Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is building one of the world’s largest AI supercomputers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since coming online in September, the facility, dubbed Colossus, has amassed an absurd arsenal of 200,000 Nvidia graphics processing units to train Musk’s chatbot, Grok.
That comes with monstrous energy demands, and the way xAI is meeting them has angered environmental groups and the residents of Boxtown, a predominantly Black neighborhood just three miles south of the facility, Politico reports.
Without obtaining a permit, Musk’s company has rolled in 35 portable gas-powered turbines with enough electricity output between them to power a small city, spewing harmful, smog-forming pollutants into the air, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde. And in just 11 months since xAI started operations in Memphis, it’s become one of the largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides in the surrounding county, according to environmental group estimates reviewed by Politico, afflicting an area that already leads the state in emergency visits for asthma…