The Phoenix area is increasingly becoming a hub for data centers powering artificial intelligence, and even tribes are beginning to tackle the tradeoffs.
From language and culture to tribal courts and health, the applications are seemingly endless.
“There’s not been a conference on AI and Indian Country at all, to my knowledge,” said Traci Morris, executive director of Arizona State University’s American Indian Policy Institute, “and so this is really the first time bringing people together.”
Morris, who is Chickasaw, says she and her team will draft a whitepaper on takeaways from the daylong “Wiring the Rez” gathering at the university’s campus in downtown Phoenix last month.
Among them was critical dialogue about natural resources like water and energy, a topic initially missing from the agenda but later added, admitted Morris, “after we saw stuff on our social media saying, ‘Well, what about what it’s doing to the environment?’ OK, let’s add a panel, we got space.”
Former Obama-era Energy Department official Chris Deschene, who is Navajo and now executive director of the National Inter-Tribal Energy Council trade association, believes few tribes are in the position to consider building data centers on their lands.
“So while we have 574-some-odd tribes in the country, most of Indian Country is not impacted by this,” said Deschene, “but it does impact for example, if you have utility rates that might change, because water is changing, power demand is changing.”
Echoing Deschene is Cora Tso, who is Navajo and a senior research fellow specializing in tribal issues at ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.
With many Arizona tribes still in litigation, Tso stated “about 10 tribes are excluded from that conversation because we don't have our water rights resolved” — yet “we have some golf courses that are located on tribal lands that have the same water consumption use as some small AI data centers.”
Arizona utilities APS and Tucson Electric Power are now proposing a 14% hike for ratepayers, largely driven by rising energy demands across the sprawling Grand Canyon State, which is reportedly home to more than 150 data centers and counting.
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