The Fire Bringers

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By Karen Elias

As new data centers threaten to ride the legislative fast track into our region’s communities, we might want to consider the behind-the-scenes fantasies that appear to be driving this latest frenzied AI gold rush. By piecing together the hyperbolic language of AI investment campaigns, the inflated announcements from developers, and the mythologically derivative names chosen by tech bros for their latest projects, we can glimpse what appears to be the emergence of a world view that could very well influence at least one direction our collective future might take. 

Announcing an over-$90 billion investment in data center technology for Pennsylvania at the recent Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, President Trump said we are entering a “true golden age for America.” He used the same language back in January when touting the $500 billion Stargate Project meant, like a moon-shot, to launch America into AI dominance. “[O]ur country will be prospering like never before,” he said. “It’s going to be the golden age of America.”

Like many details of the fever dream feeding the AI frenzy, the Golden Age is a transplant from Greek mythology, where it represented a foundational time of blissful abundance and harmony. In its current usage the term designates a time in the near future when such a utopia will once again be possible, when the gods will once again walk the earth (preferably in America), creating – through the miracles of techological innovation – a prosperity previously unattainable in human history. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested a similar possibility when he wrote his staff to say, “As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight.  I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity. . . .”

1. The Golden Age and the AI Arms Race

Ironically, the Greek concept of the Golden Age rested on a balanced relationship between human beings and nature, with nature – in her infinite largesse – bestowing upon a joyful earth her unlimited bounty, freely given. It can be argued, in contrast, that today’s technological version arises from a contempt for the earth and a refusal to acknowledge planetary boundaries. The promise of a “radical abundance” previously unknown in human history is only half the story, requiring (for one) that we ignore AI’s massive misuse of natural resources. As Steve Rose from the Guardian recently put it, “The amount of water and electricity that future AI datacentres are predicted to require is astronomical, especially when the world is facing drought and a climate crisis. By the time AI cracks nuclear fusion, we may not have a planet left.”

In direct contrast to the easeful tranquility of the original Golden Age, tech giants Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are competing fiercely for mastery in what is being called the “AI arms race,” a race in which “dominance” is clearly the prerequisite for success. The names chosen by these tech giants for their projected projects can be heard as battle cries, each flaunting a kind of aggressive triumphalism, as a new pantheon of in-your-face, Golden Age demi-gods takes shape before us.

2. Colossus

Colossus claims to be the planet’s largest supercomputer. Already online, based in Memphis and designed to power the Grok chatbot, this facility – according to Elon Musk, its creator — “is the most powerful AI training system in the world.” We can imagine Musk sitting at his laptop musing, What better name for such a massive enterprise than Colossus — a reference to the Colossus of Rhodes, source of our word ‘colossal’, and symbol of superhuman power? The 108-foot statue of the sun god Helios erected by the residents of Rhodes to celebrate a military victory became known in its time as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In our own day, popular culture has resurrected Colossus as a character possessing extra-human strength, a hybrid half-metal, half-human being who has conquered all bothersome human vulnerabilities and is able to forego completely the need for food, water, or oxygen.

Musk may have intended to invest a similar invincibility in his Memphis project. As it turns out, however, the residents of South Memphis, predominately Black and already suffering disproportionately from asthma and cancer due to industrial pollution, have not taken well to the forceful invasion of their community. Business leaders approved the proposal behind closed doors, with no broad-based community engagement, and the facility was allowed to operate its gas turbines – emitters of nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds — without proper permitting, thereby creating, with what has become xAI, one of the largest sources of pollution in the area. As residents began protesting this latest assault on their health and environment, leaflets were distributed anonymously throughout the community claiming that the emissions produced by the data center were negligible. Environmental groups responded by collecting real-time drone footage revealing that the facility was, in fact, operating a greater number of gas turbines, and emitting a greater amount of pollution, than the company had admitted to, in violation of the Clean Air Act. The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center have issued a notice of intent to sue xAI for failure to observe safety and environmental protocols. And, in the latest news, xAI is now attempting to change the subject by promising to invest renovation money in the four county schools located closest to the facility. (Stay tuned!)

Postscript: It’s interesting to note that a film from 1970 (“Colossus: The Forbin Project”), based on the novel Colossus from 1966, features an advanced supercomputer by that name, a machine designed to manage the world’s nuclear defense that gradually seizes power over humanity. Impervious to attack, the computer eventually declares itself “The Voice of World Control” and promises to create, yes!, a new millennium that will raise human well-being to unimagined heights – but only under its total control. Did Musk perhaps consider this source in the naming of his project? And if so, what inflated (and misguided) fantasies might this suggest?

