Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™.
The Trump administration’s anti-DEI crusade has now come for artificial intelligence (AI). Over the past several months, tech companies have retracted their previous commitments to DEI to comply with Trump’s executive order. Now, according to AP, both the administration and the Republican majority of Congress claim that AI is woke.
“Wokeness,” or “woke,” is a term derived from African American Vernacular English to refer to being aware of social and racial injustice. It was a positive thing seen as early as the 1930s, or with people asking someone to “stay woke” from the 1970s well into the 2010s. That is until conservatives turned the word into a negative. Now, wokeness is seen as a negative thing, but only because they don’t want the public to be aware of the injustices they are committing currently.
Artificial intelligence can’t be woke — it’s a thing that only operates in a way that it is programmed to. AI can have preconceived biases because the people who program it have that same bias. It’s why digital blackface among AI is so prevalent. However, many tech companies have made efforts to promote equity in AI to reduce the amount of harmful bias that comes from it. But the Trump administration wants the major tech companies — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and more — to get rid of “woke AI.”
Quickly, artificial intelligence has become a crutch to users. Everyone is using AI to craft grocery lists or, alarmingly, to serve as their therapists. As with any new shiny thing, everyone rushes to use it without regard for any potential consequences or side effects until it’s too late. While Biden passed some legislation to administer safeguards around AI usage, the current administration has removed any mention surrounding safe and responsible AI usage. And as AI continues to advance, there is a risk that removing these safeguards will only give the worst people access to technology that could be dangerous.
Emerging technology like AI should be woke. We shouldn’t defer to just any semblance of inclusion to make people comfortable with their bigotry. AI has its place in culture, and it should be implemented wisely. That means ensuring that Black people and other people of color are included behind the scenes — so that the people of color using the tech aren’t being exploited by the heads of these tech companies for profit.
Tech companies are only worried about their bottom line. But resisting inclusion practices contradicts that. Removing “wokeness” from AI won’t make them more money. AI is global, and if consumers in other countries are encountering bias and discrimination from the technology, they’ll be less inclined to use it, therefore causing the tech companies to lose money. Deepfakes, which create face videos with images of other people, are also on the rise. Last year, celebrities like Taylor Swift were the target of deepfakes and AI. Removing laws and letting AI be a free-for-all is dangerous, not just for famous people but for everyday people who can still be the target of deepfakes.
Sometimes, face-matching software on phones can fail to detect the faces of Black people and people of color. Face recognition services regularly misidentify Black men, leading to false arrests. These occurrences aren’t just recent. Over the past decade, advocates have been sounding the alarm about how technology discriminates against age, race, and gender. This can affect people’s real lives, it’s not just confined to the internet.
If the Trump administration believes that there is bias within AI, it shouldn’t be attacking companies’ efforts to rectify their mistakes. Instead, it should be looking to actually address the issues at hand to ensure that other people don’t get hurt on the other side of the technology. They should push for more diversity in the tech industry and pass laws to protect people from potentially dangerous situations.
