For decades, we’ve talked about who gets to tell the story — the producers, the executives, the editors, the distributors.
Now the conversation has shifted.
Because today, it’s not just studios deciding what the world sees.
It’s algorithms.

And behind those algorithms are new gatekeepers — the handful of tech conglomerates who own the data, the infrastructure, and the digital oxygen we all breathe.

They call it innovation.
But let’s name it for what it is: a new kind of gatekeeping, one that automates the same power dynamics we’ve been fighting for generations.

The New Power Structure

In Hollywood, gatekeeping looked like executives deciding which stories were “universal.”
In AI, it looks like a few companies — Google, Microsoft, Amazon — controlling the hardware, the compute, and the code that determines what’s possible.

AI isn’t neutral.
It’s built by humans, trained on biased data, and governed by profit.
And when the same handful of companies own the datasets, the servers, and the research labs, what we call “the future” becomes a mirror of the past — only faster, quieter, and harder to challenge.

These companies don’t just build models; they define reality.
They decide what’s visible.
What’s credible.
What’s erased.

Bias by Design

The danger isn’t that AI “hates” anyone — it’s that it reflects the majority.
When systems are trained on data that underrepresents Black and Brown voices, they learn a distorted version of truth.
When AI tools summarize “professionalism,” “beauty,” or “leadership,” they default to whiteness — not because the algorithm is racist, but because the data is.

And because these systems scale globally, so does the bias.
It’s not one executive greenlighting a movie — it’s millions of algorithmic decisions shaping perception, opportunity, and access in real time.

The result?
A new digital color line — one drawn not by people in boardrooms, but by patterns in code.

The Emotional Cost of Access

Shereen Daniels calls it emotional cash: the toll of constantly proving your worth to systems built to overlook you.
In AI, that emotional cash shows up in new ways.

Black founders pitching models trained on our communities get told their markets are “too small.”
Black researchers raising concerns about bias get pushed out of labs in the name of “efficiency.”
And when we build platforms centering our stories, we’re asked to make them “more mainstream.”

Mainstream, in this case, just means “more white.”

The Blueprint for Reclaiming Power

We can’t wait for permission to enter this space — we have to own it.
That means funding our own models, training them on our data, and protecting our intellectual property like our grandparents protected their music masters.

It means supporting open-source movements like Hugging Face and collective governance models that democratize access to compute and data.
It means educating ourselves and the next generation — because equity isn’t a policy. It’s a protocol.

The Truth

AI will shape every part of how we live, work, and connect.
But unless we intervene, it will replicate the same systemic inequities that entertainment, media, and policy once enforced.
The difference now is that bias has gone digital — scaled through code, trained on history, and optimized for profit.

The question isn’t whether AI will change the world.
It’s whose world it will change — and for whom.

The gatekeepers have evolved.
They’re not standing at the door anymore.
They’ve built the door, the lock, and the key.

Our job is to write new code.
To build systems that remember what the old ones forgot.
To ensure the future of intelligence — artificial or otherwise — reflects all of us.

Call to Action:
Keep it locked here where we connect ethics and technology through the lens of culture and creativity. Because the algorithm might be automated, but the revolution is still human.