Traditional data centres are worthless to Mexico. AI data centres might revolutionise its industry
How a country with very little artificial intelligence use can benefit from the AI boom.
AI enthusiasts are difficult to interview. Even when asked about the physical infrastructure that goes into making artificial intelligence work, they’ll go off into the future ethereal possibilities of AI.
Meanwhile, the resistance against the physical damage wrought by AI is already here. In the US particularly, protests now erupt every time a data centre is announced. Locals worry about the emissions from these giant buildings, their consumption of water, their maddening non-stop hum.
Investors, looking to avoid NIMBYs in the US, are now pushing the construction of data centres on other countries, selling them as a great economic opportunity.
The Mexican government is sold: On announcing a new giant data centre in the state of Querétaro, economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard referred to it as “a sort of highway for everything to do with artificial intelligence in Mexico. We’re building those highways and bridges so we can get that new economy to work.”
Mexican businesses don’t even use AI. In a recent paper, Gilberto García-Vazquez, chief economist at the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab (NZIPL) and an expert in AI infrastructure, noted that “fewer than 3% of Mexican businesses have incorporated artificial intelligence.” The number of those that use it effectively is likely much lower, so—barring an unlikely cultural revolution—Mexico would only stand to benefit in the short and medium term from the economic outputs of the physical infrastructure itself.
Mexico’s closeness to the US—AI’s main market—and its eagerness to attract investment may have positioned it to be the next big site for data centre construction. It also exposes it far more to its negative effects—drought, energy scarcity, poor data protection—all add up to make a perfect shit storm.
The path of outright rejection isn’t all that viable either: In a country with virtually no economic growth and the looming threat of poverty for millions, to opt out of what may well be the next Industrial Revolution would be to willingly bow to economic submission for the rest of the 21st century. (Indeed, some of the greatest historical disasters in Mexican history could well be described stemming from failures to modernise—see the 1846 US invasion of Mexico—or to modernise equitably—see the Mexican Revolution.)
But what if Mexico could have its AI cake and eat it too? The AI infrastructure boom hides another genuine industrial revolution in plain sight. Parts of Mexican industry are already exploiting it. For the gains to be felt widely it will take a concerted effort by local Mexican business, investors, and the State to avoid missing them and ending up stuck only with the worst AI and data centres have to offer.
