AI’s Impact on Impact

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Regardless of industry, artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics on everyone’s mind. How will it affect the workforce and economy? How can we use it to upskill our teams and increase our bandwidth? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we ensure we’re using new AI tools for good?

18 Coffees has been exploring this topic first-hand through conversations and events like the 2024 Social Innovation Summit, which focuses on cross-sector collaborations to generate impact in the corporate, philanthropic, investment, policy, cultural, civil society, and innovation spaces. This year’s flagship summit featured several panels, discussions, and workshops centered around the very topic of AI for good. One “Tech & AI for Good” panel included thought leaders whose robust conversation spanned industries yet focused on three key themes when it comes to AI and impact: Education, ethical considerations, and superpowering human strengths.

Education

While conversations around AI have been circling for a few years now, there is still a sizable application gap between the high-level concept of AI and day-to-day utilization in the workforce. According to Charisse Dean, Managing Director of the US Social Sustainability & Advisory Technology Media & Telcom at KPMG, “There’s not an equitable understanding of what AI is and how to use it right now. When employees do use it, there’s not a true appreciation of what it can and cannot do. It’s creating a disparity in skillsets within our society and within our workforce.“ 

This cascading effect is extremely visible in the impact space — too often, organizations don’t understand what kind of data they are able to share or what kind of tools will be most beneficial to augment their work. More often than not, this lack of understanding leaves employees stuck in their current operations, afraid to fail, and unsure of what AI capabilities they can or should try next.

Ethical Considerations

The AI education disparity doesn’t start in an office setting — it begins much sooner when governments and school districts allocate resources that effectively determine which members of the next generation receive training in this space. Dean said, “The tech disparity hasn’t gone away — just because you put laptops in schools doesn’t mean there are enough people who know what they’re doing. Even though we’d love to accelerate learning, we don’t have enough people to teach them AI. You have to train teachers and administrators to upskill the current workforce who will upskill the next one. I see it directly because of my children who are in school — depending on their school, that dictates their access to AI.” 

Organizations in the impact space are often the first to see elements like the education disparity and the racial and gender bias of AI. This also means that they often run into issues that they can’t solve or advocate for alone. Deena Trujillo, Chief Executive Officer of the Crisis Text Line, leverages partnerships to help close gaps in her organization’s knowledge and continue improving to serve those in crisis. “We’re in the middle of a mental health and loneliness epidemic, and there’s no org that can solve this by themselves — we have to work together to address these concerns.”

Superpowering Human Strengths

The impact space is often under-resourced but overworked to meet a growing demand with less time, money, or mental capacity. AI can actually help alleviate both of these issues when leveraged properly, reducing the manual labor and bandwidth required for more mundane tasks and providing employees with the brainpower to imagine innovative solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems. As Dean said, “AI is helping people do jobs at a speed we need them in areas where we quite frankly don’t want to do the work or don’t have the capacity to do the work. I’m excited about the amount we can improve societally.” From automating routine tasks to expanding grant-writing capabilities, AI is becoming a superpower that takes organizations to the next level.

So, what comes next in the intersection of AI and impact? Pooja Shaw, Senior Advisor for Technology & Delivery at The White House is “cautiously optimistic about AI in the medium-term.” That said, she also cautioned leaders to find other more palatable approaches outside of AI. “We should be looking at other less fancy avenues to find plain language solutions,” otherwise certain communities might be intimidated and left behind.

AI will, for better or worse, not solve the world’s problems overnight. Nor will all employees or organizations immediately have a thorough understanding of this technology that is constantly changing. With that in mind, first-movers like Dean are actively encouraging people to be patient but keep trying. “It takes three to five years from a technology perspective for full tech adoption and education. This is a sprint, not a marathon.”