Justin R. Lester, a tech pastor, argues Black churches must engage in AI development or risk biased systems harming their communities. He points to documented bias in loans, hiring, and policing, and calls churches to teach and build toward justice-centered AI.
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What if I told you the next civil rights battle isn't happening on the streets, but it's happening in code? I'm Justin Lesser, that tech pastor. I'm here to give you the business for your business. Today, I want to talk about what liberation looks like for black churches and AI. See, AI is being trained every day by companies, by coders, by corporations with little or no connections to our communities. And every time they feed that system with more data without our voice, they're making decisions without our values. So here's the question. If the black church doesn't train AI, who will? We've spent generations leading movements for justice. We taught America how to pray, how to raise their children, how to protest, how to persevere. When it comes to AI, too many of our black churches are silent. And that silence is permission. It's complicity. Algorithms already decide who gets approved for a loan, who gets hired, who gets watched by the police. And too often, the results are extremely biased because no one that looked like us helped shape the system. And that has to change. Pastors, it's this time for us to move from consumers of technology to architects of justice, to bring the black church prophetic tradition into these tech spaces where people's lives are being coded without consent, without care, and without Christ. So I'm not telling you that every church needs to hire a software engineer next week, but I am saying we can't afford to wait. We've got to teach this, we got to preach this, and we got to build towards this. Because if the black church doesn't show up in the AI space, the people who've never valued us will continue designing systems that. That don't see us. And I promise you, I don't want to see what that looks like. So I'm asking you, as a black leader, as a black pastor, across this screen, will you lead or will be left out? I ask that you step forward. Let's train it with truth. Let's build it with love. Let's shape it with the wisdom of our ancestors. And most of all, let's build it with the power of the Holy Ghost. The altar call is digital now, and the altar is open for you.
