Community-Centered AI is Feasible and Beneficial for Impacted Communities

AI systems are increasingly used in community contexts, yet they often fail to align with the communities they impact. To address this misalignment, we advocate for community-centered AI---an AI development paradigm that shifts away from pursuing general-purpose AI and instead focuses on co-developing tailored AI systems with the specific communities they impact. This position paper argues that community-centered AI is both feasible and beneficial for impacted communities. To support this argument, we first outline the potential benefits of community-centered AI, including greater alignment, enhanced legitimacy, capacity building, and normative justification. Next, we highlight emerging efforts in community-centered AI across the AI development process, demonstrating its feasibility in delivering these benefits. Finally, we propose a framework to guide future work in this area, characterizing community-centered AI efforts along three dimensions: participation mode, decision-making process, and development layer. Overall, this paper calls for increased research on community-centered AI.