COMMUNITY-ROOTED AI EQUITY INITIATIVEAI in our Hands
The future is being designed right now. AI in Our Hands exists to make sure it is designed with us — not around us.
A community-rooted AI equity initiative helping people most likely to be impacted by AI — and least likely to be in the rooms where it is shaped — use AI, shape AI, and make AI.
Research from Jobs for the Future shows Black Americans are already adopting AI at higher rates than the general population — using it to start businesses, paying for it personally, and recognizing its urgency.
The risk is shaping and ownership. Communities that begin building their AI context, infrastructure, and influence in the next 3 to 5 years will compound that advantage into lasting economic power. Those who wait will face a gap that grows harder to close.
The Gap Is Not Adoption.
$43B
projected annual widening of the racial wealth gap by 2045 if AI goes unaddressed (McKinsey)
68%
of Black mothers are the primary or sole breadwinners for their families — highest rate of any racial group (IWPR)
We start building where the greatest opportunity and risk intersect, and build out from there to serve multiple communities.
THE MOMENTWhy This Matters
Generative AI is not just a technology trend. It is a structural inflection point. Moments like this have a pattern: they widen inequity or they expand opportunity — depending on who has access, who builds fluency, who shapes use cases, and who is invited into ownership.
Communities navigating displacement risk, workforce disruption, and historic exclusion from the rooms where technological futures are designed cannot afford to be passive in this moment. AI in Our Hands is built on the belief that they do not have to be.
“We need moral imagination — ways to be lifted out of the present into the realms of hopes, possibilities and dreams.”
— Ame Lambert, Ph.D.
OUR INITIATIVE COREThe Three-Part Framework
Designing community agency through practical milestones.
1. Use AI
Practical, accessible AI fluency for everyday work, learning, creativity, organizing, operations, and opportunity-building. No tech background required.
FLUENCY FIRST
2. Shape AI
Community voice, ethical discernment, cognitive immunity, and collective agency in deciding how AI should and should not be used. Because fluency without judgment is not enough.
DECISION ALIGNMENT
3. Make AI
Pathways into building, designing, governing, and imagining tools that serve community needs — in workforce development, climate resilience, education, and social innovation.
CREATION SYSTEMS
Women & AI: A Cross-Cutting Imperative
68% of Black mothers are the primary or sole breadwinners for their families — the highest rate of any racial group. What shapes their economic future shapes families and whole communities.
AI is naturally suited to how women communicate and lead: no coding required, no likability tax, no penalty for directness. Every pillar of this ecosystem centers women's access, agency, and leadership.
When we build for those most impacted, we build better for everyone.
WHO THIS IS BUILT WITH AND FORPriority Communities
Our design focuses deeply on networks, individuals, and collectives vulnerable to technical transitions or excluded from historical technical planning.
Women and Black women
Climate-affected and climate-vulnerable communities
Experienced, displaced, and displacement-vulnerable workers
Youth, educators, and families
Immigrants, refugees, and multilingual communities
Anyone building durable skills and discernment for a changing world
COORDINATING PLATFORM ACTIONSProgram Pathways
First Steps AI Labs
Introductory, hands-on sessions for leaders, staff, educators, families, and community members.
Next Steps AI Labs
Practical workflow-building sessions applying AI to real needs and real work.
Listening Sessions + Insight Briefs
Community-grounded sensemaking to surface needs, concerns, and design principles.
Strategy Sessions + Roadmaps
Support for organizations seeking thoughtful, responsible AI adoption.
Convenings
Cross-sector gatherings bringing community, education, workforce, technical, philanthropic, and civic leaders into shared conversation
HOW IT STARTEDOrigin Story
AI in Our Hands began with a possibility and agenda-setting conversation in Portland, Oregon — a gathering of Black leaders working across education, workforce development, community development, entrepreneurship, technology, health, and civic life.
That first conversation affirmed something larger: communities do not only need access to AI tools. They need trusted spaces to explore, question, practice, imagine, and shape how these tools intersect with existing work for thriving.
Future Set Thriving serves as the coordinating hub, working with anchor partners and implementation partners to build a practical, community-rooted ecosystem over time.
Thriving communities leading in the AI economy
— by choice, not by chance.
ECOSYSTEM BUILDINGAI in Our Hands is being built as an ecosystem, not a one-time program.
We welcome conversations with funders, implementation partners, technical partners, community organizations, educators, workforce leaders, civic leaders, and mission-driven institutions who want to help ensure that AI expands opportunity rather than deepening inequity.