Elon Musk's xAI plans to launch a powerful artificial intelligence model stirs controversy. Not only is it backed by Donald Trump, it's also said to worsen air quality in Memphis with a gas-powered new data center.
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00:00Nestled at the banks of the mighty Mississippi in southwest Tennessee, Memphis.
00:08Perhaps best known around the world because of this guy, the king of rock and roll.
00:13Elvis Presley lived here and is arguably still alive, somewhat.
00:18Graceland, his estate, still attracts more than at least half a million visitors every
00:23year.
00:24However, Memphis has not just Elvis.
00:30The city of roughly one million citizens is, for example, also home to global logistics
00:35behemoth Federal Express, or in short FedEx.
00:39The airport of Memphis, thanks to FedEx, is one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world,
00:45only second to Hong Kong.
00:48So far so good, but of course Memphis has its sight on more growth and wealth.
00:53It is ambitiously set on creating a diverse, future-proof business landscape.
00:58That's where high tech comes in, and in this case, Elon Musk and his relatively new company
01:04XAI.
01:07For me, and I believe for the city of Memphis and the surrounding area, one of the big advantages
01:13of having the Musk supercomputer here is to bring more prominence to the area as a technology
01:21hub.
01:22Elon Musk's investment here counts massively for Memphis and is truly astonishing.
01:28Or perhaps not.
01:29That depends on how one looks at it.
01:32Musk founded his latest artificial intelligence startup XAI in March 2023.
01:38He promised to release, quote, the most powerful AI in the world, end quote, by December 2024.
01:46The AI model is called GROK3 and its training would happen at a new massive data-slash-training
01:53center in Memphis, Musk announced.
01:58And here it is.
01:59In an industrial section of Memphis in the southern part of town, it is this facility
02:04that is supposed to supply the compute power for its artificial intelligence company XAI.
02:10And with that, the brains, arms and legs for GROK3.
02:16That takes a lot of computing power to do right.
02:20There's a lot of competition in the generative AI space.
02:23Each company is trying to outdo the other.
02:26And as they add more and more features to the generative AI, it requires more and more
02:32computing power.
02:34And AI requires more electricity to complete even simple tasks compared to a typical search
02:40queries.
02:41The electricity must come from somewhere.
02:43It must be produced.
02:45And here's the hiccup.
02:47In the US, about 60% of that electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, which is the primary
02:53driver of climate change.
02:56Hello.
02:57We're meeting Yolanda Cooper-Sutton at a local coffee shop.
03:00She is the city councilwoman representing the district in which Musk built his data
03:05center.
03:06I serve some of the poorest districts here in Memphis.
03:10And when I say the poorest, mostly brown, indigenous, people of color is who I serve.
03:20Councilwoman Cooper-Sutton is anything but happy about how Memphis and Musk found each
03:25other.
03:26The process of how Musk's XAI facility in Memphis came to pass has been shady, she says.
03:32The facility was hastily approved, almost secretly, and then built in just a few months.
03:38The process and how this business transaction took place was without the knowledge of myself
03:47and other councilmembers.
03:50I found out on the news, sitting in my living room, in my recliner.
03:57The councilwoman wasn't the only one left in the dark about the new XAI facility.
04:03Communities neighboring the data center were given no information either.
04:08We're not saying that we didn't want the business or the business shouldn't be here.
04:12But what you did was you left the people out that lives in this city.
04:18Cooper-Sutton largely blames the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce for that.
04:23And she's not alone.
04:25A group of representatives and activists of various local environmental and community
04:30engagement organizations has invited media to a press conference in one of the small
04:34parks in downtown Memphis.
04:36Their list of grievances is long and diverse.
04:40There is the water issue.
04:42The local utility company Memphis Light, Gas and Water, or MLGW, says the moment Musk's
04:48supercomputer gets to full capacity, it's going to need one million gallons of water
04:54per day for cooling.
04:56Memphis drinking water comes from an aquifer, an ancient lake underground.
05:01Taking it from the aquifer is problematic.
05:04Water is life.
05:06Business is an absolutely critical resource that everything needs for survival.
05:11Industries do need water for their process.
05:14Businesses do need water to make their revenue, but that should never be put in front of the
05:19drinking water needs of residents.
05:21Another major grievance, air pollution, which in this case has to do with the data center's
05:25need for a vast amount of electricity.
05:28At full capacity, Musk's facility needs 150 megawatts of electricity.
05:34That's enough to power 100,000 plus homes per year.
05:38But already, even if not yet at full compute power, XAI uses 18 methane gas turbines to
05:44produce enough power for the complex.
05:48Gas powered aeroderivative turbines mounted on trailers that are spewing climate changing
05:56emissions into this community's air right now.
06:02Air that was already regularly exceeding the EPA's attainment guidelines for ozone
06:09on an almost everyday basis this summer.
06:12And this without any environmental impact statement or even a permit due to the legal
06:20loophole that they're on trailers and they're only temporary.
06:25But actually they could be run 364 days a year.
06:30And finally, there is the equity and equality issue framing all other problems these groups
06:35have with Musk's presence in Memphis and with the city's Chamber of Commerce conduct securing
06:41his investment here in the first place.
06:45Community activist Kishan Pearson takes us to the industrial area that now houses XAI.
06:51The new facility is neighboring Boxtown, a small, dominantly African-American community
06:57that was established by enslaved people in 1863.
07:01The residents of Boxtown and other small communities in the area continue to miss out on any benefits
07:08whatsoever from Musk's investment next door.
07:11We've seen it played over and over and over again.
07:13It's the same playbook.
07:14And so for us, what is the material economic benefit?
07:18What's the material environmental benefit of this organization being here?
07:23What's crazy about this situation in particular or what stands out is the fact that the leadership
07:30of this organization is a proponent, quote unquote, of environmentalism, yet you are
07:36powering this facility using dirty gas that's continuing to suffocate us.
07:42Every other day or so, Kishan is in Boxtown and goes from house to house and door to door,
07:47reaching out to its residents about the whole Elon Musk situation just a stone's throw away
07:51from their neighborhood.
07:53He admits that his organization and the other groups are facing a David versus Goliath fight,
08:00but he refuses to give up.