We are a Black woman and a white man who have spent our careers in very different rooms — one of us building a research and data-driven advocacy organization that uses quantitative analysis to advance equity, the other leading the world’s largest hiring platform. We have each had a front-row seat to what happens when powerful technology meets deep inequality. And we have each seen what becomes possible when the right people come together.
Our partnership is itself an example of the kind of collaboration we believe this moment demands. Artificial intelligence that truly benefits all humanity will never be built by any single community. It requires people who bring different knowledge, different lived experience, and different stakes to the same table — and who are willing to do the hard and necessary work of building together.
A Defining Moment
AI is already transforming biology, medicine, and physics in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. The productivity gains ahead are without precedent in human history.
But this technology is not neutral. AI systems embedded in hiring, health care, finance, and criminal justice are already reproducing and amplifying the very inequalities we have spent decades fighting to dismantle. Résumé screening tools that systematically penalize candidates from HBCUs. Predictive policing systems are trained on data shaped by decades of over-policing. Risk assessment algorithms that deny loans, housing, and care to the people who need them most.
