SZA is warning her followers about the use of AI.
The SOS artist took to her Instagram Story on Tuesday to share a meme of The X-Files’ character Dana Scully that said, “Yeah, I use AI. Actual Imagination.”
SZA added a note: “AI is killing and polluting Black and Brown cities. None of you care ‘cause [you’re] codependent on a machine. Have a great life.”
While there’s much excitement and growth surrounding artificial intelligence—see: Peter Thiel recently said that without AI, we would have “total stagnation”—there are notable environmental consequences. Historically, issues like air pollution, increased energy costs, climate disasters have proven to hit Black, Brown, immigrant, and low-income communities the worst.
According to MIT News, AI uses a shocking amount of electricity, which boosts carbon dioxide emissions and pressures on the electric grid. An enormous amount of water is needed to cool the hardware, which places a strain on municipal water supplies and is detrimental to local ecosystems.
Think of it this way: Every time someone uses ChatGPT for a single query, the computing hardware consumes energy, amounting to “about five times more electricity than a simple web search,” MIT News writes.
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, set up shop in South Memphis, Tennessee, last summer; residents and environmental activists now say that the supercomputer has become one of the largest air polluters in the county. Per The Guardian, the building is situated just a couple of miles from historically Black residential neighborhoods that have long been subjected to industrial pollution, increased rates of cancer and asthma, and a lower life expectancy than other areas of Memphis.
One of those predominantly Black communities is Boxtown, which already suffers from poor air quality due to emissions from other industrial sources. Health data reveals that Boxton residents are at a higher risk of cancer than the national average.
Around that time, the NAACP threatened to sue xAI because of the air pollution from its Memphis supercomputer facility. The NAACP alleged that xAI didn’t have the proper permits to run its natural-gas-burning turbines, and that those turbines were radiating noxious emissions toward nearby communities.
“We cannot afford to normalize this kind of environmental injustice, where billion-dollar companies set up polluting operations in Black neighborhoods without any permits and think they’ll get away with it,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, told The New York Times.
Conversely, other artists have been pro-AI. Last month, Kelis explained why she homeschools her child using an AI system, The Alchemist defended AI-generated Erykah Badu single art, and Gunna said he wants to sign an AI artist soon.
