The geography of AI
From Geography Matters by Chris Hamnett
February 24, 2026 · 36 min · Season 2 · Episode 10
About this episode
This episode explores the geographical distribution of artificial intelligence and its implications for power supply and cooling.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasingly hot issue in the last year or two. There are major debates about its potential impact on the labour market, on society and on human beings themselves. In this episode, our focus on more restricted, looking solely at the geographical distribution and concentration of AI, and its implications for power supply, for cooling and space. We look at two key elements of AI, the increasing number of large data centres and cloud storage facilities. Both of these involve large sheds, filled with racks of servers, computers and memory or processing chips. They take a huge amount of power and require a lot of cooling. They are overwhelming concentrated in the USA, in Western Europe and in China. The number of data centres in the less developed world is far fewer, which is largely a reflection of the level of economic development and data generation in such countries. We discuss the extent to which it is possible to use the terms AI or digital colonialism, and whether these are appropriate terms for what is perhaps just a reflection of different levels of economic development. In the next episode we will discuss some of the growing raw…
People in this episode
Host: Chris Hamnett
Topics covered
- geographical distribution of AI
- impact of AI on society
- data centres
- cloud storage
- digital colonialism
- economic development
Keywords
- artificial intelligence
- data centres
- cloud storage
- economic development
- digital colonialism
- power supply
- cooling
Mentioned in this episode
Products: AI, data centres, cloud storage facilities, copper, lithium, rare earth minerals
Places: USA, Western Europe, China, less developed world
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