Meanwhile in India…

This letter refers to the news report ‘Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is building world’s biggest data centre: report’ (January 25, 2025). The question is: what is Pakistan doing in this field? Are we setting up our own data centres, even if they are a national or publicly operated? Have we done a study on the economic and other advantages and disadvantages that are expected to accrue from institutionalising data centres for our economy? These are all pertinent and valid questions.

The report mentions that the data centre’s three gigawatts capacity would give the most populous nation on earth the potential to greatly accelerate its development of artificial intelligence. I do not know whether alarm bells are ringing here concerning this development but we do need to be concerned and we ought to take steps for data centre/artificial intelligence development, which is the key to the future.

Abbas R Siddiqi

Lahore