Elon Musk’s pet AI chatbot, Grok, is a world-beater when it comes to generating vile racist remarks on an enormous scale. Who can forget over the summer when, unprompted, Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler,” and started “recommending a second Holocaust”?
Sadly, all that digital hate speech comes at a high price: the health of those unfortunate souls who live next to the data center that makes Grok possible.
Located in the Memphis neighborhood of Boxtown, Tennessee, xAI’s “Colossus supercomputer” data center has been mired in controversy ever since its inception, pumping noxious gasses into the air and drying out local faucets. For Musk, it’s the key piece of infrastructure behind AI ambitions — the facility keeping him in the AI race with other tech magnates like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg.
For the predominantly black residents of Boxtown, however, Colossus is turning their neighborhood into a putrid nightmare.
Speaking to The Times, 81-year-old Boxtown resident Willie Joe Stafford blamed the mucus he regularly hacks up is the result of Colossus’ pollution. “The people who live round here are blacks,” he said. “So they think they can do what they want.”
Another resident, Sarah Gladney, explained that xAI has changed the character of the neighborhood, which wasn’t exactly pretty before.
“Prior to xAI, we were dealing with more of a waste smell. Like poop. This is more like a chemical-type smell,” she explained. At 71, Gladney told the publication she hardly ever opens her windows for fresh air, and no longer goes on her daily walks.
“We have to put our lungs up in exchange for profit,” 66-year-old Boxtown resident Batsell Booker told The Times. His daughter, Booker said, is recovering from cancer — a disease Boxtown has no shortage of.
“It’s just not fair, it’s not morally right,” he continued. “I’m all for technology. My grandson works in cybersecurity. My battle is over them bringing more pollution into a small already polluted black neighborhood.”
If the first facility weren’t bad enough, it may be poised to get even worse. Back in October, it was reported that Musk was close to finishing another data center, “Colossus 2,” located near the first one. To power this one, Musk bought out an entire power plant — the fallout of which remains to be seen.
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