3. Kratos

In what may very well be an act of compensation, a seemingly nondescript crypto mining company chose to name itself Kratos after the divine personification of strength in Greek mythology, described often as brutal and merciless, a character who has now achieved prominence within the contemporary gaming community as the God of War. We follow the modern Kratos through a seemingly endless narrative maze in which, driven by vengeance, this son of Zeus strikes down whatever gets in his way, including the Furies, Persephone, his own mother, the Sisters of Fate, and finally, Earth Mother Gaia. It seems significant that this character, who has been chosen to represent a crypto-mining data center, is willing to destroy not only various avatars of the feminine principle but also Gaia herself, the embodiment of our living earth.

Like xAI in its willingness to exercise unearned entitlement, the Kratos crypto mining project slipped in under the radar, in this case into an environmental justice community in Pennsylvania, bringing with it a slew of unanswered questions. Once again, deals were made behind closed doors, with no community involvement, and with no indication that permitting procedures had been properly observed. A sprawling, unsightly construction located in a peaceful rural setting, the facility will run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year once it comes online, generating constant noise at levels that residents located near other crypto facilities have described as close to “torture.” Because an environmental impact study has not been done, it is not clear what effects these noise levels might have either on human health or on the well-being of resident wildlife. Crypto operations require massive amounts of water to cool their computers; some estimate that a swimming-pool’s worth is used every time a transaction is made. It is not clear, in the case of Kratos, where that water will be sourced or where the wastewater (which typically contains heavy metals, chemicals and organic compounds) will be discharged. Only a small minority of bitcoin operations are run by renewables, and Kratos is no exception. The company plans to power this facility with fracked gas from an established wellpad that has already accumulated multiple violations.

Many believe that the mining of crypto currencies is designed to serve the privileged few and thus, lacks a legitimate purpose. It becomes difficult then to justify its intolerable environmental footprint. Each bitcoin transaction consumes more than $100 worth of electricity, and the industry generates as much carbon dioxide over a 30-month period as do one million cars. Given these realities, crypto-mining alone could push global warming over the two-degree mark within 30 years. It’s difficult to think of any benefits that this Kratos operation, with its promise of merely one permanent job, will bring to either the community or the planet.

If the naming of this facility can be considered a declaration of war, one wonders what amount of devastation AI operations might be willing, even eager, to inflict.

4. Hyperion and Prometheus

Meta has announced that this year it will more than double its previous AI investments, spending $72 billion to build out the infrastructure it hopes will allow it to compete successfully against its rival tech giants. This infrastructure includes “hyperscalers” Hyperion and Prometheus which, together, are projected to use the amount of energy it takes to power millions of homes. Hyperion, who is known in Greek myth largely as the father of Helios, the sun, was a Titan whose name came to mean simply “he who walks on high” or “the god above.” But he too has been given new life in today’s gaming universe as a superhero, in “Avengers Alliance,” who, after Earth is threatened with extinction, works to make way for a new planetary golden age.

The Hyperion data center, projected to take up 4 million square feet of ground in northeastern Louisiana and to cost over $10 billion, is being touted as “the largest AI-optimized data center in the Western Hemisphere.”

Prometheus, which is scheduled to go online in 2026 in Ohio, is being described — using the hyperbole we have come to expect — as “a turning point” and a “massive leap forward,” built at an “unprecedented,” “gargantuan” scale. These two “titan clusters” will leave a footprint that surpasses that of Manhattan and will conduct trillions of operations every second. “With Hyperion and Prometheus . . . Meta will command one of the largest AI compute [sic] infrastructures globally.”

With Meta’s doubling of investments is likely to come (at least) a doubling of difficulties – as well as additional unanswered questions – questions that apply to data centers in general. It is not clear, for example, how these massive operations will be fueled or at whose expense. Whether customers will see rate hikes. Whether offers of tax breaks, designed to attract data centers to a particular area, will drain state coffers. What effects the buildout of additional infrastructure like pipelines will have on the environment. Whether increased use of fossil fuels to power these centers will increase the diseases now clearly associated with fracking, as well as the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate heating.  And whether the promised job numbers will actually materialize in an industry being accused of prioritizing automation over human livelihoods.

Answers to these questions have either been absent or else clouded by evasion and secrecy across the industry, with spokespersons insistent that growth in AI is essential for national security and that communities will extract huge benefits from the economic opportunities these operations promise to deliver. Critics, however, whose numbers are growing, point not only to the centers’ massive energy and water demands, to their intrusive land-use, and to their climate-heating impacts, but also to the fact that these operations will benefit the rich at the expense of the average citizen, driving up energy costs and increasing harms to health and environment, all of whose repercussions will be borne by us.

