Black workers disproportionately displaced by AI as tech grows

As artificial intelligence grows, concerns about the impact on communities of color is also increasing.

Experts say AI will disproportionately impact Black and brown workers through displacement and the environmental burden of data centers, which are more likely to be located in marginalized communities. North Carolina has at least 90 data centers, according to Data Center Map.

Keisha Bross, director of the NAACP‘s Center for Opportunity, Race and Justice, said Black workers are overrepresented in entry-level jobs, as well as manufacturing and logistics work.

“In the artificial intelligence space, a lot of these jobs that are usually taken within the South and these big manufacturing sites an e-commerce logistic sites,” she said. They’re going to be replaced in the future.”

Bross underscored that it’s still unclear exactly where and how AI will displace workers. Data centers have also been linked to health impacts for communities that live near them.

Bross says Black communities already face higher unemployment rates. Black unemployment was at 7.5% in December, compared with 4.4% for the overall population. To ensure Black workers have a place in the new AI economy, she said workers need affordable access to education.

“The best thing that these companies can do is really provide educational tools and resources, because we don’t want people displaced from the workforce,” she said. “We want people to be back in the workforce, but also earning a wage that’s livable.”

Bross said the Trump administration’s fight against diversity, equity and inclusion has hurt people of color. She believes it’s still important for companies to commit to diverse hiring practices because representation matters and a diverse workforce will make their companies more successful in the long run.

“We have to embrace technology and we have embrace artificial intelligence, but we also have to have oversight,” she said, “and we have to have governance in order to make sure that it’s not discriminatory, and that we’re not implementing technologies that are going to hurt populations of people.”

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