The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, Sept. 21, edition that the narrative that we need more datacentres is largely foisted on us by large multinational technology companies trying to keep up with the arms race of building large language models (LLMs). The Globe's guest columnist Raymond Ng says there is no question that new data centres are required for building new LLMs. But another question remains: Is it worthwhile? Research takes time, but technology companies eager to dominate the market prioritize profits over the public good. This situation leads to private gains at the expense of broader societal costs. As we confront environmental, economic and labour crises that hit marginalized communities the hardest, prioritizing wealth for executives while worsening these issues is both irresponsible and inequitable. Mr. Ng says datacentres can only be justified when the public benefits outweigh the public costs. Mr. Ng is not against artificial intelligence developments from the private sector, particularly if these investments promote sovereignty and align with national priorities. What he is against is when new datacentres are built and used predominantly for wealth creation, or even profiteering, by companies.