Welcome to episode 35 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I speak with Meenakshi (Meena) Das. Meena is working on a number of interesting areas around nonprofit technology, but what I wanted to focus on in this conversation is her work around Human-Centric AI. As you’ll hear her discuss, she’s written that “Human-Centric AI is a new learning area (seriously, you can Google it and find how little comes up), and our industry is undoubtedly still getting used to the idea.” I agree that AI is still very much a new learning area for many of us in the nonprofit/charity world. So I asked her to give us a primer or overview of AI and then describe what Human-Centric AI is, why it’s important we understand it, and how we can impact the direction AI takes in our work and lives. Some additional questions we discussed: * When AI comes up in conversation with front line workers, there is anxiety and fear of being replaced by algorithms. What’s your sense of where AI can fit as a complement to human service nonprofit work?* You work a lot at the intersection of data and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. We’ve heard a lot about machine learning and AI that simply reinforces and replicates social bias, racism, sexism, and other oppressions. What can the nonprofit sector do, or how should we be advocating for unbiased AI?* What’s happening outside the nonprofit sector related to Human-centric AI that is interesting and we can learn from?* What does tech leadership in the sector need to look like when it comes to AI?* What’s the best way for nonprofits to build practical skills like digital literacy and competency when it comes to AI within their organization, from front line to management? How should they have this conversation about Human-centric AI in their organizations? Some useful resources: * Namaste Data – her main consulting website* data uncollected – her LinkedIn newsletter for changemakers of the nonprofit industry to learn & share about equity-led data, research, & analytics* Data Is For Everyone – her evolving virtual data science school – with offerings on data, research, and analytics. * Playing with AI copywriting and video creation – we can’t ignore it any longer – an article and experiment I did that Meena references in her comments Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. The transcript has not been edited. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio. Note: In this recording, there were some small audio glitches that don’t impact understanding the audio when listening, but have an impact on the transcript. I’m writing that here in case you see some strange phrasing or words below that don’t make sense. 🙂 Marco Campana 0:00Welcome to Episode 35 of the technology and human services podcast. In this episode, I speak with Mina das Mina is working on a number of inte...