The Tattoo and the Algorithm: Race, Remembrance, and AI Education

“Kamau Bobb writes with a piercing clarity about race, history, and technology that does not comfort but confronts. His words do not allow you the luxury of distance. They leave you sharper, more aware, and undeniably changed about the AI crisis we are living through.”—Bettina L. Love, author of Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal

Urgent lessons from the US’s haunting past to light the path ahead for equitable education as AI transforms while the nation regresses to racial backlash

Educated citizens are the lifeforce of democracy. Across all aspects of modern life, and especially in education, AI is raising existential questions. Like any new technology, it is both transformative and problematic.

In The Bullwhip’s Algorithm, Dr. Kamau Bobb meditates on the convergence of American memory and the colorblind promises of AI in education. At the critical milestone of the US’s 250th anniversary, Bobb argues that enthusiasm and clamor for AI are a veil for the vacuous neglect of our nation’s racist past. Bobb encourages readers to pause and examine the actual foundation on top of which the grand claims of AI’s potential in education are being built, raising questions like:

- How does AI change the fundamental structure of American education?
- How does the application of AI enabled tools affect educational outcomes in schools that are profoundly segregated?
- When the purveyors of these technologies claim that they will close gaps and improve the educational experience for all students, what does that really mean?

American educational history is overflowing with abuse, segregation, and smoldering scorn from white nationalists who have historically cracked the bullwhip, attempting to subjugate Black Americans to the bottom the racial caste system. Bobb’s exploration of race, tech, and society makes it clear: the potential of AI in education to be justly realized depends on our ability to assess and learn from our past of limiting Black students’ academic achievement.

Kamau Bobb is the founding Senior Director of the Constellations Center for Education in Computing at Georgia Tech. He is the former Director of STEM Education Strategy and Research at Google and a former Program Officer at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering. During his federal service, he served on President Obama’s MBK STEM Taskforce. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Bobb was the Director of the STEM Initiative for the University System of Georgia. Dr. Bobb holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from Georgia Tech and MS and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.