March 18, 2026

WHEREAS, MLK Labor has asserted in past strategic plans its mission to combat racism, to uphold democracy, to defend workers from job replacement, and to protect our natural resources and the environment; and

WHEREAS, it is a stated value of our Labor movement to “combat resolutely the forces that seek to undermine the democratic institutions of our nation and to enslave the human soul… to strive always to win full respect for the dignity of the human individual whom our unions serve;” and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry as it stands today continues to be the force seeking to undermine the democratic institutions of our nation and seeks to enslave the human soul; and

WHEREAS, the integrity of our democratic institutions is already under attack, as recently demonstrated by the deal struck between the federal government and OpenAI on February 27th, 2026, after AI company Anthropic’s federal contract was cut when they declined to use their AI products for “mass surveillance of American citizens or to power autonomous weapon systems”; and

WHEREAS, all generative image, entertainment, and text AI models are built on stolen and unpaid work; and the use of AI to generate these images and text devalues the hard work of writers and artists; and

WHEREAS, AI Models have been shown to replicate the same racist, classist, and queerphobic biases as the data that was used to create them, as well as amplify the racist content; and

WHEREAS, according to a 2023 report from the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility, AI is slated to disrupt 4.5 million jobs for African Americans, who have a 10% greater likelihood of automation-based job loss than other workers; and

WHEREAS, this report also asserts that generative AI is projected to widen the racial economic gap in the United States by an additional $43 billion every year; and

WHEREAS, AI data centers also present a huge drain on our natural resources, particularly the American electrical grid, using about 4.4% of the total US electricity in 2023, and could triple by 2028, in the production of nearly nothing substantive; and

WHEREAS, AI data centers also use a significant amount of water for the purpose of generating electricity and cooling servers, with one study highlighting that a single ChatGPT query consumes the equivalent of a bottle of water; and

WHEREAS, AI is known to be inaccurate and hallucinate due to its design being based on probability and not on accurate citations; and

WHEREAS, none of the tech corporations profiting from AI are widely unionized, including Spotify, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI; and

WHEREAS, potential corporate profits from generative AI are projected in the trillions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands of workers stand to lose their livelihoods in the face of corporate greed; and

WHEREAS, public opinion polls consistently show that Americans have an unfavorable view of AI, including a recent NBC poll where only 26% of respondents had a favorable view; and

WHEREAS, organized labor serves as a line of defense against the depravity of capitalism and as the standard of work for countless industries;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that MLK Labor will strive to avoid the use of AI software in the pursuit of the goals of MLK Labor or its membership organizations, and in accordance with any AI technology use policies bargained with MLK Labor’s staff union, OPEIU Local 8;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that MLK Labor will encourage stakeholders and affiliates to participate in ongoing discussions convened by MLK Labor about the ethics, applications, and environmental impacts, such as water usage and fast-tracking and de-regulation of nuclear reactors for the purpose of feeding AI technology in our Labor movement, and that MLK Labor will participate in the Washington State Labor Council’s AI Summit on April 30, 2026.