The Australian Human Rights Commission says data centres – which are seeing an extraordinary boom due to artificial intelligence investment – threaten human rights. Source: The Australian.
It also questioned the employment benefits due to marginalised groups such as women, older workers, and disabled people being “under-represented in construction, ICT and engineering”.
The Commission has called for “robust and trusted regulatory protocols” on data centres to “protect fundamental human rights”.
Amid growing resistance from both the political left and right to the data centre rollout, the AHRC has declared the Albanese Government’s AI plan does not sufficiently recognise human rights challenges and environmental concerns posed by data centres.
The human rights body said data centres could raise house prices and hence interfere with the “affordability dimension of the right to adequate housing”.
“Locating data centres in urban areas may affect housing affordability by intensifying competition for land, particularly in cities already experiencing housing shortages,” its submission to a Senate inquiry on data centres said.
“Where land is allocated to large-scale industrial uses rather than residential development, this may contribute to constraints on housing supply and put upward pressure on housing prices.”
The AHRC also warned about potential temperature effects from houses downwind of data centres, noise pollution, and the electricity and water needs of data centres.
“The pressure of rising electricity costs can indirectly impact human rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living comprising food, housing and health,” it said.
“While some impacts of data centres can be mitigated through energy efficiencies and improved generation capacity, there remain limited viable alternatives to water-intensive cooling at scale.
“Increasing water use therefore has the potential to place data centre operations in tension with the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, particularly in water-stressed regions.”
The AHRC nonetheless highlighted potential benefits from the expansion of data centres, including employment opportunities, but said this could be coloured by a lack of diversity in the likely beneficiaries.
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AHRC: data centres can harm human rights (by Noah Yim, The Australian)
