Mr. Musk Goes To Memphis — And Poisons Its Air

Join CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summariesjoin our daily newsletterand/or follow us on Google News!

When Elon Musk isn’t working Tesla into the bottom, giving Nazi salutes at political occasions, flying rockets backward, or personally overseeing the dismantling of the US authorities, he fills his idle moments spawning extra offspring and running the show at xAI— his private reply to the factitious intelligence revolution. For causes which are unclear, xAI is constructing a big knowledge middle he modestly dubbed Colossus in Memphis, Tennessee.

Why? Who is aware of why Musk does something? The unique constructing is a former Electrolux manufacturing facility that has been vacant for a very long time. Possibly he received a very good deal on the hire or possibly he couldn’t wait to construct a brand new facility. For no matter cause, Memphis was chosen and the mayor couldn’t be happier.

Hizzoner is gloating as a result of a serious property that was laying fallow is now offering recent tax revenues for town, however the individuals who stay within the space aren’t feeling fairly so glad. They are saying Colossus is dumping large portions of carbon dioxide into the air they breath, together with a number of different pollution. Methane does burn cleaner than coal, however that doesn’t imply you need to stick your mouth over the exhaust pipe of a methane generator and inhale.

There nonetheless are fine particulates within the exhaust stream, that are identified to trigger important well being points. Inside a few miles of xAI are a number of residential neighborhoods which have lengthy handled industrial air pollution. This space is traditionally Black and has larger charges of most cancers and bronchial asthma and a decrease life expectancy than different components of town.

By now, everyone seems to be nicely conscious that the information facilities powering the factitious intelligence motion are voracious customers of electrical energy. A couple of years in the past, folks have been working round like chickens with their heads lower off as a result of electrical vehicles have been going to crash the utility grid. However now that AI is sucking up much more electrons than EVs ever may, all people is okay with that. (There could also be a lesson there someplace about how industries affect public opinion.)

Memphis doesn’t have sufficient electrical power obtainable to satisfy the wants of Colossus — not even shut. So the nice and highly effective Musk has organized to have transportable methane powered turbines introduced in to provide the juice it wants. The issue, the neighbors say, is that Musk uncared for to acquire the required permits to function them earlier than turning them on.

Musk Comes To Memphis

Issues got here to a head earlier this month when the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart disclosed that xAI had quietly moved in a minimum of 35 transportable methane fuel generators with out air permits to assist energy its supercomputer. The group says that many turbines may energy a complete metropolis and are monumental emitters of poisonous and carcinogenic air pollution. In keeping with The GuardianSELC made the invention by taking satellite tv for pc photographs of the Colossus facility.

Days after the information broke, Memphis Mayor Paul Younger spoke in a public discussion board and mentioned he had been involved with xAI and that the corporate was not utilizing all the fuel turbines, in line with WREG News. Younger is a champion for xAI in Memphis, partly as a result of it’s pumping cash into metropolis coffers and partly as a result of he doesn’t stay downwind of the large knowledge middle. He mentioned the corporate has a pending allow utility with the Shelby County well being division to run 15 turbines. Sharp-eyed readers will be aware that allows are imagined to be obtained beforehand. Most of us don’t construct a home and apply for a constructing allow after it’s completed, however Musk feels he isn’t constrained by such authorized niceties.

“There are 35, but there are only 15 that are on,” Younger mentioned. “The other ones are stored on the site.” However the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart has taken new pictures of Colossus utilizing thermal imaging. These pictures present 33 generators giving off important quantities of warmth, which suggests they have been in use on the time the picture was taken. So any person is mendacity. CleanTechnica readers, who’re all above common, can resolve for themselves who’s credible and who just isn’t.

“It is appalling that xAI would operate more than 30 methane gas turbines without any permits or any public oversight,” Amanda Garcia, a senior lawyer for the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart, informed The Guardian. “xAI’s failure to disclose that it’s running dozens of these polluting turbines at its south Memphis data center has left Memphians in the dark about what is being pumped into the air they breathe every day.”

For The Love Of Grok

What is going on at xAI is the event of a man-made intelligence system Elon has named Grok. In keeping with WikipediaGrok is a generative synthetic intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Based mostly on the big language mannequin of the identical title, it was launched in 2023 by Elon Musk. The chatbot is marketed as having a “sense of humor” and has direct entry to Musk anti-social media platform referred to as X. Musk co-founded the AI analysis group OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015, however left the corporate’s board in 2018, saying he “didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”

OpenAI went on to launch ChatGPT in 2022, and GPT-4 in March 2023. That very same month, Musk was one among a number of people who signed the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” open letter from the Way forward for Life Institute. It referred to as for a six-month pause within the growth of any AI software program extra highly effective than GPT-4. In April 2023, Musk mentioned in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight that he supposed to develop an AI chatbot referred to as “TruthGPT,” which he described as “a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

Musk expressed his concern to Carlson that ChatGPT was being “trained to be politically correct.” TruthGPT would later grow to be referred to as “Grok,” a verb coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Unusual Land to explain a type of understanding. Fact is a slippery idea. Elon insists he’s a “free speech absolutist,” however then throttles conversations on X that don’t conform to his model of the reality. He additionally has instructed his underlings to spice up his posts as a result of he, just like the alleged president, thinks his views are at all times right and may get probably the most consideration.

Colossus And Its Discontents

Stephen Smith, who has led the Southern Alliance For Clean Energy for greater than 30 years, has some considerations about Colossus and its impact on the community. When xAI revealed that it deliberate to extend in dimension by an element of ten, he mentioned, “Much more regarding is the truth that we’re removed from satisfied that xAI didn’t know once they first got here to Memphis that they might develop the plans 10x.

“This is a classic bait and switch — xAI proposed one thing, and grew support from stakeholders like the Greater Memphis Chamber, the Memphis Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), TVA, and governing authorities. Musk and crew moved forward on the path to operating the facility, and only then announced a change in magnitude that creates a fundamentally different situation for public health in Memphis, economic stability for ratepayers, and environmental security.”

The present peak demand for all the metropolis of Memphis is round 3 GW. Supplying Colossus would require the equal of a brand new nuclear or mixed cycle methane-fired producing station simply to satisfy the wants of this one buyer. “TVA will now have to contemplate building a power plant just to serve this one facility. The unanswered question is who pays for the new generation?” Smith asks.

“Our original hope with the original 150 MW level facility was that Musk would use his engineering expertise to bring Tesla Megapacks with solar and storage capability to make this facility a model of clean, renewable energy. It would be good to hear if there is an expansion to the facility that there’s a scalable commitment to renewable energy and storage.”

What Smith fails to grasp is that Musk doesn’t care a flying fig leaf about clear power. He cares about imposing his will on others and taking advantage of doing so. The listening to subsequent week will drone on and greater than doubtless, a supine board will decide favoring Musk. Objectors will then attraction and the method will take years to work its means although the courts. In the meantime, these methane turbines will maintain spinning and sending clouds of poisonous air over communities that don’t have the political energy that Musk has.

Ultimately, Musk will get all the pieces he desires, simply as he at all times does. When your are the richest particular person in human historical past, issues have a means of going your means. The plan is to expire the clock, one thing folks with truckloads of money and a military of attorneys do on a regular basis. Ultimately, all of this can do nothing greater than present Musk with one more platform that dispenses fact as Musk understands it to be. Sleep tight, America.