Major AI company Anthropic already hiring someone to power training Down Under
If the Prime Minister wants major AI companies to start training their models in Australia, he'll be chuffed to see a new job advertised by Anthropic. The US company behind popular AI chatbot Claude has listed a "Data Centre Energy Lead, Australia" in the last few days. Whoever fills this job will have the task of finding enough power to "scale compute capacity efficiently while navigating the complex dynamics […] and Australia's evolving energy regulatory environment to achieve the speed and scale required for frontier AI development." That last bit — "frontier AI development" — is key. The data centres popping up across Australia are mostly being used to run the AI that's already been trained. Training AI requires bigger, hungrier and more sophisticated data centres. As far as we know, the major AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are only doing their training in the US. But Anthony Albanese's major AI speech last week made clear that he wants to lure major AI company training down under — and the tens of billions of dollars of investment and reliance on Australia that would come with it. So just how much power are we talking? The job ad doesn't say, only saying the role would need to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it: "Structure innovative commercial frameworks and partnership models — including PPAs, network use of system arrangements, and behind-the-meter solutions." Previously, the ABC reported that Anthropic representatives told industry sources that they want 5 gigawatts by 2030, ramping up to 2040 in the future. Whoever gets this gig has their work cut out for them!