Mississippi AI Collaborative wins data.org’s Generative AI Skills Challenge

By ADDIE DAVIS Daily Journal Nov 22, 2023 Original Link

The Mississippi AI Collaborative was one of five organizations worldwide to win the Generative AI Skills Challenge from international nonprofit organization data.org.

The winners were announced Nov. 15, and they included organizations in Nigeria, India, Greece, and Chile. They were selected out of a pool of more than 600 applicants from 93 countries.

“The Generative AI Skills Challenge issued a call for best-in-class organizations training and upskilling teams on generative AI to drive social impact and advance socioeconomic mobility,” the data.org website reads. The Challenge, co-hosted by Microsoft, specifically focused on organizations in communities that were low- and middle-income.

The Mississippi AI Collaborative was created in June 2023 to help people across Mississippi learn about and learn to use artificial intelligence, particularly following generative AI’s wider introduction to the public over the past year.

Generative AI is artificial intelligence that produces content — whether text, images, video, or some combination thereof. ChatGPT is a well-known example.

For winning the Generative AI Skill Challenge, the Mississippi AI Collaborative received $250,000 in grant money. The Collaborative will also receive in-kind contributions from Microsoft for purchases of software such as Azure and ChatGPT, and Microsoft will offer technical support as well.

“I think our major goal right now is that we want to reach absolutely everyone in the state of Mississippi to make some form of upskilling or education in generative AI available to them,” said Brittany Myburgh, a Collaborative team member. “We think that (generative AI education) can be quite a democratic force in terms of closing the digital divide.”

Myburgh is an assistant professor of art history at Jackson State University, where her research includes studying how artists use data, algorithms, and AI in their work, generative AI particularly, now.

With the use of the Challenge grant money, the Collaborative expects to reach 4,000-6,000 Mississippians, Myburgh said.

Danil Mikhailov, data.org’s executive director, and one of the judges of the Generative AI Skills Challenge, told the Daily Journal that what made the Challenge winners stand out was their strong focus on local communities. He’d been impressed by the Mississippi AI Collaborative’s focus on local businesses and community partners, as well as its focus on training individuals in AI skills all the way from K-12 schools, to university, to apprenticeships and jobs with local businesses.

Data.org is a nonprofit launched in January 2020 and funded primarily by the Rockefeller Center, the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, and the Wellcome Trust, among others.

“We describe ourselves as a platform for partnerships,” Mikhailov said. “We fundamentally help other nonprofits, academic teams, (and) social enterprises to use data and technology for social impact.”

The Mississippi AI Collaborative is currently running two initiatives, with another in the works. One of the Collaborative’s partners, the Computer Science Teachers Association of Mississippi, created curricula for the Collaborative’s Learning Accelerator program to train K-12 teachers on integrating AI in their classrooms.

Learning Accelerator will also soon be offering a yearlong fellowship designed to teach K-12 educators to become AI educators themselves — training the trainers, Myburgh said.

The Collaborative is also running the Mississippi “Skill-AI-Thon,” an AI skills competition in which Mississippi residents can earn a “Career Essential in Generative AI Professional Certificate” from LinkedIn Learning.

“We were really fortunate to kind of pilot (the Skill-AI-Thon) at Jackson State University,” Myburgh said. “We had almost 200 people from across campus signed up, and they’re currently finishing up their certifications.”

With the grant money from data.org, the Skill-AI-Thon has been opened up to all Mississippi residents. To join, all you need is to have a LinkedIn account and sign up for the Skill-AI-Thon, and you’ll have access to the free learning modules.

The Collaborative’s apprenticeship initiative, the AI Agency, is still in development. By the end of this semester, about 10 Jackson State University students from the department of art who specialize in AI and graphic design as well as students from the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development will take on apprenticeships within the agency. The goal will be to help small businesses and nonprofits in the area by leveraging AI.

“Generative AI, and AI more broadly,” Mikhailov said, “is very much the discipline of the 21st century, as my colleague Uyi Stewart says.”

Stewart is data.org’s chief data and technology officer.

Generative AI “will be transformative for all of us in our jobs,” Mikhailov said. “We want to make sure that communities are prepared for this revolution and are able to have a voice and stake for how it develops in their community. And for that, they need to have an understanding of the technology.”

That’s what makes the work that the Mississippi AI Collaborative is doing so important.

Mikhailov also noted that data.org’s grant to the Collaborative is not the end of their relationship. Data.org intends to stay connected to its grantees, helping them grow and network.

“Hopefully, this is the start of a long-term partnership,” Mikhailov said.