By Keisha Credit, Special to The Seattle Medium
In today’s digital and in person conversations, there is a particular irony in watching the public conversation around artificial intelligence unfold.
The urgency is new.
The technology is not.
Over the past year, artificial intelligence, “AI” for short, has become the subject of dinner table debates, conversations, social media warnings, corporate trainings, and political discourse. Entire industries are reorganizing themselves around it, and businesses are being built because of it. School districts are scrambling to respond to it. And parents are wondering how it will affect their children’s futures. All the while, fearful of what it can replace, while also considering, what it can create.
And within Black communities, a growing narrative has emerged: AI is dangerous.
As an early adopter of the newer models of AI, I was shocked. Hearing things like: AI is exploitative, AI is taking resources from communities that have already borne more than their share of society’s burdens, and the one that shook me the most: ‘AI is stealing clean water from Black people’.
I said whoa, wait a minute… What is going on?
Upfront, these concerns are not without merit.
But as I was so excited to see the vast amount of opportunities that this technology could open up, I was seeing my community shun this very magical seed. It was clear. The framing of this entire situation, deserves closer examination.
And perhaps I view this moment differently because I have been watching technology evolve quickly my entire life. I’ve helped it push boundaries. At fourteen years old, I began interning at Microsoft. I entered an industry that was already building the infrastructure upon which our modern digital lives would eventually depend. Long before “the cloud” became a household phrase, I walked through facilities that housed vast amounts of information. Long before ChatGPT entered the public imagination, I witnessed the physical architecture required to store, process, and move data around the world. Datacenters.
The public often speaks of ‘the cloud’ as though it exists somewhere beyond the reach of geography and infrastructure. Yet the cloud has always lived on the ground.
It lives in buildings.
It lives in servers.
It lives in data centers.
And it always has.
This is why I find myself increasingly concerned with a misconception that has loudly taken hold of the public imagination: the belief that artificial intelligence arrived with ChatGPT.
It did not.
ChatGPT did not create artificial intelligence. It popularized it. It monetized it. And it marketed it SO WELL it became a household name in minutes.
For decades, Artificial intelligence has informed search engines, recommendation systems, advertising algorithms, predictive analytics, navigation tools, facial recognition technologies, and countless other systems for decades. The technologies that now feel revolutionary are, in many respects, extensions of systems that have already shaped modern life for years.
What has changed is not the existence of artificial intelligence.
What has changed is our awareness of it.
At the same time, legitimate concerns are being raised regarding the environmental impact of expanding data infrastructure. Data centers require energy. They require land. They require water. Communities have every right to question where these facilities are built and who bears the burden of supporting them.
Black Americans, perhaps more than most, understand the consequences of development that prioritizes corporate gain over community well-being. Our history offers no shortage of examples. From highways that divided thriving neighborhoods to industrial projects concentrated near residential communities, we know what happens when people are excluded from decisions that affect their quality of life.
These concerns deserve serious consideration. These datacenters have ALWAYS required too many resources, and land. Who benefits, who does it harm?
What further concerns me, is the possibility that we are allowing a valid environmental justice conversation to evolve into something else entirely: a cultural rejection of artificial intelligence itself.
That distinction matters.
Because while we debate whether AI is good or bad, the technology continues to advance.
Businesses are integrating it.
Universities are teaching it.
Students are using it.
Entrepreneurs are building with it.
Entire sectors of the economy are reorganizing around it.
The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will influence the future. It already does.
The question is whether Black communities will participate in shaping that future or simply react to it and discuss its effects while ignoring its potential entirely.
Historically, Black Americans have rarely benefited from being late to a technological transformation. We have benefited when we learned the systems, challenged the systems, and positioned ourselves to influence the systems.
This moment should be no different.
We should demand accountability from corporations.
We should advocate for environmental justice.
We should ask difficult questions about who benefits and who bears the cost.
But we should also be learning.
Because if we reduce artificial intelligence to a threat rather than understanding it as a tool, we risk confusing resistance with strategy.
And history has taught us that those are rarely the same thing.
The future is being built whether we participate or not.
My hope is that we do more than participate.
My hope is that we help lead it.
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