While the marine layer was gray, spirits were sunny as audience members poured into Malibu’s Creative Visions Foundation on October 16th, 2024. As people mingled and took in the oceanside view, LA2050 and the Goldhirsh Foundation prepared for their second consecutive day’s 2024 LA Tech Week panel, “AI For Social Good.” The event featured Goldhirsh Foundation President Tara Roth in conversation with Jen García, AI executive in residence for the Goldhirsh Foundation and LA2050. More: Read about the 10/15 event.

During the conversation, Roth and García discussed AI and its role in equity, ethics, and the Los Angeles impact sector; and how AI can be utilized to aid grantees and investment partners with their objectives.

Following welcoming remarks by CVF’s Founder Kathy Eldon, Roth began the discussion by asking García, “How can AI help our grantees and investment partners in fulfilling their missions in keeping a broad lens about equity and social responsibility?” The answer, in part, is: embracing Open AI, GPT programs, and large language models with open arms. “This is the gold rush,” García said. “Everyone is out to figure out how to apply AI to business and that’s a good thing. We are going to benefit from that, but we also need to ensure that all our communities are rising with this emerging technology.”

Throughout the year, García has provided targeted consulting to LA2050 grantees and allies to help them adopt AI technologies for social good, focusing on capacity building and sustainable innovation. García has also led Goldhirsh Foundation-sponsored workshops and training sessions on AI applications in philanthropy, tailored to diverse levels of tech proficiency, including back in February, 2024 at the well-attended LA2050 Artificial Intelligence for Social Good seminar.

At the Malibu event, comments poured in from those in attendance regarding the digital divide that exists amongst organizations. (AI, especially as related to ethics and community impact, is a topic the Goldhirsh Foundation has been tracking since 2019. The foundation has hosted discussions with some big names in the field - people such as Jim Gao and Katie Hoffman, co-founders of Phaidra; Peter Diamandis of XPrize and Singularity, and Gil Elbaz, now with the Elbaz Family Foundation and co-founder of TenOneTen.)

One question Roth asked García included, “How can implemented AI solutions positively benefit nonprofit leaders, staffers, and their organization?” García reflected on these solutions in a prior Goldhirsh Foundation blog post she wrote regarding empowering nonprofits with AI. The post consisted of four insights on revolutionizing program delivery and using technology as a medium to reimagine, better communicate, and adopt new means of addressing challenges. During the Tech Week conversation, she reassured the crowd that humans are still learning how to navigate AI, and we are doing it together.

She said, “Open AI has allowed for us to train their large language models on our data so that the GPT program can be informed on how to handle what we ask it to do. We’ll be able to focus on and better answer what’s next with these programs around.”

Responsible AI usage is still a major factor in how industries and creatives alike embrace technology. García shared that when used responsibly, AI can streamline and increase organization impact beyond what is possible without AI technologies. She heeds that through training events, increased accessibility, and simple practice, approaching AI can be effortless. For her, trying and adapting is key.

A plethora of other topics were also discussed, including concerns of data privacy and safety, real-world AI applications, and an AI Chatbot attached to the LA2050 Ideas Hub that GarcíaGarcia and a group of UCLA grad students have been working on. If Once completed and launched, the project would help connect people to the impact organization that best suits their interest.

Technology’s means of connecting people was a major theme throughout the conversation between Roth and García, with other projects such as technology around resource translation being brought up as an example. Following Roth’s question on how AI can “enhance someone’s way of being in the world,” García highlighted a fellow AI expert and nonprofit founder in the audience, whose work focuses on wider information and resource accessibility in multilingual cities through broader language translation technology.

García said, “Language is such a niche thing but with [the founder’s] technology, people can pass an employment exam and it can release them from being stuck in that ‘government slow.’” García explained that the barriers set in place for people applying to jobs when language becomes an issue, adding that the difference between someone who understands the resources at hand and another who doesn't could be an income of “$15,000 more a year.”

Yet, even with AI’s benefits, García is aware there are fears that come with the move towards it. She said, “Of course there are concerns that we need to be aware of, but we need to make sure that we’re seeing that [AI] is going to be used for good because we’re the ones driving it.”