Kevin O'Leary warns China is winning the AI race because U.S. states are slowing data center production
As data center projects continue to get shut down across the country, "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary and other investors are warning that the facilities are needed to compete with...
By Fox News · Fox News
As data center projects continue to get shut down across the country, "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary and other investors are warning that the facilities are needed to compete with China in the artificial intelligence race. Data centers are at the forefront of the continued development of AI, serving as the hardware for the large amount of electricity and infrastructure needed to improve response time and data storage. But opponents cite utility costs to local residents and environmental concerns in their efforts to block development of new centers. "If everybody talks about data centers, too much heat, too much noise, too much water , all that, that was 20 years ago," O’Leary told Fox News Digital. "Today's technology is completely different in terms of the heat profile, in terms the water profile, in terms how big these buildings have to be and where they have to be, because we've got air-cooled technology and obviously the chip technology's advanced." TRUMP SAYS EVERY AI PLANT BEING BUILT IN US WILL BE SELF-SUSTAINING WITH THEIR OWN ELECTRICITY O’Leary said China is focused on improving its power grid, which is needed in order to support the massive electricity demands of running a data center. He noted that data centers can function using varied energy sources. "Most of it is coming from burning nat[ural] gas, which is very clean now, with turbines," he said. "Hopefully nuclear power one day, some solar, some battery, all of it together. I think the key is that they're beating us because they're getting more power sooner, and then they're building these data centers to train their own AI. The country that has the best AI will have the best economy and the best defense, the best military, and win all the wars because it's going robotically." REPORT: CHINESE PROPAGANDA, SINGHAM NETWORK, FOREIGN DARK MONEY LINKED TO CAMPAIGNS AGAINST DATA CENTERS President Donald Trump has pushed hard for new data center production. Last July, he signed an executive order titled "…