Fighting the Inevitable: AI, Hyperscale Datacentres, and Resistance [RBF]

Fighting the Inevitable: AI, Hyperscale Datacentres, and Resistance runs at Assembly Roxy on Friday 6 November, from 12:30 to 1:30. It's part of the Radical Book Fair, the November fixture of Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop.

The panel challenges the idea that AI is inevitable. The argument is that this narrative is used to justify the build-out of hyperscale datacentres, new surveillance technologies, and job cuts, and that there's a resistance that puts power back into communities. It asks what these centres draw in power and water, who carries the cost, and what communities have managed to stop, rooting the whole debate in the local Gyle data centre proposal. The session brings together a supercomputing researcher and a datacentre campaigner to talk through it.

On the panel are Dr Victoria Plutshack, Steph Wright, Dr Rupert Nash, and Kim Pratt, with Anna Komendantskaya chairing. The session is sponsored and organised by People and Planet at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Radical Book Fair, which is the November fixture of Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop. Lighthouse runs a year-round programme that includes the August Book Fringe and several book clubs, like Other Fruit and Bright Futures.

The session is filmed and recorded. It runs from 12:30 to 1:30 at Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, EH8 9SU, and tickets are £5 or free.