Our cultural obsession with artificial intelligence (AI) intensifies with each passing day. Whether it's the United Nations hosting a panel of human-looking AI-enabled robots at a Geneva Conference in July or SAG-AFTRA’s claim that Hollywood executives wanted background actors to turn over their human likenesses to be used in perpetuity for a day’s pay, we are witnessing a historic — and strange — moment in technological history.
AI is replicated intelligence drawn from existing human-made content, including problematic data sets, so it’s not as artificial as the name implies. This helps explain how it’s possible for systemic racism to be spun into data sets and propelled back into society with abandon. But in what ways, specifically?
AI technologies are being used to increase surveillance at the US-Mexico border. Facial recognition software has led to unlawful arrests and detainment of Black people. Human workers in the Global South are often paid pennies on the dollar to sift through massive data sets for AI algorithms. AI-enabled software can determine the race of a patient based on a medical image, and we’ve seen alarming use of algorithms by police. These functions for artificial intelligence are not objective or unbiased; instead, they mirror systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression in our world.
For instance, so-called predictive policing — which seems to be taken straight from the plot of the movie Minority Report — directs officers to target people “most likely” to break the law. The predictions come from data sets that are mirrors of the same systemic injustices we witness in our everyday lives. This practice has drawn severe criticism from social justice scholars and researchers who cite an extensive history of unfair and biased policing in Black and Latinx communities.
In May, Geoffrey Hinton, PhD, an AI groundbreaker who helped produce technologies that led to ChatGPT, announced that he had left Google and began raising alarms about the potential AI has to do harm. In an interview with the New York Times, he said, “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”
Without boundaries, we know our global society’s history with oppression often floats to the surface. In the words of Joy Buolamwini, a leading AI researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, “There needs to be a choice. Right now, what's happening is these technologies are being deployed widely without oversight, oftentimes covertly, so that by the time we wake up, it's almost too late.”
That choice is in our hands. It’s up to us to recognize the inherent biases in AI and set those boundaries before it's too late.
So far, we haven’t seen many great examples of AI being used cautiously or thoughtfully. Recently, for example, the Washington Post published an article about “interviewing” an AI-enabled Harriet Tubman. Social media pounced on this, reasonably critiquing the casual reanimation of one of the most impactful figures of the Black liberation movement since the United States was founded in the 18th century.
But why would bringing such a person to the forefront of technology be problematic in the first place? In part, it’s because of our society’s long and winding history of mocking the culture, joy, and oppression of enslaved and formerly enslaved African people.
Minstrel shows, also called minstrelsy, emerged in the first half of the 1800s. These were shows where white people painted their faces black and sang and danced to mimic enslaved people. These displays of anti-Black racism characterized Black people as cowardly, unmotivated, untrustworthy, violent, and objects of “hypersexuality.”
The earliest minstrel shows were performed by white men. Thomas Dartmouth Rice, one of the first white men to engage in the degrading and dehumanizing practice, developed a popular minstrel caricature named Jim Crow. Eventually, that name came to be used as shorthand for the laws in place from the 1870s to the 1960s that denied Black people basic human rights.
When we think about examples of blatant racism in US history, we often see them as being far removed from our present moment. But racism continues to be one of the most enduring technologies in our world.
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines technology as “the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment.” Science and technology are not inherently bad; however, in the wrong hands, these disciplines have long been used to justify the existence of racialized bias and violence.
For example, 19th-century scientist Louis Agassiz believed that each race of people represented a distinct species. He manipulated and co-opted the influence of science to claim that white people were biologically superior to Black people. In the late 1800s, early health data was weaponized against Black Americans and used to claim they were more likely to contract disease and likely to become extinct. In a world such as that, what or who could intervene to work around the systemic oppression in society? Black abolitionists and organizers, like Harriet Tubman.
Tubman was a Black disabled scout, nurse, guerilla soldier, and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War. She ushered dozens to freedom via the Underground Railroad, on foot, risking her life over and over again to save the lives of other enslaved Black people. Rightly, she continues to be celebrated as a hero, and her politics, being, and essence can never truly be captured within an algorithm or data set.
The last thing we need is to condone the modern-day practice of minstrelsy. We don’t need to turn iconic Black historical figures into AI-enabled puppets for entertainment. We don’t need AI interviews with Audre Lorde, Mary Ann Shadd, Marsha P. Johnson, Malcolm X, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, James Baldwin, or other groundbreaking leaders of Black liberation from around the world. Instead, we can read about their lived experiences on the internet and in books written about their lives. We can listen and watch live interviews, read the books they wrote, the speeches they gave when they were alive. Most crucially, we can regulate AI technologies to protect the agency, autonomy, and well-being of historically and currently marginalized people everywhere.
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