Blackness as the epistemological foundation of generative AI

Determine what it would mean to make Blackness, including Black ways of knowing, making, and relating, the epistemological default for generative AI design rather than treating it as a corrective to preexisting defaults.

Background

The paper distinguishes meaningful epistemic grounding from participation that merely solicits Black community input while retaining authority elsewhere. A liberatory orientation would instead treat Black ways of knowing, making, and relating as constitutive of what generative AI is designed to do and for whom.

The authors connect this issue to the concept of Black Indigeneity as an ontological grounding for reconsidering what counts as a problem, whose knowledge authorizes a solution, and what technological futures are imaginable. The paper poses but does not resolve the implications of making Blackness foundational rather than corrective in generative AI development.