The Cultural Significance of Artificial Intelligence: Applications of AI and Implications for Black People

• In Event: Reimagining the Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The history of artificial intelligence is vast. The earliest successful example of AI programming dates back to 1951 with the checkers and chess-playing Ferranti Mark 1 machine at the University of Oxford. The applications and implications of AI in 2024 exceed dominating smart human beings at board games. What are the contemporary applications and implications of AI on the organization of human history along with the discipline and mission of Black Studies? In order to answer this question, I enrolled in Google’s Elements of AI certification program to build a better understanding of AI. Using the knowledge from this program alongside my background in Africology and African American Studies in the doctoral program at Temple University, I will offer my perspective on this topic. My primary concern with the development of AI is the potential for its weaponization against Africana worldview and cultural perspective. The outcome of this innovation in its inception is the further hegemony of European worldview, culture, and traditional values over the rest of the world. Instead of using words like “traditional”, “popular”, “conventional”, “classical”, or “common” to describe the European worldview; the key word in the 21st century will be “artificial.” Meaning that the theories, methods, and findings of the American Academy in disciplines like history, communications, sociology and so on will be indoctrinated so fundamentally into the “memory” of the algorithms of these computer programs that European ideas will be completely displaced from their authors. Black Studies will have no say so in the matter in comparison to the fodder of data produced by “traditional” disciplines generally accepted as truth by the general public.

Maurice Robinson
Temple University
Tuj82615@temple.edu
3913 21st Ave Temple Hills, MD 20748

Author

• Maurice Robinson, Temple University