Artificial intelligence (AI) work technologies have been lauded for their efficiency, cost savings, and ability to democratize access to work. Indeed, AI work technologies make a “planetary labor market” possible. But what does this mean for the future of work for Black workers both in the Diaspora and on the African continent? Building on the Afrofuturist works of Derrick Bell and N. K. Jemisin, this Essay argues that concepts from Afrofuturism hold insights into how to regulate AI technologies for the good of all rather than a select few. In Part I, the Essay discusses the notion of “sacrificial lambs” as a narrative device for challenging the mantra of innovation or “progress” at any price. Part I starts with an examination of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas as an example of the trope of sacrificial lambs in colorblind science fiction and contrasts it with Derrick Bell’s Afrofuturist fiction The Space Traders, where the sacrificial lambs are people of African descent. Part I also offers an alternative ending to Derrick Bell’s The Space Traders that highlights a linked-fate hypothesis as the path to racial justice in the future of work. In Part II, I contrast the notion of a sacrificial lamb with Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres’s notion of racialized Americans as the “miner’s canary” for what ails our society, and I surface examples of how Black workers are already being harmed in the AI revolution of work. In Part III, I deploy N. K. Jemisin’s rebuttal, The Ones Who Stay and Fight, to show how an embrace of human vulnerability, linked-fate thinking, the Ubuntu philosophy of interconnected personhood, and equity by design can ensure that the AI revolution works for all.

Continue reading Artificial Intelligence, Afrofuturism, and Economic Justice.