We imagine a future centered on life rather than extraction. A future that is regenerative rather than governed by degenerative consumerism, unchecked technological expansion, corporate accumulation, and ever-expanding technology that creates, reinforces, and then preys upon human alienation. We imagine a future where AI is democratically governed and regulated so that it does not compete for vital natural resources, accelerate environmental degradation, or exploit the health and well-being of Black communities.
The Climate Crisis is NOW, and an ever-present reality shaping the social and geopolitical landscape we exist within. Our planet is experiencing human-accelerated climate change that threatens life on Earth, our physical and mental health, air quality, access to water, food systems, and shelter. While the climate crisis impacts us all, some communities continue to bear its consequences far more than others. To fuel technology’s snowballing influence, Big Tech has increasingly framed AI as a savior of sorts, particularly in addressing the climate crisis. The reality tells a different story. By 2030, the current rate of AI growth could release 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the emissions equivalent of adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roadways. Far from solving the climate crisis, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is deepening dependence on fossil fuels, straining already fragile ecosystems, and intensifying the environmental burdens disproportionately placed on Black and frontline communities. Unless meaningfully challenged, this buildout threatens to deepen the very environmental crises it claims to solve.
Water is life, not for tech. Water sustains our bodies, ecosystems, food systems, communities, and collective survival. Yet as AI infrastructure rapidly expands across the United States, Black communities are increasingly being forced to compete with hyperscale data centers for access to clean and reliable water resources. Data centers require massive amounts of water to cool the heat generated by AI computing systems. Mid-sized facilities can consume up to 300,000 gallons of water per day, while larger hyperscale facilities can use as much as 5 million gallons daily, comparable to the water use of an entire small town. At the same time, Black communities already facing environmental racism, aging infrastructure, drought vulnerability, and water insecurity are being asked to absorb the environmental costs of AI expansion while corporations privatize and profit from finite public resources. We believe water is a human right. It cannot continue to be treated as a commodity sacrificed to sustain unchecked technological expansion and corporate profit.
Free the land. Land is tied to our existence, dignity, survival, and collective self-determination. Land nourishes Black communities through housing, agriculture, stewardship, cultural memory, and spiritual connection. As the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure accelerates across the United States, land is increasingly being transformed into a site of extraction for corporate technological expansion rather than collective community survival. Hyperscale data centers now span hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres, permanently transforming farmland, forests, wetlands, and rural landscapes into industrial infrastructure corridors. Like earlier waves of industrial expansion, Black communities are once again being positioned as sacrifice zones for extraction while corporations consolidate control over the land, water, energy, and infrastructure that shape community futures. We believe communities must have collective control over land use, preservation, zoning, siting, and the infrastructural decisions that determine their survival.
Health is a human right. Black communities continue to be forced to breathe the consequences of extraction, pollution, and environmental racism while corporations accumulate profit without accountability. As AI infrastructure rapidly expands across the United States, data centers and the fossil fuel infrastructure built to power them are creating new public health threats that are disproportionately burdening Black and frontline communities. From toxic air pollution and diesel emissions to rising heat exposure and worsening respiratory illness, communities are once again being asked to sacrifice their health for corporate technological expansion. In Memphis, Tennessee, xAI installed dozens of unpermitted gas turbines to power its Colossus data center, releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, nitrogen oxides, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde into surrounding Black communities. Fine particulate pollution linked to fossil fuel plants and diesel generators has been associated with asthma, respiratory disease, heart disease, strokes, cancer, and premature death. In already overburdened Black communities, AI infrastructure expansion threatens to deepen longstanding patterns of environmental racism under the language of innovation and technological progress. We reject the idea that communities must sacrifice their lungs, health, air quality, and long-term well-being to sustain the unchecked expansion of AI. The right to breathe cannot coexist with an infrastructure model built on pollution, secrecy, extraction, and corporate impunity
No human is replaceable by machine. The global economy was built on the stolen labor, extraction, and exploitation of Black people across the Global Black Diaspora. Today, AI corporations are attempting to repackage that same logic of exploitation under the language of innovation, efficiency, and technological progress. While Big Tech markets AI as inevitable and transformative, the infrastructure sustaining it depends upon vast systems of hidden labor, resource extraction, environmental sacrifice, and economic displacement. There is nothing “artificial” about the labor sustaining AI systems. Behind the mythology of machine intelligence are workers performing data annotation, content moderation, logistics, maintenance, construction, mineral extraction, and other forms of often invisible labor under exploitative conditions. At the same time, AI systems are increasingly being deployed to surveil workers, suppress organizing efforts, intensify productivity demands, and undermine labor protections. We reject an economic future where human beings are treated as disposable in service of corporate technological expansion. A just transition requires dignified labor conditions, democratic worker protections, collective bargaining rights, community accountability, and an economy rooted in care, sustainability, and human well-being rather than extraction and perpetual technological acceleration.
