xAI Allegedly Operates Unpermitted Methane Turbines in Memphis to Power Supercomputer Colossus to Train Grok

June 5, 2024

The xAI 'Colossus' supercomputer in South Memphis allegedly operates 33 methane-powered turbines, despite holding a permit for only 15. These turbines are reportedly used to train AI model Grok. The energy-intensive facility is suspected of contributing significantly to nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde emissions, exacerbating air pollution in an already polluted, predominantly Black neighborhood. This incident highlights the need for responsible AI governance, safe and secure AI practices, and the importance of Project Cerebellum's AI incident database in preventing harm. Join us in shaping trustworthy AI by contributing to the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern/Map).

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
xai
Alleged developer
xai
Alleged harmed parties
south-memphis-community, residents-with-pre-existing-health-conditions, residents-living-in-the-vicinity-of-the-colossus-supercomputer, predominantly-black-communities, general-public-of-memphis

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1144

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.