Artificial Intelligence, Afrofuturism, and Economic Justice

• Pages: 1267-1297
• Date: 01 June 2024
• Published date: 01 June 2024
• Author: Ifeoma Ajunwa
• Subject Matter: Derecho Civil

SYMPOSIUM: AFROFUTURISM AND THE

LAW

ESSAYS

Artif‌icial Intelligence, Afrofuturism, and Economic

Justice

IFEOMA AJUNWA*

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 ex-

amination of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from

Omelas as an example of the trope of sacrif‌icial lambs in colorblind sci-

ence 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 think-

ing, the Ubuntu philosophy of interconnected personhood, and equity by

design can ensure that the AI revolution works for all.

“Legal storytelling is a means by which representatives of new communities

may introduce their views into the dialogue about the way society should be

* Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law; L.L.M., Yale Law

School; Ph.D in Sociology (Organizational Studies and Law & Society), Columbia University. © 2024,

Ifeoma Ajunwa. Many thanks to Professors Bennett Capers, Etienne Toussaint, Jessica Eaglin, Paul

Gowder, and other attendees of the Afrofuturism and the Law Symposium at Georgetown Law. A

special thanks to my research assistant, Aseelah Saiyed and to the Editors of The Georgetown Law

Journal for their fastidious cite-checking.

1267

governed. Stories are in many ways more powerful than litigation or brief-

writing and may be necessary precursors to law reform.”

— Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

1

“But automation can be used to generate an abundance of wealth for a people

or an abundance of poverty for millions as its human-like machines turn out

human scrap, along with machine scrap, as a by-product of production. And I

am convinced that our society, with its ability to perform miracles with ma-

chinery, has the capacity to make some miracles for men, if it values men as

highly as it values machines.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., December 11, 1961

2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1269

I. SACRIFICIAL LAMBS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1274

A. THOSE WHO WALK AWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1275

B. THOSE WHO ARE GIVEN AWAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1277

C. THOSE WHO RETURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1279

II. CANARIES IN THE MINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1285

A. THE DRAUGHT HORSES OF THE AI REVOLUTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1286

B. AI BLACKFACE AND VIRTUAL SLAVERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1288

C. AUTOMATED HIRING AND DISCRIMINATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1290

III. THOSE WHO STAY AND FIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1291

A. UBUNTU AS GUIDING AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1292

B. HUMAN VULNERABILITY AND LINKED FATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1294

C. EQUITY BY DESIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1296

CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1297

1. Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Derrick Bell’s Chronicle of the Space Traders: Would the U.S.

Sacrif‌ice People of Color if the Price Were Right?, 62 U. COLO. L. REV. 321, 328 (1991).

2. Martin Luther King, Jr., Address Delivered at the Fourth Constitutional Convention of the

AFL-CIO (Dec. 11, 1961), in 7 THE PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: TO SAVE THE SOUL OF

AMERICA, JANUARY 1961–AUGUST 1962, at 333, 336–37 (Clayborne Carson & Tenisha Armstrong eds.,

2014).

1268 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 112:1267