All power to the people. Democracy cannot exist when corporations and political elites make decisions about our land, water, labor, air, and futures behind closed doors while Black communities bear the consequences. Across the country, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure and hyperscale data centers is reshaping local governance, public utilities, environmental policy, and democratic participation itself. Communities are being asked to sacrifice their water, energy, public resources, and political power in exchange for promises of “innovation” and economic growth that too often fail to materialize. At the same time, Black communities continue to face voter suppression, environmental racism, surveillance, disinformation, and exclusion from meaningful decision-making processes. Democracy requires transparency, accountability, public participation, and community control. Yet corporations continue to hide behind anonymous LLCs, secrecy agreements, and opaque permitting processes that undermine public trust and weaken civic power. Black communities must have the right to shape the technologies, economies, and political systems that govern our lives. We reject corporate capture of democracy and demand systems rooted in collective care, environmental justice, public accountability, and community self-determination.
Extraction is not an economy, we will not subsidize our own destruction. Black people demand a just transition. The same extractive economic system built through slavery, colonialism, fossil fuel dependence, and racial capitalism is now being repackaged through artificial intelligence and data center expansion. Across the United States, corporations are promoting AI infrastructure as economic development while receiving massive tax breaks, utility subsidies, and public resources. Communities are being asked to absorb the costs of this expansion while corporations consolidate wealth and power. Black communities, particularly throughout the South, continue to be treated as sacrifice zones where corporations extract land, water, labor, and energy while leaving communities with pollution, displacement, and rising costs. We reject the lie that endless extraction and corporate growth are necessary for progress. Climate reparations require investment in regenerative economies rooted in community ownership, living wages, affordable utilities, public accountability, sustainable infrastructure, and ecological stewardship. A just transition means building economies that sustain life instead of exploiting it.
Our data, labor, lands, and bodies are not extraction zones. We stand in solidarity with the entire Global Black Diaspora. We stand in solidarity with Black communities across the Global South resisting the expansion of AI infrastructure, digital colonialism, and extractive technology systems. The same systems that extracted minerals, labor, land, and wealth from Black communities through colonialism are now extracting data, energy, water, language, and human labor to fuel the AI economy. From the Congo to Brazil to the U.S. South, Black communities are being forced to absorb the environmental and human costs of technological expansion while being excluded from decision-making power. These systems depend upon the exploitation of Black labor and land while withholding power, ownership, and sovereignty from the communities most impacted. We reject the false inevitability of an AI future rooted in extraction, surveillance, displacement, and corporate control. We believe Black communities across the diaspora must have the power to govern the technologies, infrastructures, labor conditions, and data that shape our futures. The future cannot be built through digital colonialism where Black communities become sources of “training data” while corporations own the intelligence, profits, and governance structures. Forward ever, backward never.
Founded out of the M4BL’s AI and Data Center Working Group – Black Authors Against AI and Data Centers (BAAAD) was founded because Black authors are witnessing data centers come for our land and water while AI hits us hard as workers. At the same time, because of current legal action against AI companies, many Black authors may receive payouts for the unauthorized use of their work.
