(Photo by Brandon Dill for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
An environmental group is demanding that Elon Musk shut down the pollution-causing elements of his AI supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, or they'll sue.
The nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) sent a letter to Musk’s company, xAI, on behalf of the NAACP, demanding it pull the plug on the supercomputer’s gas turbines.
"Since breaking ground on its supercomputer facility last year, xAI has been operating dozens of unpermitted methane gas turbines without public notice, permits, or air pollution controls,” the nonprofit alleges, adding: “These pollutants can cause increased rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer.”
The 58-page letter warns that the NAACP intends to file the lawsuit against xAI for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act by using as many as 35 gas turbines without the appropriate permits.
The letter is an escalation from the SELC, which has been raising air pollution concerns for months. The xAI supercomputer, known as "Colossus," opened in Memphis last year and needs huge amounts of electricity to power AI training and processing. That energy consumption is also bound to increase since it’ll eventually be home to 1 million enterprise-grade GPUs, up from the current 200,000.
In response to the air pollution complaints, the Greater Memphis Chamber said in May that xAI had begun “demobilizing” some of the gas turbines at the facility. The remaining turbines would continue to run until this fall, when a new substation was slated to be completed.
But according to the SELC’s letter, satellite imagery indicates xAI’s supercomputer still has 26 turbines at the site. The group accuses the company of removing the smaller turbines for several larger ones.
(Credit: SELC)xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But under the Clean Air Act, the SELC can only officially pursue the litigation 60 days after serving the formal legal threat. “This notice paves the way for a lawsuit that can hold xAI accountable for its unlawful refusal to get permits for its gas turbines,” the nonprofit added in a statement.
In the meantime, the local Shelby County Health Department in Tennessee is reviewing whether to issue the permits for xAI’s gas turbines. Last month, the agency said it received “more than 1,700 public comments” on the matter.