The 2024 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) Annual Legislative Conference (ALC), held in the District from Sept. 11-Sept. 15, conducted scores of panels related to important issues affecting African Americans – and artificial intelligence was a major part of the discussions.
The Brain Trust, “Beyond the Algorithm: AI and Black Lives,” co-hosted by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), included a panel of Black women in technology, who merged the past with the future, and emphasized how AI continues to impact people’s lives, the nation and world.
“In a relatively short period of time, we’ve gone from a few number of people who know about AI to nearly everyone who’s talking about or at least wondering how AI is going to impact and change our lives,” said panel moderator Afua Bruce, a data engineer, who is founder and principal of ANB Advisory Group.
The panel examined the current age of technology as it relates to social and political movements and advancements.
“One of the things that I think is so incredibly important about this moment is that we have lived for 50 years with the internet. Most of the people who have narrated its value have been in the tech industry,” said Safiya Noble, Ph.D., professor at UCLA and author of “Algorithms of Oppression.”
Panelists emphasized how access to technology can be used for good, especially with children, noting it stimulates a child’s imagination to go further.
However, the panel also noted technology can be misused. That notion puts a heavy responsibility on users, practitioners, and policymakers.
Panelist Chanelle Hardy, head of Civil Rights at Google, said she and her colleagues at Google are, in fact, a civil rights team. The team wants to work with civil and human rights organizations to steer them to become more technologically proficient.
“How to ensure the capacity of expertise is something that I think about greatly,” said Hardy. “One of the initiatives we launched was the Digital Futures Project, a $20 million fund that provides grants to academic institutions and think tanks worldwide to support responsible AI development.”
She referenced a call she was on with the Congressional Tri-Caucus, a powerhouse of diverse legislative leaders composed of the Congressional Asian-Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC).
“Of course, we want to be in those spaces where bias, discrimination, economic prosperity, and jobs are discussed,” Hardy said.
Uncovering the AI Process
Looking at AI processes, panelist Nicole Jefferson, vice president of U.S. Government Affairs at Dell Technologies, spoke about the company’s partnerships.
“Tech has the potential to be the great equalizer. If you have access, it is a moment where, if democratized properly, that potential is endless,” said Jefferson. “We want to make sure communities of color that have been underserved or underrepresented have access to that technology.”
Whether in the public or private sector, the audience was warned about putting AI on top of bad data hygiene. There is an opportunity to revisit audits through technology and algorithms. Current technology information should be compared against what did not exist before.
“If your hygiene is bad on your data, you will get bad outcomes,” said Nicol Turner-Lee, senior fellow of Governance Studies and director of the Center of Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. “We want to use these technologies as they emerge, but we can’t be too quick. We have to take a step back and consider the frameworks.”
Turner-Lee, author of the recently released book “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet Is Creating the New Underclass,” emphasized the importance of the human factor in the operation.
“We cannot remove humans from the situation,” she said. “There needs to be a human-based decision-making component to this.”