Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age (Editorial)

Authors

• Daisuke Akiba, CUNY Queens College; CUNY Graduate CenterFollow
• Julie Albright, University of Southern California

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 8-26-2026

Abstract

This editorial article introduces and synthesizes the Special Issue, “Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age,” which examines how AI systems intersect with race, ethnicity, and interconnected identity dimensions across global contexts. The eight contributions span healthcare, digital media, higher education, organizational communication, and speculative futures, addressing anti-racist psychiatric algorithms, AI-generated visual disinformation, epistemic injustice between the Global North and South, algorithmically mediated rural–urban divides, culturally untranslated technology transfer, accessibility auditing across the AI lifecycle, and the tension between mechanical objectivity and empathic understanding. Read together, they show that AI is neither inherently empowering nor oppressive; rather, its consequences are mediated by the socioeconomic, cultural, and political conditions under which it is developed and deployed. Three cross-cutting insights emerge: (a) algorithmic harm is structural rather than merely technical, rooted in whose data and lived experiences are treated as the default; (b) equity cannot be retrofitted but must be embedded from problem formulation through post-deployment monitoring; and (c) context is constitutive, such that identical systems yield divergent outcomes across regions. The editorial identifies underexplored domains, including migration governance and stigmatized communities, and calls for community-led ethical frameworks, intersectional methodologies, enforceable auditing standards in high-stakes domains, and longitudinal cross-national research.

Comments

Akiba D and Albright J (2026) Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age. Front. Sociol. 11:1951102. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2026.1951102