The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to re­as­sure the pub­lic that en­vi­ron­men­tal, tech­ni­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns sur­round­ing its pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tre projects will be thor­ough­ly ex­am­ined be­fore any con­struc­tion be­gins.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith stressed that the agree­ments signed with Unit­ed States com­pa­nies are mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing (MOUs) and not ap­provals for de­vel­op­ment.

"It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that these are mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing es­tab­lish­ing a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion and due dili­gence, not fi­nal project ap­provals," Smith said.