The AI Agency is an initiative of the Mississippi AI Collaborative, which was created in June 2023 to help people across Mississippi learn about and how to use artificial intelligence, particularly following generative AI’s wider introduction to the public over the past two years.
Generative AI is artificial intelligence that produces content — whether text, images, video, or some combination thereof. ChatGPT is a well-known example.
The AI Agency first got up and running in the spring semester of 2024, with an inaugural cohort of 10 Jackson State University student apprentices. The students receive continual training in AI use while working for the Agency.
To receive help from the AI Agency, an eligible business must fill out an intake form to specify its needs. The students working at the Agency review the form and set up a meeting with the new client. Over a six-week period, the Agency assesses the client’s needs, makes an action plan, presents its determined solution and completes the project.
At the moment, the Agency has so many clients that it is not accepting new ones; one goal that the AI Collaborative has is to expand the AI Agency across Mississippi’s institutions of higher learning, creating greater bandwidth for taking on more clients.
All services are offered for free; funding for the Agency is provided through a grant that the AI Collaborative won in 2023 through the Generative AI Skills Challenge co-hosted by data.org and Microsoft. 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,” said Danil Mikhailov, data.org’s executive director. “We fundamentally help other nonprofits, academic teams, (and) social enterprises to use data and technology for social impact.”
Microsoft, which is supporting the Agency through the AI Skills Challenge grant, also provides the Agency with support through training for the apprentices. The Agency students have access to Microsoft’s LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn modules, as well as Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact Team, said JJ Townsend, who leads Microsoft’s TechSpark program in Mississippi.
The AI Agency student apprentices are paid with a stipend at the end of each semester of work.
The AI Agency isn’t just a job, and it’s not just a way to serve the community, said Ka’Pri Burden, the project manager for the AI Agency. As one of the student apprentices, she’s had constant opportunities for professional development and upskilling in the AI field.
Burden, who recently graduate from JSU’s computer science program and is a newly minted systems planning engineer for Midcontinent Independent System Operator, was a member of the first cohort of AI Agency apprentices. She’ll be staying on with the AI Agency team part time.
At the AI Agency, “(we’ve) really tried to kind of cultivate something that was very student led, which has been amazing,” Brittany Myburgh said.
Myburgh is an AI Collaborative team member and 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.
“It's been quite interesting because (the Agency is) pairing … tech-consulting services with AI, which is obviously a very, very new field,” Myburgh said of the Agency. “We're actively working with about 30 companies, and their needs range from everything from, you know, using AI to quickly spin up a web page so they have online presence, to creating their own personalized chatbots.”
The JSU student apprentices’ work also includes, among other things, helping their clients produce AI generated images and using prompt engineering — the process of building an instruction that a generative AI model can interpret and understand.
“Being a part of the AI agency has really shaped my perspective on a lot of things,” Burden said. “It opens up a lot of opportunities: … How can you use AI to improve the disabled communities? How can you use AI to improve education? It has reshaped what I want to do professionally.”
With clients, the Agency takes a “teach a man to fish” approach, Burden and Myburgh said. It doesn’t simply use AI to give clients the solutions they need; it also trains the clients to use AI themselves.
“I’ll check in on a client and ask how things are going, and I just get these glowing reports of how they've been able to implement what they've been shown in these sessions by apprentices,” Myburgh said. “And so that to me is the part that's really wonderful, is that we're kind of equipping people with that knowledge themselves.”
“As a Mississippi native, coming from the Mississippi Delta, … it's very uplifting and empowering to see that this initiative has taken place in Mississippi, because a lot of people might even say that Mississippi is behind in time,” Burden said. “But the changes are being made, the people are working, and I'm happy to be a part of something like that, that wants to uplift the communities that I grew up around.”
©2024 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
