Black Tech town hall examines AI’s impact on Black communities

Color of Change, a racial justice organization, hosted the national Black Tech Town Hall, AI, Algorithms, and the Cost to Our Future, gathering advocates, legal experts and environmental justice leaders to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping, and at times harming, Black communities.

Hosted by Destanie Newell, senior regional field manager at Color of Change, the event opened with the organization’s updated Black Tech Agenda, which outlines six pillars aimed at protecting Black digital rights, economic security and community control. Michael Huggins, the organization’s deputy senior director of policy and government affairs, described the importance of these pillars.

“Black communities need clean digital access. Technology must work fairly for Black economic success,” Huggins said. “Black workers need protection and pathways in tech. Black creators need control over their expression and Black neighborhoods need community control.”

Leaders and advocates, such as AI strategist Dupé Ajayi, warned that AI systems continue to make important decisions about housing, employment, healthcare, education and public benefits without transparency or accountability. She explained how algorithmic bias and content suppression disproportionately affect Black creators and job seekers. Ajayi describes her experience testing AI’s racial bias.

“I have a main [YouTube] channel, but I have a sub channel that only uses my voice, and that is intentional,” Ajayi said. “I’m constantly testing how [AI] performs. I released a video on YouTube, a short. Two views [on it]. On my other channel, where I’m faceless, it’s just my voice, the same short, within an hour, had over 30, 40 views, and then went up to 60 views and counting.”

This bias extends beyond social media and into daily life. Civil rights attorney Clarence Okoh shared that all 92 million low-income people in the U.S. have some aspect of their lives affected by automated decision-making, such as AI-driven eligibility for Medicaid and SNAP benefits. He calls this the new “Jim Code”, a term describing the current era of discrimination reminiscent of Jim Crow, where racial bias permeates digital systems.

“The idea is that we are seeing these technologies not just being implemented in these one-off glitches, but instead working together to recreate the systems of racial subordination, racial segregation that define generations of Black life before,” Okoh said. “It’s really up to folks like us on this call to be stewards and to be paying attention to these issues so that we can fight this generation of racial discrimination just as those that came before us.”

The conversation moved to the environmental consequences of AI. Climate strategist Candace Fortin and environmental justice leader LaTricea Adams dived into how data centers, which power AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, consume vast amounts of water and energy to allow their systems to function at full capacity, contributing to pollution in predominantly Black communities. In Open AI’s case, their foundational technology for GPT-4 was trained in West Des Moines for its capability to handle intense AI workloads; in 2022 alone, the center used 11.5 million gallons of water, representing 6% of the district’s water consumption, according to the AP. Fortin says that these data centers are contributing to environmental racism.

“[These data centers are] doing the same thing that these polluters do with refineries and petrochemical plants, and identifying areas that are lower-income, Black and Brown communities where they don’t think that these communities are going to advocate for themselves,” Fortin said. “This tactic only exacerbates existing issues in these communities, like poor air quality, high water consumption, noise pollution, cost of living.”

Advocates and organizers encouraged resistance from BIPOC communities. From packed city council meetings in Michigan to coalition-building efforts in Memphis, community members have delayed or reshaped proposed projects. Speakers encouraged attendees to organize locally, demand transparency, and build cross-community alliances to hold corporations accountable.

The town hall, held on Feb. 25, concluded with a call to action for attendees: demand and practice ethical AI use, protect digital rights and ensure that digital innovation does not come at the expense of Black lives or the environment.

Screenshot of Color of Change town hall meeting.