On March 22nd, 2020, the Future of Life Institute released a letter calling for a six-month pause

on the training of powerful generative AI models. It was supported by Elon Musk and a slew of

other influential figures in the tech and AI industries, but not all of them were sincere.

Earlier that month, Musk had registered a company called XAI to try to steal the thunder from

OpenAI in its chatbot chat GPT. But XAI needed time to catch up, hence his interest

in promoting an industry-wide pause. Musk went public with the company in July, then began showing

off its grok chatbot in November. But if the company was going to grow, it would need more

computation. In June of this year, the if the company was going to grow, it would need more computation.

In June of this year, the Greater Memphis Chamber, effectively a Chamber of Commerce in Memphis,

Tennessee, announced XAI was building its data center or a supercomputer, as must calls it,

in the city. The local council, not to mention the wider public, were completely caught off

guard. Reporting by Forbes revealed negotiations happened over a few days in March,

involving mainly chamber officials and a few other stakeholders,

not the Democratic representatives you would expect to be involved in such a deal.

XAI was taking over a former manufacturing facility,

seemingly through a shell company called CTC Properties LLC that

was formed around the time of the negotiations and converting it to meet its needs. The company

promised it would build a new electricity substation and a gray water treatment plant, but a contract

for neither facility existed, nor was the deal conditional on XAI following through on those promises.

And as we all know, Elon Musk doesn't exactly have a track record of following through on his

commitments. The XAI facility, which is the size of 13 football fields, is located in South Memphis,

near black communities that have long suffered higher levels of air pollution and environmental

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