Hope for jobs was tem­pered by con­cerns over wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and a lack of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion yes­ter­day, as res­i­dents of Debe re­act­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish AI da­ta cen­tres in the com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing they want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on how the project would af­fect their lives.

The an­nounce­ment that Debe has been ear­marked as the pro­posed home for one of the coun­try’s biggest tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments has sparked cu­rios­i­ty across the south Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty. While some res­i­dents wel­comed the prospect of jobs and de­vel­op­ment, oth­ers ques­tioned whether the area’s in­fra­struc­ture could sup­port fa­cil­i­ties known in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for their sig­nif­i­cant elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter de­mands.

The Gov­ern­ment an­nounced it had signed mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with Flori­da-head­quar­tered Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings and New York-based Ernst and Young LLP on Fri­day to de­vel­op two ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres in T&T as part of a pro­posed mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment.