The real cost of slightly funnier AI is the health of a poor black community 

We are literally poisoning the air of a Black community for the sake of a chatbot, writes James O'Sullivan, lecturer in digital humanities at UCC

The xAI data center in Memphis which needs 35 methane-fuelled gas turbines to operate. Photo: Steve Jones/Flight by Southwings for Southern Environmental Law Center

It’s not a place that comes up much in Irish discussions of AI but it doesn’t take much Googling to see that South Memphis is used to being on the wrong end of other people’s ambitions.

The neighbourhood of Boxtown, hemmed in by railyards, petrochemical works and interstate flyovers, has long shouldered the particulate fallout of industry so that the rest of the United States can breathe a little cleaner.