The new AI Literacy Pipeline to Prosperity Project is an initiative of the nonprofit’s prominent AI Ethics Council. That council boasts civil rights leaders, presidents of historically Black colleges and universities and major tech leaders as its members. The council is co-chaired by Operation HOPE founder John Hope Bryant and Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
The goal of the literacy pipeline project is to start training people from kindergarten all the way through college on AI. Richard Phillips, dean of the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State, and Bryant formally announced the initiative Wednesday morning at the nonprofit’s annual HOPE Global Forums alongside leaders from Mayor Andre Dickens’ office, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta Public Schools and the Atlanta Board of Education.
Bryant sees the project as a way of creating an economic ladder for people who don’t have access to the same opportunities as wealthy Americans.
“I think it’s very dangerous to have an economy where big chunks are technology, finance, health care,” Bryant said, “but there’s no intentional development process. There’s no laddering system.”
New research from the Brookings Institutionhas found women, Hispanics, multiracial and Black people in metro Atlanta remain underrepresented in computer, engineering and management jobs compared to their share of the population. Brookings also found that these workers are more concentrated in lower wage digital jobs.
But with AI, almost everyone is starting from scratch with the burgeoning technology, regardless of race, education or class, Bryant said, which means “no one has an advantage.”
So, the literacy pipeline program is going to focus on bringing AI training to communities in Atlanta “that wouldn’t naturally have those opportunities,” Phillips from Georgia State said. “We’re not fully taking advantage of the innate capabilities of this country. We’re sort of leaving people on the sideline that shouldn’t be on the sideline, they should be on the playing field.”
Georgia State and Operation HOPE are partnering with Atlanta Public Schools on the program. The primary focus is on Title I schools, Bryant said, which are schools with a high number of poor students. In Atlanta, those schools are primarily concentrated in the south side of the city and are overwhelmingly Black.
“There’s a (African billionaire and tech leader) Strive Masiyiwa and an Andrew Young of technology in those communities right now, with no nurturing, no support and no opportunities,” Bryant said.
But the program is not limited to those students, “we’re not going to exclude anybody,” he said. “If you happen to make your way … from Buckhead, we’re happy to talk to you, we’ll be happy to help you.”
APS will help develop the program’s curriculum, and Phillips said they are aiming to launch a pilot next summer. Georgia State’s College of Education, the mayor’s office, Clark Atlanta, Morehouse College, Georgia Tech and other members of the AI Ethics Council are also partnering on the program.
As the program develops, it will also provide AI internships to high school students, AI-focused scholarships and financial literacy programming through Operation HOPE.
The program is initially being funded by the AI Ethics Council, Georgia State, Operation HOPE and Mastercard. Bryant declined to disclose the exact amount of funding.
The ultimate goal of the program is to have Atlanta be a model that can then be implemented in other cities in Georgia and around the United States. But Bryant also sees the pipeline as a new model for trying to create equity-focused programs in a time when diversity, equity and inclusion is under legal and political crosshairs.
“This also might be an example of something that’s the future of what was called D, E and I, because this is for everybody,” he said. “This is inclusive economics. Whether you’re white, poor, rural in the mountains of Georgia. Whether you’re Latino, whether you’re Asian, whether you’re African American in the inner city, wherever.”
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