Artificial intelligence may promise convenience, but its environmental cost is falling hardest on Black neighborhoods. In a powerful reflection, Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III reveals how AI infrastructure is deepening environmental racism in places like Boxtown, a historic Black community in South Memphis.
Just three miles from Boxtown, Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer facility is releasing smog and harmful chemicals through gas turbines. “Residents are saying that they can barely breathe,” Brown writes. The facility joins more than 17 industrial sites in the area, compounding pollution and health risks. Boxtown residents face increased rates of asthma, heart disease, and a cancer risk more than four times the national average.
Brown, who once embraced AI for ministry work, changed course after witnessing its impact. “Artificial Intelligence, as currently engineered, is an environmental disaster,” he says. Each AI task consumes massive energy, pumping pollution into the air, water, and soil. The decision to build in Boxtown, he argues, is no accident—it’s part of a legacy of environmental neglect targeting Black communities.
As founder of the Black Church Food Security Network, Brown emphasizes that food justice and environmental stewardship must go hand-in-hand. “We cannot compromise our ethics in the name of convenience,” he writes. Until AI industries are guided by racial and environmental justice, he refuses to promote them.
“Protecting the profits of the richest white men in the world will never be worth more than a single human life,” Brown concludes.
See: “Artificial Intelligence Furthers Environmental Racism in Black America” (July 28, 2025)
