Heinrich, Bay Area nonprofit leader want to improve AI literacy

On Monday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) spoke at an event about artificial intelligence and its impact in the community. The event, hosted by the Women’s Economic Self-Sufficiency Team (WESST) and Bay Area-based nonprofit AIandYou, centered on AI and how it affects education, the workforce and small businesses.

“We need to do a better job of foreseeing what some of the deleterious uses are going to be, while encouraging the stuff that’s going to grow small businesses and economic development,” Heinrich said.

Heinrich, one of the leading lawmakers in Congress when it comes to AI, is the co-chair and co-founder of the Senate Bipartisan AI Caucus. He aided the passage of the Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act to increase research and development of AI and he helped establish the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force.

Generative AI, ChatGPT and Gemini, are all tools business owners could use to speed up certain menial tasks, Heinrich said.

“If you open a restaurant in New Mexico, you’re setting staff policy, writing the menu, you may have a marketing email list that you’re trying to communicate.” he said, “Having something that can write the first draft of that menu, marketing email and lots of things that help you communicate more effectively with your customers, make them happier and more likely to come back again and again.”

The chat bots still have a ways to go when it comes to accuracy, according to the AI experts in attendance Monday, and the bots need human intervention to correct the prompt for its finial iteration.

“Small business owners in our communities need to understand that you all can download an app that can allow you to customize your marketing, manage inventory or monitor competition,” said Susan Gonzales, founder and CEO of AIandYou.

Gonzales also sits on President Joe Biden’s National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC), created by the Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act that Heinrich supported. AIandYou, started in 2019, brings AI literacy to marginalized communities.

There’s a tidal wave of new AI opportunities and risks coming, and AI literacy will need to be better, according to both Gonzales and Heinrich.

“If small businesses don’t become literate with these tools, they could be at a competitive disadvantage. ... Let’s make sure we don’t have a digital divide 2.0 that holds some communities back.” Heinrich said.

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