I was asked about the tech pipeline in education at the @black_in_ai workshop, and given recent events with @timnitGebru I’m haunted by the idea of encouraging brilliant members of our community - including our young folks of difference - to enter a toxic 1/

tech community, only for them to be spit out at the first sign of corp tech’s incompatibility with (read unwillingness to reach into) the realities of black life. On the one hand, it’s to be expected. I mean, corporate’s gonna corporate. 2/

Are we encouraging our community to use the master’s tools, despite Audre Lorde’s warning? On the other hand, is there a way for us to engage and create in tech without reliance on a field that is always-already organised around the interests of whiteness? 3/

What are we asking for when we say ‘AI ethics’? Are we asking for entry into that which already presupposes our exclusion (or inclusion only under their terms)? Are we asking for justice in that which has falsely positioned itself as the guardians of justice itself? 4/

Maybe ‘ethics’ needs to give way to ‘abolition’ simply because of tech’s impossibility to do anything other than replicate white heteronormative perception and imperial violence. Which means tech - as is - has proven to be no more than a fictive shadow of broken promises. 5/

This isn’t a technical solution. You can’t code away white heteronormativity because it is white heteronormative that has established the codes (both technical and cultural) in the first place. 6/