On the banks of the Mississippi, a sulfurous stench hits the back of the throat near Elon Musk’s Colossus, the largest artificial intelligence supercomputer in the world.
Housed in a warehouse guarded by CCTV cameras and an imposing fence, with a row of Tesla cybertrucks parked outside, Colossus is named after a 1970 dystopian film about a computer that seizes control of the United States nuclear codes and enslaves humanity.
Inside, hundreds of thousands of processing units, the systems used to power AI, are whirring away on neatly stacked shelves to produce Grok, a chatbot which Musk hopes will soon overtake ChatGPT as the most advanced large language model.
When completed, Colossus will require 1.1 gigawatts of power, about 40 per cent of the energy consumption of Memphis on an average summer’s day. It will pump one million gallons of water, equivalent to one and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools, to cool its processors each day.
Elon Musk has planned a second AI supercomputer to be built about 6 miles to the west of the current Colossus
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Although these statistics seem extraordinary, what is happening in south Memphis is a vision of America’s economic future.
Despite fears of a 2008-style financial crash, investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI, and big tech tycoons are competing to build data centres at a frenetic pace across the country.
It was after the release of ChatGPT in 2022 that Musk, 54, realised the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, his former friend turned competitor, had stolen a march in the AI race.
• Does the world really want what Sam Altman is selling?
Desperate to catch up, Musk created xAI and looked for a city in need of investment. He chose Memphis, whose authorities were willing to waive planning regulations to help him build his supercomputer. In just 122 days he turned a former appliance factory into Colossus.
The site of Colossus
KAREN PULFER FOCHT FOR THE TIMES
In Boxtown, a 90 per cent black neighbourhood first settled by freed slaves in 1863, residents believe the fumes from Colossus, about a mile away, have made a polluted suburb even more noxious.
The surrounding forest has turned shades of saffron and pumpkin, yet these days Sarah Gladney, 71, seldom opens her windows and she has given up on her daily constitutionals.
“Prior to xAI, we were dealing with more of a waste smell. Like poop,” Gladney, a retired postal worker, said. “This is more like a chemical-type smell.”
Sarah Gladney asked Grok when xAI would invest in the community
KAREN PULFER FOCHT FOR THE TIMES
• Louisa Clarence-Smith: Americans are fighting back against data centres and Big Tech
Each question posed to an AI chatbot such as Grok requires far more power than an ordinary Google search — possibly up to ten times more.
When the Memphis grid was unable to offer sufficient power for Colossus to churn out chatbot responses, Musk installed 35 methane gas turbines for his data centre.
While Shelby County has recorded the dirtiest air in Tennessee for many years — half the state’s admissions for childhood asthma come from there — local residents say the arrival of Colossus has made things worse.
Willie Joe Stratford at the home in which he was born. He blames pollution from Musk’s AI for his ailments
KAREN PULFER FOCHT FOR THE TIMES
Willie Joe Stafford, 81, a retired Boxtown resident who used to work in the city’s transport department, explained his conviction that the mucus he now regularly coughed up was a result of the xAI pollution in Boxtown. To illustrate the ill effects, he turned on his cold water tap to show a slow trickle falling into his sink, blaming the pathetic flow on the insatiable thirst of Colossus.
“The people who live round here are blacks,” Stratford said. “So they think they can do what they want. Why did Musk pick this area down here to put that computer thing that ain’t nobody down here need?”
Batsell Booker, 66, has a daughter who is recovering from cancer. Boxtown has abnormally high rates of the disease.
“We have to put our lungs up in exchange for profit. It’s just not fair, it’s not morally right. I’m all for technology. My grandson works in cybersecurity. My battle is over them bringing more pollution into a small already polluted black neighbourhood,” he said.
Musk has promised not to drain the city’s aquifer and has committed to building an $80 million wastewater plant, an investment that residents have long been campaigning for.
The hope is that Musk’s spending will spur further economic growth in a city with the second highest poverty rate in the US, even though no one is expecting Colossus to create many jobs.
“I think it was understood early on that this wasn’t going to be an operation that would be a large producer of jobs,” John Zeanah, the city’s chief of development and infrastructure, said. “My recollection is that it was somewhere between 200 and 300 that they were anticipating.”
The pace of the construction is unrelenting and a few miles inland from Colossus, just south of Elvis Presley’s Graceland, Musk is well under way with the construction of a larger data centre, Colossus 2.
When the Times approached xAI for comment to ask about Memphis residents’ concerns about the effects on air quality, Musk’s company gave a three-word response: “Legacy media lies.”
Frustrated by the lack of answers, some residents have turned to Musk’s own chatbot for a response. On a rainy day in November, Gladney asked Grok: “When will xAI invest some money in the Boxtown community?”
After a few seconds of computing, Grok produced a small essay with a devastating conclusion. “There is no public announcement or evidence that xAI plans to make direct investments or financial contributions specifically into the Boxtown community in Memphis, Tennessee,” it said.
RAFAEL HENRIQUE/SOPA IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK/REX
Laudable though it may be for its self-awareness, Grok’s response was not quite correct.
The city, which has been supportive of Musk’s plans, has collected $13 million in taxes from Colossus in its first year of its operation, a quarter of which has been ring-fenced for community projects in Boxtown.
“They are the largest taxpayer now in the city and the county,” Zeanah said.
Residents’ claims about the pollution are also disputed. While Colossus did install 35 turbines at one stage, xAI has reduced that figure to less than half that number and Musk only has plans to have 15 permanently installed. A University of Memphis study found that the amount of formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide emitted from xAI’s turbines fell below the national standard, although campaigners dismissed that investigation and installed their own pollutant monitors to collect data for a separate study.
“I’ve never used Grok and never will,” said Justin Pearson, 31, the state representative for Tennessee’s 86th district. “And to people who do, I remind them, that’s my air.”
Justin Pearson, a Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives
KAREN PULFER FOCHT FOR THE TIMES
A Democrat, Pearson and his brother, Keshaun, have led the protests against Colossus. At the risk of appearing like Luddites, the brothers want to hold back the tide of AI investment in Memphis, challenging Silicon Valley’s mantra that entrepreneurs must “move fast and break things”.
“What happens when what’s being broken are people?” Justin said at his home in south Memphis, batting away the attentions of his two Maltese dogs. “There’s a cost to using this technology. Anytime I’ve used ChatGPT I’ve thought about the environmental effect … There’s a question. Do you really need it? More times than not, no I don’t. I’ve got lots of books, I’ve got lots of people. Google still works and so do conversations with folks to figure out answers to things.”
On Pearson’s bookshelves are volumes of black history. In Memphis, the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated, many residents believe their battle with Musk is a continuation of 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggles.
“If the headquarters is in Seattle, in Silicon Valley and in Los Angeles, what part have we got? We’ve got the hindquarters,” Pearson said. “So give us the headquarters. Give us that level of investment that helps to transform our community. Hire people in this city.”