Unregulated Artificial Intelligence Technology Hurts Black America More Than It Helps

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When does the federal government protect us, and when does it get in the way? Whatever the right balance is, the Trump administration and its yes-men in Congress and on the Supreme Court are doing the exact opposite. The proposal they are pushing on AI proves how far backward they want to take us. Federal policy should set a floor—not a ceiling—for accountability.

Over decades, we won strong federal laws that prevented state legislatures from taking away our freedoms: to vote, to have our votes counted, to get pregnancy health care, to get health care in general, to have clean water and air. Under Trump, the federal government is bowing out of those responsibilities and letting states run wild, doing their worst to us for profit and political gain.

On the other hand, we often relied on states to protect us when the federal government wouldn’t: raising the bar for car emissions and education standards, granting same-sex marriage licenses, experimenting with social policies and regulations—all of which pushed the country forward as a whole. Under Trump, the federal government is now undermining its ability to do so.

When states want to protect us, Trump attacks them. When states want to attack us, he protects them. It’s the opposite of how it’s supposed to be. And why we need to stop it.

This is exactly what’s happening with Big Tech right now: Trump is trying to hamstring states that want to show leadership and get ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting us from the worst effects of rapidly developing, largely unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. The White House’s new AI framework is being sold as common sense: a single national standard rather than a patchwork of state laws.

The argument is that 50 different approaches will slow innovation in AI and undermine America’s ability to compete. But their approach to regulation means only one thing: no regulation. Not only are they trying to prevent the development of any federal standards that would protect us, but the single goal of this policy is to prevent states from setting good standards in the face of the federal government failing to.

We have heard this story before. When social media companies were rising up in influence, politicians from both parties told us not to get in the way of innovation. “Don’t regulate too soon. Don’t slow things down. Trust the companies. Trust the market.” What followed didn’t free us, of course, it allowed those corporations to target us—for profit.

Social media platforms and other tech corporations scaled far faster than any regulation or accountability. Disinformation spread faster than the truth. They preyed on children. They fueled right-wing violence. And Black communities were among the first to feel the consequences: targeted harassment, algorithmic bias, fraudulent services, voter suppression, and a system that too often treated harm as the cost of doing business.

Now we are being asked to make the same mistake again with AI. Across the country, states with responsible leadership are beginning to respond to these real harms: putting up guardrails for young people interacting with AI systems that can influence their mental health, protecting against tenant screening tools that replicate bias and lock families out of housing, and halting discriminatory hiring systems that quietly screen people out of opportunity. Some are moving to protect people from the racial and other forms of discrimination that AI accelerates. Others are requiring transparency when political content is manipulated by AI, distorting elections and confusing voters, or when corporations use people’s private health care information to manipulate or scam them. The White House proposal would “preempt” the ability of states to take action when federal officials bought off by the tech corporations (or deeply invested in them) refuse to do anything.

And when those harms show up, they do not land evenly. They follow existing fault lines — across race, income, access, and power. Black communities know what it means to be on the front edge of that impact. We have seen technologies amplify discrimination in hiring and lending. We have seen data used to target, exclude, and surveil. We have seen how narratives can be manipulated at scale to undermine our political power. AI does not erase those patterns. It accelerates them.

Innovation without accountability is not progress. It is merely shifting risk onto the people least able to absorb it, in favor of those who profit from it. We should be investing in innovation. We should be leading in AI. But leadership is not defined by how fast we move—it is defined by what we are willing to protect. States must retain the ability to act while federal policy catches up.

Congress should not preempt state AI laws absent strong national protections. Instead, federal policy should set a floor—not a ceiling—for accountability. It should make clear that civil rights laws apply fully in the age of AI. It should ensure that companies are responsible not just for what they build but also for how AI is used and the harms it causes.

Right now, we are witnessing elected officials (even some Democrats who need Black voters to retain their power) willing to compromise federal legislation of AI with Republicans without ensuring civil rights protections for our community. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down a significant portion of the Voting Rights Act, this administration and its supporters seem hellbent on returning the country to the Jim Crow era of its past. What is happening with AI feels like the same bad-faith actors are also determined to erase our future.

What actions—if any—can the average person take to demand AI regulation as it continues to integrate itself into our lives? Tell your state officials—from governors to legislators to attorneys general—not to back down, to keep fighting, no matter the pushback.

Tell your Congresspeople to challenge the Trump administration’s policy, for the sake of all the people whose lives it will ruin. And alert everyone around you: your coworkers, your family, the influencers you follow, the makers of the media you consume, to not bury this story or make light of the real threat AI poses, because it’s hard to understand or because its takeover seems inevitable. We must put up a real fight.

Unregulated Artificial Intelligence Technology Hurts Black America More Than It Helps was originally published on newsone.com