ONLINE FIRST
published on December 19, 2024
Richard Jones
https://doi.org/10.5840/clrjames20241217115
On Artificial Intelligence in Black and White
With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Anthropocene, we are faced with ¡°humanizing AI before it dehumanizes us.¡± Before the advent of the ¡°posthuman,¡± will our technologies help develop a better world, or enable us to more efficiently destroy it? This essay is an appeal to Black philosophers to contribute to the critique and value theory of AI. OpenAI¡¯s GPT-4 has opened new ethical questions. This examination of AI¡¯s history, and the possibility of ¡°thinking machines,¡± concludes that emerging technologies have disproportionately adverse effects on Black and brown people. To counter this, as a sentient tool, AI ought not be an instrument enabling excess capital accumulation, increased cognitive class division, surveillance for the authoritarian state, and pernicious anti-Black racism. Because of this, a new value theory for this technology should be based on participatory socialist principles of access to resources, environmentalism, and redistribution of the global commons. Informed by broader perspectives, as a more useful tool in bridging power differentials, AI should be the people¡¯s tool.