The skepticism is not a feeling. It is a position. And it deserves to be treated like one.

When Black and queer people say AI is bad, they are usually saying something more specific: data centers are poisoning our air. Tech money is buying our politicians. Billionaires are selling us a future they designed without us. And the tools keep getting us wrong.

These are not conspiracy theories. They are documented conditions. The evidence is in the public record. Here is what it shows.

In 2024, Elon Musk built the world’s largest AI supercomputer in South Memphis, Tennessee. He put it in Boxtown, a neighborhood founded in 1863 by people who were formerly enslaved, named for the shotgun houses its first Black residents built to resemble boxed train cars. Boxtown is roughly 90% Black. Its cancer risk from air pollution is four times the national average. Its life expectancy is eight years below the U.S. average.