A neighborhood well being division in Memphis has granted Elon Musk’s xAI information middle an air allow to proceed working the fuel generators that energy the corporate’s Grok chatbot. The allow comes amid widespread group opposition and a looming lawsuit alleging the corporate violated the Clear Air Act.
The Shelby County Well being Division launched an air permit for the xAI undertaking Wednesday, after receiving lots of of public feedback. The information was first reported by the Every day Memphian.
In June, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce announced that xAI had chosen a website in Memphis to construct its new supercomputer. The corporate’s web site boasts that it was in a position to construct the supercomputer, Colossus, in simply 122 days. That velocity was due partially to the cellular fuel generators the corporate shortly began installing on the campus, the positioning of a former manufacturing facility.
Colossus allowed xAI to shortly catch as much as rivals OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic in constructing cutting-edge synthetic intelligence. It was constructed utilizing 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, making it seemingly the world’s largest supercomputer.
xAI’s Memphis campus is positioned in a predominantly Black group generally known as Boxtown which has been traditionally burdened with industrial tasks that trigger air pollution. Fuel generators like those xAI is utilizing in Memphis could be a important supply of dangerous emissions, like nitrogen oxides, which create smog. Memphis already has some of the highest child asthma rates in Tennessee. Since xAI started working its generators, residents have repeatedly met and rallied in opposition to the undertaking.
“I’m horrified however not shocked,” says KeShaun Pearson, the chief of Memphis Group In opposition to Air pollution. “The flagrant violation of the Clear Air Act and the disregard for our human proper to scrub air, by xAI’s burning of unlawful methane generators, has been stamped as permissible by the Shelby County Well being Division. Over 1,000 folks submitted public feedback demanding safety and received handed over for a billionaire’s bold experiment.”
Below the Clear Air Act, “main” sources of emissions—like a cluster of fuel generators—want a allow, generally known as a Prevention of Vital Deterioration (PSD) permit. Nonetheless, Shelby County Well being Division officers told native reporters in August that this wasn’t needed for xAI since its generators weren’t designed to be everlasting. Amid mounting native opposition, xAI lastly utilized for a allow with the Shelby County Well being Division in January, months after it first started working the generators.
Final month, the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Regulation Middle (SELC) announced that they meant to sue xAI for allegedly violating the Clear Air Act.
“The choice to offer xAI an air allow for its polluting fuel generators flies within the face of the
lots of of Memphians who spoke out in opposition to the corporate’s allow request,” stated SELC Senior Lawyer Amanda Garcia in a press launch. “As a substitute of confronting long-standing air air pollution issues in South Memphis, the Shelby County Well being Division is popping a blind eye to apparent Clear Air Act violations as a way to enable one other polluter to arrange store on this already-overburdened group with out applicable protections.”
