Engineer at Elon Musk's xAI Departs After Spilling the Beans [View all]

[tinrobot]

So what exactly did Ghori reveal on Relentless? Well, he seemed to tip off the possibility that xAI has been skirting regulations and getting dubious permits when building data centers—specifically, its prized Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. “The lease for the land itself was actually technically temporary. It was the fastest way to get the permitting through and actually start building things,” he said. “I assume that it’ll be permanent at some point, but it’s a very short-term lease at the moment, technically, for all the data centers. It’s the fastest way to get things done.”

When asked how xAI has gone about getting those temporary leases, Ghori explained that they worked with local and state governments to get permits that allow companies to “modify this ground temporarily,” and said they are typically for things like carnivals.

Colossus was not without controversy already. The data center, which xAI brags only took 122 days to build, was powered by at least 35 methane gas turbines that the company reportedly didn’t have the permits to operate. Even the Donald Trump-staffed Environmental Protection Agency declared the turbines to be illegal. Those turbines, which were operating without permission, contributed to the significant amount of air pollution experienced by surrounding communities.

More here:
https://gizmodo.com/engineer-at-elon-musks-xai-departs-after-spilling-the-beans-in-podcast-interview-2000712569

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Illegal high-polluting gas turbines powering a massive AI center built on land permitted for a traveling carnival. All so Musk can shove his kid-p@rn creating AI down our throats.

I'm pretty neutral on AI as a technology, but things like this make me absolutely hate the way these self-serving oligarchs are implementing it.

We do not need to be doing this.