A historically Black community in Memphis, already burdened by pollution, fears xAI will worsen environmental threats.
A former Electrolux facility in Memphis, Tennessee, on June 10, 2024. Elon Musk's xAI plans to develop a new facility in Memphis to house a giant supercomputer.: that his artificial intelligence startup xAI would release “the most powerful AI in the world,” a model called Grok 3, by this December. The bulk of that AI’s training, Musk said, would happen at a “massive new training center” in Memphis, which he bragged had been built in 19 days.
MLGW said in a statement to TIME that xAI is paying for the technical upgrades that enable them to double their power usage—and that in order for the company to reach the full 150 megawatts, there will need to be $1.7 million in improvements to a transmission line. “There will be no impact to the reliability of availability of power to other customers from this electric load,” the company wrote.
And Garcia, at the SELC, says that while xAI waits for more power to become available, they’ve turned to non-legal measures to sate their demand, by installing gas combustion turbines on the site that they are operating without a permit. Garcia says the SELC has observed the installation of 18 such turbines, which have the capacity to emit 130 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year.
Memphis’s drinking water has also been threatened by contamination. In 2022, the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice claimed that a now-defunct coal plant in Memphis was leaking arsenic and other dangerous chemicals into the groundwater supply, and ranked it as one of thecontaminated coal ash sites in the country. And because xAI sits close to the contaminated well in question, Houston warns that its heavy water usage could exacerbate the problem.
“We're not opposed to ethical economic development and business moving into town,” says Garcia. “But we need some assurance that it's not going to make what is already an untenable situation worse.” For Pearson, of Memphis Community Against Pollution, the arrival of xAI is concerning because as someone who grew up in Boxtown, he says he’s seen how other major corporations have treated the area.
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