Sister Spokesman event asks how Black communities can shape the AI era

Artificial intelligence may be changing how people work, learn and create, but Dr. Elizabeth M. Adams wants Black communities to think beyond just responding to the technology.

“I would like to see us leapfrog and actually shape the future, specifically with how we engage with AI,” Adams said.

That idea was at the center of “The AI Era: What to Know and How to Use It,” a Sister Spokesman event held Saturday, Sept. 5, at the NorthPoint Conference Center in North Minneapolis.

Presented by Sister Spokesman and the Minnesota CHILL Foundation, the gathering showed attendees how AI can boost career development, entrepreneurship, and daily tasks. Panelists also addressed concerns around privacy, bias, misinformation and its use among youth.

The event’s panel featured Adams, chief engagement officer at the Minnesota Responsible AI Institute, and Chuck Hill, president of Programming Solutions Incorporated and chair of the Minnesota CHILL Foundation.

Embracing tech without the fear

Opening the discussion, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder CEO and publisher Tracey Williams-Dillard encouraged attendees not to let fear stop them from learning about the growing technology.

“Learn AI, because it won’t replace you,” Williams-Dillard told attendees. “You’ll replace yourself if you don’t learn it.”

Hill echoed that sense of urgency. A longtime information technology professional, Hill said he believes having more knowledge of AI will become increasingly important as the technology becomes more integrated into everyday life.

“The more you use it, the more you learn,” Hill said.

During the panel, Hill shared ways AI can help with tasks ranging from meeting summaries and business documents to job searches and resumes. In his own business, Hill said AI has helped him consider opportunities he might have otherwise overlooked.

“It gives me an opportunity to ask and get an objective look at my business, where I can maybe grow in areas that I never even thought of,” Hill said.

Addressing bias and algorithmic risks

Throughout the discussion, the panel received several questions about the potential risks of AI and how it could impact Black communities.

Adams encouraged attendees to remain involved in how they use the technology and how AI systems affect their communities. During the panel, she described experiencing racial bias while experimenting with an AI image generator for a book project involving an African American cowgirl.

The experience pointed to a larger concern about who designs AI systems, what information is used to build them, and whether the technology treats communities fairly.

For Adams, responsible AI use means neither rejecting the technology nor accepting everything it produces.

“We need to think about how to use it responsibly, but also kind of lean on each other and play around with it,” she said.

Navigating the classroom divide

Those questions were relevant for attendee Remi Eichten, who said she spent 17 years teaching before resigning this year. She said she attended the event because she is considering what comes next professionally.

“If I am not going to be teaching anymore, how do people who are not teachers use AI?” Eichten said.

Eichten sees possibilities in the technology, such as helping people access information, but her classroom experience also left her concerned about students becoming too dependent on it. She shared that students would question why they needed to learn certain skills when AI could produce answers for them.

“They were like, ‘What’s the point? AI is going to do everything. I don’t need to know that,'” Eichten said. “‘I’m not even going to try because AI is going to do everything.'”

That concern is nearly the opposite of Hill’s, who said he worries restrictions on young people’s use of AI could leave them behind.

“Putting restrictions on their use early on, I think, could have a negative impact on their ability to learn how to use it effectively,” Hill said.

Building a community roadmap

Rather than resolving or offering the right answers to both sides, the event created space for community members to raise questions about what responsible adoption should look like.

Eichten said the event gave her new ideas about how she might use AI and reinforced the value of having community conversations about it.

“It was good to have this discussion so people could start thinking about it,” Eichten said.

Adams said those conversations are especially important because there is no single roadmap for navigating a technology that continues to evolve.

“We have to remember that this is so new for us,” Adams said. “We haven’t been here before. So we’re all trying to figure it out.”

Aaliyah Demry welcomes reader responses at ademry@spokesman-recorder.com.