New technology is challenging political plans.
For many people, “AI” is something small that fits neatly in their pockets, confined to their 6.1″ phone screen, consigned to a little icon that lurks on their home screen or in a folder labeled “productivity.” For the vast majority of consumers, what they call “Artificial Intelligence” (in reality, usually a Large Language Model [LLM] that imitates and reproduces patterns of language) is a tool they treat in the same way as Google, a microwave, or a car. It is there for a purpose, but can be put away when it’s not in use.
But in Southeast Asia, “AI” is something real, tangible, physical—and increasingly intrusive. The region has long been recognized as the most attractive place for global tech firms to invest when it comes to growing their AI capacities, with over $55 billion having been poured in by major tech companies already—a figure that is expected to double by 2028—and it’s easy to see why. Southeast Asia in general benefits from low energy costs, vast tracts of undeveloped land, and—crucially—readily accessible water.
Water is like gold in the AI rush. After all, AI, like “the cloud,” is a term that obfuscates its physical reality: there is no disembodied intelligence that exists only in the ether, but rather as a massive brain tethered to huge banks of computers, running and processing non-stop, hungrily swallowing energy and water at a pace that is difficult to sustain. These banks of computers, labeled “data centers,” are incredibly resource-intensive, with large data centers already using up to five million gallons a day, the same as a small town of up to 50,000 people, to keep them cool enough to keep running.
So while many of us can safely tuck AI away into our trouser pocket, for the people of Southeast Asia, the physical presence of AI challenges the availability of resources. Inevitably, this has moved AI out of the realm of science fiction, rapidly through the world of the market, and into the sticky hands of politics. Artificial Intelligence, which only three years ago was considered clunky and nowhere near ready for mass use, has now become a geopolitical football kicked around by policy makers and climate change activists, in regional disputes.
Already, Google has quietly relegated its net-zero commitments to the dusty shelves, due almost entirely to the rapid rise in energy demand owing to AI data centers. This is a trend across other giants, including Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and others, though this is not so easily waved away as greedy corporations giving up the ghost as soon as they can—instead, AI Magazine argues, the AI surge should be seen as an opportunity to provide more innovative and sustainable answers to the questions raised by climate change. This poses questions over whether a commitment to net zero actually gets in the way of resolving energy crises, by preventing the technologies needed to solve it from doing so. As Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google, put it: “Our AI-powered efficiency recommendation system for data centers led to a 40% reduction in the energy we use for cooling.”
In fact, a report from the University of Cambridge determined that the enormous demand for AI and net-zero climate change commitments are, frankly, irreconcilable. Significantly, the report argues that “the idea that governments such as the UK can become leaders in AI while simultaneously meeting their net zero targets amounts to ‘magical thinking at the highest levels,’ according to the report’s authors. The UK is committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”
Similarly, in geopolitical terms, “Southeast Asia” is a fractured market with highly uneven investment; historically, highly-developed nations like Singapore have been well-placed to take advantage of the surge of investment, but as their natural resources relevant to AI dwindle (particularly land space), developing nations like Malaysia have benefited from, as McConnell and Yanling put it, “spillover” from the developed nations.
This has led to interesting, and potentially consequential, policy shifts as Singapore attempts to retain its leading role in the region: for instance, there are plans to use Jurong Island to build an AI data center powered by renewable energy in a major experiment in overcoming the bottleneck imposed on AI development by climate change concerns.
In response, Malaysia has developed a specific policy framework purely for data centers to integrate them into the nation’s economic life, “streamlining policies and investment” with an ecological aspect in mind, while Vietnam has made AI and eco-data centers a central plank of its energy platform in its drive to become a tiger economy. Part of this plan is that half of all data centers must be powered by green technology.
Regardless of the strategy through which AI expansion is pursued, there is a clear pattern emerging. What we can see is an industry that is increasingly politicized, and geopolitically vulnerable; as global tech giants continue to pour billions into the gold rush that is AI, nations in Southeast Asia are competing more and more to attract investment and attempt to square the circle of climate change concerns with the potential prosperity the technology offers. The first nation to do so will reap the rewards.
