The power of AI: balancing ethics and harm for the environmental justice field

Abstract

Artificial intelligence, after the boom of generative AI, is beginning to shape environmental decision-making, at the same moment that environmental justice (EJ) communities face intensifying ecological harm, federal disinvestment, and data erasure. This paper examines the dual tensions AI presents for the EJ field: its potential as a tool for democratizing data access and amplifying community knowledge, and its reproduction of the very hierarchies EJ seeks to dismantle. We document harms across several domains, including the environmental racism embedded in data center siting and energy demand, the extension of fossil fuel industry lifespans, data bias and digital colonialism in AI training, access and literacy inequities, data privacy risks, technological hallucination, and technological solutionism. Drawing on thirty years of community-centered data practice at an EJ nonprofit, we propose an alternative paradigm grounded in the Community Advisory Board model, data democratization, community co-creation, and ethical data governance. This includes community-governed data trusts, accessible data infrastructure, and AI tools designed to build rather than replace community capacity. EJ communities must not only hold AI accountable for its harms but also ask the question of how the technology’s capabilities can serve justice rather than just capital interest.