When one of my best friends (who is also a pastor) encouraged me to look into utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for ministry purposes, I was exhilarated. It seemed like a game-changer at my fingertips. I used it to make presentations and outline Bible studies, saving time on the tasks that often fill my days. The opportunities seemed endless, and the convenience was remarkable. Regular projects and tasks that I had poured effort into before could now be completed in mere seconds. Not only did I start utilizing it, but I started singing its praises as well to all who would listen.

Then, earlier this summer, I was invited to teach a class entitled “The Integration of Land, Food and Faith Formation in Ministry” at Memphis Theological Seminary. In an effort to utilize the city of Memphis as part of learning opportunities for my class, I began studying the local environmental justice scene. It was then that I learned things about AI that shifted my perspective and put a damper on my enthusiasm. While teaching my class, I learned that what is touted as the largest supercomputer in the world resides in Memphis. This massive facility was established by Elon Musk to support his artificial intelligence company called xAI.

Its gas turbines are releasing so much pollution that residents are saying that they can barely breathe.

Musk’s supercomputer facility is near a community called Boxtown, a neighborhood in South Memphis where over 90% of the residents are African American. Boxtown was established in 1863 by formerly enslaved Black families shortly after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It has long been a site of political and economic neglect as well as a desired location for environmentally harmful corporations.

Now, Boxtown is an immediate neighbor of Elon Musk’s supercomputer facility, which is located just three miles away. Residents of Boxtown are alleging that xAI is polluting the air, the water, and affecting the physical health of people in their community.

This xAI facility is filling the surrounding area — including Boxtown — with smog and harmful chemicals. Its gas turbines are releasing so much pollution that residents are saying that they can barely breathe. It has added significantly to the pollution produced by the 17 or some-odd industrial facilities in the same block of real estate.

Black communities are among those being disproportionately affected.

The more I pulled back the curtain, the more I saw the ethical and environmental issues lurking behind artificial intelligence (AI). From Musk’s supercomputers to Mark Zuckerberg’s massive data centers (co-founder of Facebook), and the countless AI facilities being quickly built by billionaires in communities around the country.

Each and every search on an AI platform expends enormous amounts of energy. Each task that we complete on these platforms pumps pollution into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we eat from. Artificial Intelligence, as currently engineered, is an environmental disaster and a threat to all who live, work, worship, or play near its facilities.

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As the founder of The Black Church Food Security Network, I focus primarily on organizing African American congregations to grow food on their land and develop mutually beneficial partnerships with Black farmers in an effort to cultivate the development of Black-owned food ecosystems across the country. However, I do not have the luxury of separating issues here. Environmental racism, such as what is occurring in Boxtown, is inherently connected to the health, food justice needs, and overall well-being of Black communities.

AI supercomputers negatively impact the environment, agriculture, and food. Black communities are among those being disproportionately affected. Residents of Boxtown are being hit with increased rates of asthma and heart disease, and a cancer risk more than four times the national average.

It is no coincidence that xAI, or any of the other industrial facilities, chose to develop in this neighborhood. The decision to develop in Memphis, in Boxtown, is the result of a long legacy of environmental racism. Black communities have been victimized over and over again in the name of science, development, and job creation.

This is not just about Boxtown or Memphis. It’s about Black communities everywhere.

Black people have a right to health. We have a right to breathe clean air. We have a right to leave our homes without fear of pollutants entering our bodies at disproportionate levels.

I am clear. Increasing our capacity to grow our own food and establish our own food ecosystems is necessary to satisfy our basic needs and decrease our dependence on corporations and the government to feed us. However, African Americans must not stop there. Food sovereignty and nutrition must work hand-in-hand with the proper stewardship of the natural environment; one without the other will continue to create lingering problems.

Protecting the profits of the richest white men in the world will never be worth more than a single human life, let alone entire Black communities.

Since my time in Memphis, I have pulled back from AI. My ability to perform any of the tasks I once delegated to AI has not diminished. AI may work faster, but becoming knowledgeable of its harms to my people put a stop to the excitement for me. Until this technology and the industries surrounding it are better informed by ethics, concern for the poor, and racial and environmental justice, I will not be able to, in good conscience, promote it or participate uncritically on its platforms.

While it may be impossible to stop this new technology in its tracks altogether, our use of AI must be selective and measured. We must reasonably weigh its values against its harms. We cannot compromise our ethics in the name of “convenience” or rushing to get a seat at the table as the industry takes off.

The “convenience” that AI provides will never be worth the havoc it wreaks on the environment and our health. Protecting the profits of the richest white men in the world will never be worth more than a single human life, let alone entire Black communities. I will do my level best to use technology responsibly, ethically, and undergirded by my allegiance to the God of my understanding who wishes above all that we prosper and be in health, even as our souls prosper.