ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — This week, business, education, and security leaders gathered at Atlanta Tech Village in Buckhead for Atlanta AI Week. This event is designed to discuss how Atlanta can stay at the forefront of technological change and how people can adapt to it.
“It might scare some people,” said Summer Crenshaw, organizer of Atlanta AI Week.
More than 500 organizations are expected to participate in the event.
“We need people talking about difficult things and coming together as a community,” Crenshaw said.
As AI expands into everything, companies are looking to establish roots in hub cities. Atlanta’s ability to develop a coherent plan to support AI businesses will go a long way in bringing more capital to the region.
“If you look at the country as a whole, Atlanta is generally pretty advanced,” Crenshaw said, adding that more companies are locating outside of their traditional hubs in Boston and Silicon Valley.
One of the key topics this week is the education of children, especially in a changing work environment.
“It’s fun because when you give kids a task or give them a tool or a new toy, they immediately learn how to use it,” said Mark Michelson, Southeast regional director for the AI Collective, an international nonprofit organization with more than 200,000 members.
Although his description of a tug-of-war between humans and machines sounds suspiciously like Skynet from the Terminator legend, Michelson said there aren’t actually two sides. Technology’s ability to work for good or evil can only work to the extent that humans allow it to.
“I think we need to teach technology more so that people understand what it is and what it’s not, what it can and can’t do,” Michelson said.
He believes that knowledge solves many problems. But as he said, better pencils don’t make better writers. It’s no different than installing a computer. It starts with the children. But how do you do it? That’s what humans need to understand without using ChatGPT.
“I feel like it’s up to us, older millennials and Gen Xers, to lead the way,” Crenshaw said.
“At some point we’ll have to learn how to use this to control monarchs,” Michelson added jokingly.
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