Right now, a crisis is unfolding in Memphis, Tennessee — and not enough people are paying attention.

When Elon Musk’s xAI converted an abandoned factory in southwest Memphis into what’s now being billed as the world’s largest supercomputer, city leaders hailed it as the dawn of a tech renaissance. The facility, named Colossus, was promoted as a landmark investment — a leap toward economic transformation in a region long marginalized by industrial decline.

But for the residents of Boxtown, a historically Black neighborhood just down the road, this AI boom feels less like progress and more like a public health emergency.

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Boxtown is already burdened with a legacy of environmental injustice. The community has spent decades living in the shadow of fossil fuel infrastructure and chemical plants. Now, it faces a new threat: a supercomputing facility powered by dozens of natural gas turbines, operating without air permits and with little public oversight.

Colossus consumes an enormous amount of energy — far more than a typical industrial site — and residents fear it’s adding new layers of toxic exposure to an area already saturated with pollutants. And yet, local and state leaders have offered few answers. Permitting processes have been bypassed or fast-tracked. Environmental assessments, if conducted at all, have not been made public.

I spoke with KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director of Memphis Community Against Pollution, who has been organizing on the ground. The picture he painted is deeply troubling: minimal transparency, aggressive corporate lobbying, and a widening gap between public policy and public health.

This is about more than one neighborhood. It’s about who bears the costs of technological advancement — and who gets to decide.

With federal environmental protections weakening and political leaders eager to court tech billionaires, Memphis risks becoming a cautionary tale: a city betting on AI dominance while sidelining the communities living in its shadow.

As the national conversation around AI continues to center on ethics, innovation, and opportunity, what’s unfolding in Boxtown reminds us that the environmental and racial justice dimensions of this race cannot be ignored.

This isn’t just a Memphis story. It’s a story about who gets a seat at the table when the future is being built — and who’s left gasping outside the door.

If you want to make your voice heard, contact Mayor Lee Harris at Officeofthemayor@shelbycountytn.gov and Shelby County Health Department Director Michelle Taylor at Michelle.Taylor@shelbycountytn.gov