Ubuntu AI

Abstract Current AI technologies amplify exploitation by training on human-created images and text taken from the internet, without any return to its creators. Companies can then use AI to displace paid employees and compete with independent creators, amplifying wealth inequality. Black populations are especially vulnerable to this appropriation. This article describes how alternative AI services and platforms might reverse its potentially debilitating impact on Black artisans by combining the capabilities from two projects. Ubuntu-AI, funded by the OpenAI Foundation, is a platform that allows African artists and designers to license images for use in AI. Artisanal Futures, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines how Black artisans in Detroit can use digital fabrication and machine learning for economic empowerment. The project this article describes creates a collaboration between those two platforms, and examines the possibilities for redesigning AI and its applications to circulate value in community-based production, rather than allow its extraction by corporations or the state. Because production within a community, no matter how regenerative, is also dependent on external exchanges, we stress the importance of creating layered ecosystems of exchange which minimize value alienation, while expanding regenerative practices. We envision this expansion as a democratization of AI at multiple scales, from community-based ownership of creative production, to global principles for maintaining human rights and egalitarian futures.