An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The promise is dif­fi­cult to ig­nore. Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) is trans­form­ing in­dus­tries, tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies are pour­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in­to com­put­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and coun­tries across the world are com­pet­ing to host the da­ta cen­tres that pow­er the next gen­er­a­tion of AI mod­els.

Trinidad and To­ba­go wants to be part of that race.

The gov­ern­ment’s push to at­tract in­vest­ment in large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture has been wel­comed by sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas, cre­ate a new tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change. Yet along­side that op­ti­mism is an equal­ly strong call for trans­paren­cy, de­tailed plan­ning and a clear com­mer­cial strat­e­gy be­fore com­mit­ments are made.

In­dus­try lead­ers, tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions agree that AI presents enor­mous op­por­tu­ni­ties. Where they dif­fer is on how the coun­try should pur­sue them and whether enough in­for­ma­tion has been shared pub­licly to de­ter­mine whether the pro­posed projects are com­mer­cial­ly vi­able.

A dif­fer­ent in­dus­try

ICT con­sul­tant Kwe­si Prescod be­lieves much of the na­tion­al dis­cus­sion has con­fused two very dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es.
“The first thing we have to re­mem­ber, and I’m see­ing a lot of con­fla­tion, is the dif­fer­ence be­tween a da­ta cen­tre or cloud da­ta cen­tre and an AI da­ta cen­tre,” he said.

That dis­tinc­tion, he ar­gued, changes the en­tire con­ver­sa­tion.

T&T al­ready has five pri­vate­ly op­er­at­ed cloud da­ta cen­tres—TSTT, Flow, Dig­i­cel, Fu­jit­su and Air Link. Those fa­cil­i­ties al­ready pro­vide host­ing ser­vices, em­ploy­ment, dig­i­tal stor­age and op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ICT pro­fes­sion­als.

“So, when we’re talk­ing about the pos­i­tives that are ac­crued from a cloud da­ta cen­tre, well, we’re al­ready in that world be­cause we have five cloud da­ta cen­tres in the coun­try,” he said.

Prescod ques­tioned whether Gov­ern­ment should en­ter a mar­ket al­ready served by pri­vate op­er­a­tors, warn­ing that pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion could dis­tort com­pe­ti­tion if state re­sources are used to sub­sidise com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

In­stead, he said, pol­i­cy­mak­ers should fo­cus on whether an AI da­ta cen­tre has a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el.

Un­like con­ven­tion­al cloud fa­cil­i­ties, AI da­ta cen­tres are de­signed to run ad­vanced ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence plat­forms us­ing mas­sive amounts of com­put­ing pow­er.

“AI da­ta cen­tres that’s not where you host your web­site. AI da­ta cen­tres, it’s not where you store your cor­po­rate in­for­ma­tion,” he said. “The busi­ness mod­el is the host­ing of AI plat­forms.”
That im­me­di­ate­ly rais­es com­mer­cial ques­tions.

“Is there a mar­ket for that busi­ness mod­el in Trinidad?” he asked.

Prescod said he has yet to see an­swers on who the even­tu­al cus­tomers would be, whether there is suf­fi­cient in­ter­na­tion­al fi­bre con­nec­tiv­i­ty to sup­port over­seas users, or how op­er­a­tors would gen­er­ate sus­tain­able rev­enues.

He al­so point­ed to glob­al con­cerns over fi­nanc­ing.
“There’s an en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue, there’s a fi­nanc­ing is­sue, and we have no clear idea on ei­ther. And we still don’t un­der­stand what the busi­ness mod­el is,” he said.

En­er­gy re­mains an­oth­er ma­jor con­cern

“If it’s cheap en­er­gy, do we have the gas for the cheap en­er­gy?” he asked, not­ing that ex­ist­ing in­dus­tries have al­ready faced chal­lenges be­cause of nat­ur­al gas short­ages.

He al­so ques­tioned whether T&T has ful­ly con­sid­ered wa­ter re­quire­ments, en­vi­ron­men­tal ap­provals and the broad­er in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port fa­cil­i­ties that con­sume enor­mous amounts of elec­tric­i­ty while gen­er­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant heat.

For Prescod, none of those ques­tions should be viewed as op­po­si­tion to AI in­vest­ment.

“If they’re go­ing to in­vest in this, this is a 50-year in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try,” he out­lined.

He be­lieves the pub­lic de­serves greater clar­i­ty be­fore any fi­nal com­mit­ments are made.

“There’s just not enough in­for­ma­tion, and the onus is on the gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy all the var­i­ous things I would have men­tioned in this con­ver­sa­tion,” he said.

A chance to di­ver­si­fy

Busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions, mean­while, see gen­uine po­ten­tial if the projects are prop­er­ly struc­tured.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said the coun­try can­not ig­nore op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing with­in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my as tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy pro­duc­tion de­clines.
“The Cham­ber wel­comes ini­tia­tives that ac­cel­er­ate eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and cre­ate new sources of non-en­er­gy rev­enue. As en­er­gy pro­duc­tion de­clines, in­vest­ments such as da­ta cen­tres have the po­ten­tial to strength­en the coun­try’s dig­i­tal econ­o­my and long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

The Cham­ber stressed that tech­ni­cal stud­ies and en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­guards must ac­com­pa­ny any in­vest­ment.

