Ireland’s “let it rip” attitude to data centres could become problematic, a prominent global advocate for responsible artificial intelligence (AI) policy has said.
Dex Hunter-Torricke was director of communications for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and served as Mark Zuckerberg’s personal speech writer as well as Facebook’s first head of executive communications.
After becoming disillusioned with big tech, Hunter-Torricke founded the Center for Tomorrow in 2025, an organisation focused on AI regulation and protecting democracy.
Addressing the Vodafone Future Frontiers event in Dublin on Wednesday, he told The Irish Times data centres will be one of the biggest issues globally in the next year, and that Ireland and other countries could learn from the approach of the Australian government.
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Australia has implemented a national regulatory framework for data centres. The laws include water-usage-efficiency rules, a focus on renewable energy (with penalties for breaking the rules) and stipulations on local engagement.
“It’s extraordinary to me that data centres which are being built on the promise that AI might serve people, are then being justified when we completely detach them from the effects on people,” he said.
“If Ireland wants a good future, it’s going to need to have infrastructure and energy which is under its control and which is delivered in an affordable way. It also needs the support of communities . . . on the current path, it’s just a ‘let it rip’ strategy with AI.
“There’s a way to do this stuff and to get the value of AI, but also to do it in a responsible way.”
He said Musk’s veer to the right in politics was “independent of Trump”, adding that he was probably “furious” at the US midterm election results.
Hunter-Torricke believes Musk’s right-wing political views are “authentic”, but he was surprised by the extremity of the SpaceX founder’s rhetoric since his own departure from the company in 2016.
Given Musk and Zuckerberg were so preoccupied with their respective images, he found their move to embrace the more extreme Republican policies “astonishing”.
But, he said, their “moment of reckoning is about to arrive”.
“There was this reputation for these companies that they were politically very astute. And I think that reputation has gone out the window.”
Hunter-Torricke advocates for governments to play a stronger role in AI regulation, and said Ireland, a “technology superpower”, should use its presidency of the EU Council to lead on this.
“There is absolutely a role that Ireland can play now. I think in this age everything is extraordinarily interconnected,” he said.
“There are no small countries any more . . . and Ireland has a chance to articulate a set of rules for managing AI, data centres, the effects of AI on young people, all these things that deeply matter to people around the world.”
