Young Black innovators in Oakland are putting artificial intelligence to work for their community. Velena Jones reports.
Young Black innovators in Oakland are putting artificial intelligence to work for their community. Kids as young as 11 spent the summer learning to build AI-powered apps designed to solve real neighborhood problems that were important to them
For six weeks, 26 young Black men from 11 to 25 in Kingmakers of Oakland learned coding, prompt engineering, and software development while building live AI-powered apps focused on issues affecting their communities. A first for the program
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“For our Kings to move from just passively receiving all that’s on their phone and all the programs have to offer them to thinking critically what they are doing with it, how they can create something different and how it’s impacting us as a community,” Kingmakers of Oakland Program Director Kahlil Chatmon
Working in small teams called Tribes, each group focused on a different community issue—from youth substance abuse and education to reisited Google’s San Francisco campus for a deeper look at AI
“For our Kings, it’s about building something that can better impact our experience and also create and produce that our people can use that are for us, by us,” Chatmon said
For Tribe leader Willie Rodgers, a former Kingmakers student now attending Morehouse College, his team’s project focused on closing the re a petition to push for change
“We are all from Oakland, but we all have different backgrounds, so the fact that we came together to create something that can truly create a change,” he said
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Another Tribe focused on creating a tool for immigrants to report ICE activity. Their app provides a private community watch map and connects users with immigration re
“Once we figured out the end goal, using a user’s location for only 30 seconds and once they make a report that data gets wiped off, and stuff like that, they felt relief and pretty proud that they were able to build this app,” Tribe Chief Sanusi Signateh said
Friday, the young innovators will showcase and pitch their apps to technology leaders, with plans to continue developing their ideas throughout the year. Organizers say the goal is to give them the tools to become leaders in tech and beyond to drive change