Nevertheless, the buildout continues. In the interest of speed, Meta is now hurriedly erecting hurricane-proof tents to put the finishing touches on its Prometheus plant. In a nod to the current administration’s insistence that we are experiencing a national “energy emergency,” these tents are being referred to as “rapid deployment structures,” whose purpose is to enhance the rapid “deployment” of AI infrastructure, not (of course) to enhance Meta’s competitive edge in the AI arms race.

5. Prometheus, Part II

Prometheus, whose name is often translated as “forethought,” was, like Hyperion, a Titan from Greek mythology. A defiant figure, he stole fire from Mount Olympus and presented it to human beings, thereby giving humans the means to create technology and progress toward a civilized life. In response to this transgression, Zeus condemned Prometheus to unending torture, chaining him to a rock and sending his avatar, an eagle, to devour the Titan’s liver, in a daily drama of eternal punishment.

Prometheus has long stirred the Western imagination. Embodying a kind of ambivalence, he has become a symbol of what many see as admirable human striving while, at the same time, serving as a warning that acting outside of proper bounds can lead to unintended consequences, even tragedy.

In his Poetics, Aristotle spelled out the prerequisites for tragic drama, suggesting that the hero’s downfall often resulted from a character flaw called hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence causing the hero to defy, and ultimately unbalance, what the Greeks called the natural order. Prometheus can be seen as a case in point, his act of defiance worthy of punishment because his gift of fire to human beings belonged “properly” to the gods. Mary Shelley titled her famous novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, suggesting that her obsessive doctor, in challenging human limitations, was in fact creating a monster. The idea that the “gift” of fire could have tragic consequences when placed in human hands is suggested in the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a biography that uses the Prometheus story to caution against the development of the atomic bomb.

Choosing the name Prometheus for one of Meta’s latest data center operations suggests a willingness to defy convention in the interest of challenging human limitations, whatever the consequences. The fact that our need to continually push on to new frontiers could take us in directions we haven’t anticipated seems less important to AI developers than the acquisition of a new superhuman power. They are essentially claiming the “gift of fire,” and running with it. And although our “forethought” might be seen by some as humanity’s progressive-thinking superpower, in truth we can only see so far.

Postscript Two: In the game God of War II, Kratos frees Prometheus from his eternal torment and, in the process, gains for himself the powers of the Titans. (Just saying.)

6. The Fire Bringers

To some folks (mainly white, mostly male, always rich) the promises of AI’s “Golden Age” seem too compelling to resist. A group that includes tech bros as well as bio-hackers and -futurists is keeping its collective eye on our farthest, most challenging frontiers to figure out – and to shape – where the human race goes next. They long, according to entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, “to achieve escape velocity, not just from Long Island but from Earth itself.” To this end, they are funding anti-aging research and spending millions of dollars of their own money in an effort to live forever or, failing that, as long as possible free from disease and the infirmities of old age. We watch as longevity studios and clinics, along with a “Don’t Die” movement, pop up to offer pricey treatments, some costing ten thousand dollars apiece, all designed as “a fix for debility and death.” Treatments can include scientifically targeted vitamin supplements, therapeutic plasma exchange, personalized immune therapies, organ replacement, nanobots that repair aging tissues, stem cell injections, multi-pathogen vaccines, and DNA enhancement (from tardigrades, eg). Believing that “immortality is a reality” and that they are on the verge of discovering the secret to eternal life, these modern-day Prometheus stand-ins are fixated on “a transhuman future,” a future in which the human race will be able to wield at last a power that surpasses even the original gift of fire.       

What does all this mean for those of us still toiling away on the ground? Rather than being fired-up  by these utopian promises, increasing numbers of us are worried, instead, about simply being fired. Large numbers of folks who serve as support staff – far from being soothed by promises that AI will deliver “labor-replacement tools” — are already being let go, as AI-generated “assistants” step into that space. One tech-bro was heard responding to these fears in a moment of revealing honesty: “It’s brutal if you think like a human.”

And amid all this talk about super computers and super powers, about data centers like “titan clusters” that will permit us to defy mortality and usher in a new golden age, we are having to extend the language of extremity to the wildfires now ravaging our planet. “Megafires” are those that devastate large areas; “gigafires” are those that burn over a million acres. As a severe climate-fueled heatwave currently grips southern Europe, hundreds of wildfires are this month (August 2025) burning across Greece, the land that gave the Western World its notion of hubris — that overweening pride that drives humanity’s obsessive striving and is capable of bringing the entire house tragically down upon our heads.

Giorgos Karavanis, a voluteer firefighter, was asked what it looked like on the ground in Greece. “What it looks like?” he said.  “It looks like doomsday.” 

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