A Colossal Injustice
with Colossus in Memphis
When the richest man sets his sights on a town –watch out. You can imagine the town business and community leaders rolling out the red carpet giddy with the attention and anticipation of the possibilities for prosperity –for themselves and the community.
But what happens when the rich man comes and decides he doesn’t have to abide by rules and regulations or listen to the people in the community that will be impacted by what he does? You get xAI in Memphis, Tennessee. In less than a year Elon Musk has managed to make the already polluted air unbearable.
I posted on his platform last year when the deal for his xAI World Headquarters…
It’s great when new investment is made in our communities but there’s a saying in our community, “All money is not good money” this feels like one of those instances IMHO /js
Future generations of South Memphis deserve clean air to breathe. (Eric Hilt/SELC)
also in this thread responding to my State Representative Jeff Yarbo’s reaction
I really want to be as excited as my state rep who I respect I hope I’m wrong but this guy doesn’t have a great track record for his treatment of black employees and given the demographics of the area & the history I’m skeptical
I’m not psychic, I’m just aware of his corporate behavior in communities where he currently does business (ie Texas) and communities he left, like California. As Maya Angelou said, “when people show you who they are, believe them.” Elon has shown us plenty to discern who he is and, from my perspective, not a very good corporate citizen.
He runs his companies like a mad King and because most of them until his Twitter purchase are financially successful nobody cares or says very much about it. That is until he took his chainsaw hatch management style to our government.
Elon slid into Memphis quietly and quickly, inking deals and NDAs with utilities and regulators in the city. Since it was made public people have begun to speak out and tell the world what the richest man is doing to a relatively poor black community. This is the same man who cut-off lifesaving aide to the poorest most vulnerable children in Africa for cost savings under the guise of government efficiency as Presidential Advisor and head of DOGE.
I fear he will eventually lay Memphis to waste in much the same way he’s done with his X platform which uses the AI Grok fueled by Colossus. Twitter was once a great virtual diverse space for constructive townhall type discussions, now it’s a toxic wasteland.
Memphis city officials, the Greater Memphis Chamber, and Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division signed NDAs to “maintain secrecy around the project’s details, citing competitive, economic, and technical reasons.” In true billionaire technocrat style he bypassed any transparency or public oversight for a project with major environmental and community impact! To meet the data center’s incredible energy demands, xAI set up — and is still running — more than 30 unpermitted methane gas turbines.
Why are they allowing it? Economic growth and gains have them starry eyed and short sighted. This is the same old story of American expansionism from previous decades it's always at some community’s expense. They are usually black and brown marginalized people. Money and the potential for more always speaks louder than their potential harm.
The jobs they talk about will largely be filled by people outside of Memphis who relocate there. They relocate with great salaries in need of housing driving up the cost and availability for affordable housing. Then many of the residents may be forced to relocate to the very area that is Ground Zero for the pollution. This is the anatomy of gentrification.
Musk’s DOGE team is expanding use of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok in the U.S. federal government too. Using it to analyze data, potentially violating conflict-of-interest laws and putting at risk sensitive information on millions of Americans.
Included in the Republicans Big Billionaires Bill currently in Congress is a poison pill, a dangerous giveaway to tech firms that would leave consumers — particularly vulnerable communities and children — unprotected and wipe out a flurry of state laws that address everything from deepfakes to discrimination in automated hiring.
Tennessee recently passed the ELVIS Act, which is like our first generation of the NO FAKES Act.” Hopefully the Representatives from Tennessee will take a strong stand to stop it as Sen. Blackburn has indicated.
Colossus is not even open yet and it's already causing colossal havoc! This is business as usual for Musk and the “Free-Market” Liberatarian disruptive ideologues. Move fast and break things even if it kills people --literally!
Precisely the same behavior the technocrats will use for their proposed “freedom cities” or “networked states” this regime is enabling. More on this to come.
Sources:
https://www.selc.org/news/resistance-against-elon-musks-xai-facility-in-south-memphis-gets-stronger/
https://wreg.com/news/mayor-young-says-only-15-of-xais-35-turbines-are-being-used/ *
https://time.com/7021709/elon-musk-xai-grok-memphis/
https://tntribune.com/how-memphis-became-a-battleground-over-elon-musks-xai-supercomputer/
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5088134/elon-musk-ai-xai-supercomputer-memphis-pollution
https://beyer.house.gov/uploadedfiles/congressional_letter_to_administration_on_doge_use_of_ai.pdf
https://www.techpolicy.press/us-house-passes-10year-moratorium-on-state-ai-laws/