The Forgotten Discourse At the ChatGPT Table

I attended the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego over the past few days. My focus was to learn more about ChatGPT that is dominating innovation air space in rooms. As a woman, person-of-color small business start up company, I was certainly out-scaled, and this summit was not necessarily catering to me anyway. There were the Google, Microsoft, and other mega billion dollar companies present (including their CEOs), as well as the whole spectrum of hedge fund sponsored start ups, along with small and mid-sized established tech companies. I was a fish out of water and I embraced it! It was a lively and friendly environment.

It was exciting to hear the various ways in which AI is being thought of to revolutionize work, create efficiencies, rethink learning, and even how to better design jobs for millennials - the largest employable group today. I particularly enjoyed learning about how blue collar jobs would change to eliminate more tedious work, and make these jobs more interesting and safer. I also loved the ideas around redesigning learning models and constructs across fields of work. Particularly, I thought the ideas around using AI to increase access to language learning to create a more multilingualism society was fascinating.

I didn't love everything I heard though. Putting aside the more obvious concerns with needing to solve the safety issues of the AI environments, there were equally urgent matters that I didn't hear about in the sessions. (If you haven't attended this conference - it's like being at Disney World during spring break with long lines just to attempt to get into sessions, and then not being able to get on the ride! Not fun considering the amount I paid out of pocket to be there)

So here are my three primary wonderings coming out of the sold out ASU+GSV Summit . 1. How will racial minorities, who are already on a steep uphill social economic climb historically in this country, be able to negotiate a space at this AI innovation table in an increasingly globalized market place that has not solved for these inequities?

2. What problems SHOULD we be solving with AI? Just wondering if we are willing to talk about something other than the for-profit industry and instead shift to matters of the seemingly unsolvable - such as food distribution so that the issue of malnutrition for children global becomes an obsolete matter. What about using AI to eliminate racial housing redlining that is still alive and well in the U.S. and affect our public school systems and communities of color? Can we use AI to plan in advance for communities in the pacific and in Africa that are being flooded out of their homes? You have to admit that this summit was a capitalist-centered space and less about solving global problems!

3. My third wondering is why certain millionaires at the conference were telling educators at the conference that "everyone should be using ChatGPT now?" I think the perspective of a multimillionaire technologist at the conference and a person like me that fought her way out of poverty, hunger and racialized violence, is that our view of AI are different, although both are important. You see, before I sign away my privacy to ChatGPT, I want to know how we will solve for who owns my data. People of color and people in poverty have had their data used and abused at the will of people in power, including big tech corporations. Let's talk about how companies and policy influencers will ensure that people will be able to own their data.

This exciting innovation front still has major issues to solve but make no mistake, it is very exciting! My goal primarily was to raise the issue of who is truly at this innovation table, who is present but has no voice, and who is not only not present but invisible. With so much power and influence in one room there is a tremendous opportunity to discuss and attempt to address the racial inequity in our capitalistic society. I hope that the future of AI is one not of power hoarding - who did what first and who made how much money and who dominates the industry, but rather one of power sharing - who were the collective thought leaders that were willing to work together to solve pain, suffering and inequities to bring joy and opportunities globally.