alt Hacker NewsColossus 1 datacenter is the one using illegal power, is poisoning the air for poor communities near Memphis, and is potentially poisoning the water. It's likely the additional demand on the grid will cause massive blackouts during extreme weather events, putting residents at further risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)#Envir...
So you can put Anthropic on your list of companies that like to talk big about safety, but when the rubber hits the road, profits matter more than safety.
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Not every allegation that appears in print is true. One should be very skeptical about these kinds of allegations, especially when there are deep-pocketed corporations involved who can be sued or pressured to settle in the face of sufficiently "plausible and persistent" (to borrow Hazlitt's term) claims of harm done by their operations.
So I was just Googling this, and apparently most datacenters don't pay any state tax on revenue generated by said datacenter? Huge loophole if true, no wonder capital investment in datacenters is so high. [0]
[0] https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/regulations/how-are-data...
How would a data centre poison the water? They don’t produce any chemicals or do anything.
Illegal is a strong term here. While the wiki link you included indicates there might be some permitting nuances, I've seen nothing claiming the power is "illegal."