Our Story
The AI conversation has collapsed into two camps. One says we're on the verge of solving everything. The other says we're on the verge of losing everything. Both are loud, both are well-funded, and both are talking past the people who actually have to make decisions. Meanwhile the rest of us are stuck in echo chambers of our own — professional ones where everyone already agrees, personal ones where nobody wants to argue at dinner. Misinformation fills the gaps. Institutions moved too fast or too slow, and rarely with intention. Most people respond by checking out. Not because they don't care, but because there's nowhere to go with caring. There's no room where a community organizer and a technologist can disagree in good faith for an hour and both leave smarter.
Our founder recognized this. She entered corporate America with the intention to make public services work better for the people they serve. As she looked under the hood of public institutions, it was obvious to her how emerging technology could create more capacity for civic employees to tackle their LONG list of backlogged ideas. However, as a non-technical skeptic herself, she was terrified of the negative repercussions AI could have on workers and her communities. While learning both from accelerationists and doomers, she noticed how the failings of AI extremism lead to flattened conversations in the rooms where it matters most–no matter the industry.
Leveraging her background in policy research and advocacy, she set out to create a space where tough questions across different perspectives could be discussed openly–where business incentives and human concerns could meet on common ground. Inviting folks of all backgrounds to learn alongside her, AIR+IT was founded to tease out the hard stuff, closing the education gap that keeps us from taking action.