“We recog­nise these projects will re­quire en­er­gy and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture. We there­fore ex­pect the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal as­sess­ments, mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures and, where ap­pro­pri­ate, al­ter­na­tive sources of sup­ply to be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the over­all project de­sign and im­ple­men­ta­tion.”

It added that long-term suc­cess de­pends on bal­anc­ing in­no­va­tion with re­spon­si­ble re­source man­age­ment.

“The Cham­ber sup­ports in­vest­ment that de­liv­ers sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and AI sov­er­eign­ty while en­sur­ing the re­spon­si­ble man­age­ment of our na­tion­al re­sources.”
Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio al­so be­lieves Trinidad and To­ba­go has sev­er­al com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages that could make it at­trac­tive to in­vestors.

He point­ed to rel­a­tive­ly af­ford­able en­er­gy, an es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al base and ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture as strengths that could po­si­tion the coun­try to at­tract in­vest­ment not on­ly in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence but al­so cloud com­put­ing, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and broad­er dig­i­tal ser­vices.

Gre­go­rio sees the pro­pos­als as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand be­yond the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic sec­tors while build­ing in­dus­tries ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing high-val­ue tech­nol­o­gy jobs and fu­ture in­no­va­tion.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh like­wise be­lieves this coun­try can­not af­ford to stand still while wait­ing for ad­di­tion­al gas pro­duc­tion to come on stream.

“This will gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­ment in a new in­dus­try to this coun­try, and it will gen­er­ate net for­eign ex­change on a sig­nif­i­cant ba­sis that we do not have,” he said.
“While we go through the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, and we await the mon­eti­sa­tion of the gas fields that should come on stream with­in the next year or two, we can­not sit idly by.”

His po­si­tion re­flects a broad­er view with­in sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that new dig­i­tal in­dus­tries should com­ple­ment, rather than re­place, the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sec­tor.

Build­ing the ecosys­tem

The pro­posed projects re­main at an ear­ly stage.

A con­sor­tium led by Hum­ming­bird AI has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op a pro­posed 150-megawatt AI in­fra­struc­ture cam­pus and da­ta cen­tre. A sep­a­rate con­sor­tium led by EY has pro­posed an­oth­er 300-megawatt project.

Hum­ming­bird de­scribes it­self as a US-based de­vel­op­ment plat­form es­tab­lished to ex­plore, struc­ture and de­liv­er large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture projects in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Rather than op­er­at­ing the com­plet­ed fa­cil­i­ties, the com­pa­ny says its role is to as­sem­ble the el­e­ments need­ed to make the de­vel­op­ment in­vest­ment-ready, in­clud­ing en­gi­neer­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies, gov­ern­ment en­gage­ment, com­mer­cial struc­tur­ing, in­sti­tu­tion­al fi­nanc­ing, tech­nol­o­gy part­ners and even­tu­al op­er­a­tors.

The com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship team in­cludes Trinida­di­an en­tre­pre­neur Marc-Kwe­si Far­rell, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture spe­cial­ist Ash­ton So­ni­at, in­fra­struc­ture fi­nance ex­ec­u­tive Nicholaus Rohled­er and ma­jor project de­liv­ery ex­pert Jake McE­wan.

Hum­ming­bird be­lieves the op­por­tu­ni­ty ex­tends well be­yond the con­struc­tion phase.

It says projects of this scale have the po­ten­tial to cre­ate high­ly skilled em­ploy­ment, gen­er­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers and es­tab­lish a long-term dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture plat­form ca­pa­ble of earn­ing sus­tained for­eign ex­change.

The com­pa­ny al­so ac­knowl­edges that con­cerns sur­round­ing elec­tric­i­ty de­mand, wa­ter con­sump­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts are ap­pro­pri­ate for projects of this mag­ni­tude.
It not­ed those is­sues will be ex­am­ined through de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing stud­ies, util­i­ty as­sess­ments and en­vi­ron­men­tal eval­u­a­tions be­fore de­vel­op­ment pro­ceeds.

The pro­posed first phase would utilise ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture where prac­ti­cal and sub­ject to tech­ni­cal stud­ies and gov­ern­ment ap­provals. As the cam­pus ex­pands, fu­ture phas­es could in­clude ded­i­cat­ed be­hind-the-me­ter gen­er­a­tion, pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty specif­i­cal­ly for the fa­cil­i­ty rather than re­ly­ing en­tire­ly on the na­tion­al grid.

Hum­ming­bird al­so says re­new­able en­er­gy and oth­er ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies could even­tu­al­ly form part of the project’s evo­lu­tion where tech­ni­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly fea­si­ble.
The pro­pos­als have al­so at­tract­ed in­ter­est from the Unit­ed States.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, US Em­bassy eco­nom­ic of­fi­cer Jeff Cern­yar iden­ti­fied in­dus­tri­al es­tates as log­i­cal lo­ca­tions for fa­cil­i­ties of this scale be­cause they al­ready sup­port heavy in­dus­try and are sep­a­rat­ed from res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties.

Point Lisas has emerged as one of the lo­ca­tions viewed as suit­able be­cause of its in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture and ex­ist­ing util­i­ty net­works, al­though no fi­nal site has been an­nounced.

As de­bate con­tin­ues, one point ap­pears to unite sup­port­ers and skep­tics alike. Few dis­pute that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence will re­shape the glob­al econ­o­my.