AI is the most important civil and human rights issue of our time — HBCUs need to be in the driver’s seat

We are a Black woman and a white man who have spent our careers in very different rooms — one of us building a research and data-driven advocacy organization that uses quantitative analysis to advance equity, the other leading the world’s largest hiring platform. We have each had a front-row seat to what happens when powerful technology meets deep inequality. And we have each seen what becomes possible when the right people come together.

Our partnership is itself an example of the kind of collaboration we believe this moment demands. Artificial intelligence that truly benefits all humanity will never be built by any single community. It requires people who bring different knowledge, different lived experience, and different stakes to the same table — and who are willing to do the hard and necessary work of building together.

A Defining Moment

AI is already transforming biology, medicine, and physics in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. The productivity gains ahead are without precedent in human history.

But this technology is not neutral. AI systems embedded in hiring, health care, finance, and criminal justice are already reproducing and amplifying the very inequalities we have spent decades fighting to dismantle. Résumé screening tools that systematically penalize candidates from HBCUs. Predictive policing systems are trained on data shaped by decades of over-policing. Risk assessment algorithms that deny loans, housing, and care to the people who need them most.

These are not edge cases or technical glitches. They are the predictable result of building powerful systems without the people most affected by them in the room.

AI is the defining civil and human rights issue of our lifetime. It will either become a force for extraordinary human flourishing, or it will entrench existing hierarchies in ways that may prove impossible to undo. We have one chance to get this right.

Everyone Needs a Voice

AI is not an autonomous entity acting on its own. It is a tool designed with purpose, and its purposes are inevitably aligned with the people who create it. History has taught us what happens when a small, homogeneous group is handed the wheel and told to ‘move fast and break things’: they get richer, and things break for everyone else.

HBCUs and institutions serving global majority communities cannot simply be consulted after the fact, along for the ride. They need to be in the driver’s seat. Not because inclusion is a courtesy, but because it is a prerequisite for getting things right. The research is unambiguous: diverse teams build more robust, more fair, and more innovative systems.

But influence alone is not enough. These communities also need ownership — capital formation, entrepreneurship, and a presence on cap tables in numbers that reflect the scale of what is at stake. The economics of AI are shifting fast. The unit costs of compute are falling, competition is fierce, and new entrants can scale almost overnight. This is an open field, and HBCU graduates are among the most innovative, resourceful, and empathetic thinkers we know. They are ready to build.

What We Actually Want

Despite the many poetic mission statements offered by AI labs and large companies, they tend to be light on specifics about what “human flourishing” should actually look like. What future do we want?

Communities of color have spent generations answering that question with clarity and imagination, without taking a single thing for granted. When we sit with HBCU students, faculty, and alumni, they have original and compelling ideas about what AI ought to be — and what it must never become.

Today, AI displays a tremendous amount of IQ, and astonishingly low EQ. It expresses itself with algorithmic overconfidence, but does not yet appreciate the diverse array of individual human experience. Truly equitable AI would honor and protect the rich texture of culture, context, and community — rather than statistically flattening it. That is the beating heart of equity. And we believe it is also the foundation of AI that actually works: more personal, more trustworthy, and yes, more valuable.

The Work Ahead

If AI is even a fraction as powerful as its builders believe, ensuring it serves all of humanity is hardly a task for a single company, government, or community. It demands global collaboration at a scale we have never attempted.

We need more allies in this work — people and institutions who believe, in the most committed way possible, that AI is fundamentally stronger with all of us deeply and consistently involved. We need partnerships that span every line and every border.

HBCUs and the communities we serve have always been full of inventors, scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs. The current moment must anchor in that history — and in the bravery and sacrifice of those who came before us.

We cannot simply be along for the ride. We must shape AI as much as it is shaping us.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com