Atlanta AI Week brings together business, education leaders to discuss technology’s future

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Business, education and security leaders have gathered this week at Atlanta Tech Village in Buckhead for Atlanta AI Week. The 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 folks,” said Summer Crenshaw, who organized Atlanta AI Week.

The event is expected to draw more than 500 organizations.

“We need folks talking about the hard stuff, and coming together as a community,” Crenshaw said.

As AI expands into everything, businesses are looking to set roots in hub cities. Atlanta’s ability to develop a cohesive plan for supporting AI businesses will go a long way toward bringing more money into the region.

“Atlanta is pretty advanced overall when we look at the nation as a whole,” Crenshaw said, adding that more and more companies are establishing locations outside traditional hubs in Boston and Silicon Valley.

One of the key talking points this week will be children, specifically education in a changing job landscape.

“It’s fun, because if you give kids a task, or give them a tool, or a new toy, they’re going to teach you how to use that shortly,” said Mark Michelson, Southeast Region director for the AI Collective, an international group of nonprofits encompassing more than 200,000 people.

His tug-of-war explanation between man and machine sounds suspiciously like Skynet from Terminator lore, but Michelson said there aren’t actually two sides. The tech’s ability to work for good or evil will only go as far as humans allow.

“I think that there needs to be more technology taught to people, so they understand what it is and what it’s not, what it can do and what it can’t do,” Michelson said.

He believes knowledge will solve many problems. But as he said, a better pencil doesn’t make a better writer. No different than the introduction of the computer. That starts with kids. But how to do it? That’s something humans will need to figure out, without ChatGPT.

“I feel like it’s up to us, elder millennials and Gen X, to kind of lead the way,” Crenshaw said.

“You’re going to need to learn how to use this to control your overlords at some point,” Michelson added as a joke.