AI That Benefits All

Please note that the narration is entirely synthetic; the voices in the audio are AI‑generated using Google’s NotebookLM.

“AI is the new electricity,” declared Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and an adjunct Stanford professor who founded the Google Brain Deep Learning Project, comparing its transformational power to that of electrification a century ago. It is a comparison worth considering—not just for its scale, but for its implications. Just as electricity revolutionized every industry in the 20th century, artificial intelligence is now reshaping how we work, learn, and connect. Like past efforts to advance basic literacy and more recent ones focused on digital skills, we now face a pivotal opportunity to prepare people for an AI-driven era (Ng 2017). 

Key Takeaways 

• AI is reshaping how we live and work—fast. 
  Much like electricity and the internet before it, AI is transforming industries. But public understanding is struggling to keep pace with adoption. 

• AI literacy is now a core competency. 
  Nearly 90% of employers report increasing demand for AI and data skills. Workers across sectors must learn to collaborate with AI—not compete with it. 

• Educators are turning curiosity into opportunity. 
  While concerns about misuse remain, AI tools are already being used to improve instruction design, support personalized learning, and bridge equity gaps. 

• The digital divide is evolving into an algorithmic one. 
  AI growth is clustered in a handful of metro regions. Without intervention, rural and underserved communities risk falling even further behind. 

• History offers a roadmap—if we choose to follow it. 
  From the public education movement to the first digital inclusion programs, past efforts show that coordinated action can close access gaps. The same urgency and commitment are needed now to prepare all communities for an AI-driven future. 

In 1925, electrification and assembly lines transformed factories. In 1995, the internet entered classrooms. In 2025, AI will change how society functions. From factory floors to college lecture halls, rural libraries to city hall meetings, AI technologies are becoming part of everyday life. Once confined to research labs and tech conferences, AI is now a topic of everyday conversation—from academic circles to kitchen tables—making AI literacy more essential than ever.  Yet while adoption accelerates, public understanding has not kept pace. That gap presents both a challenge and a call to action. On National AI Literacy Day, it is important to examine how we can make sure all benefit from the AI revolution. 
 

 
Digital Equity: Bridging the Algorithmic Divide 

Not everyone is benefiting equally from the AI revolution. We have long talked about the digital divide – the gap between those with internet access, the devices, and the skills to use it, and those without. Now, as AI gains ground, experts warn of an emerging “algorithmic divide,” where communities with robust tech infrastructure and AI knowledge surge ahead, while others are left behind. 
 
AI development is concentrated. Just 14 U.S. metro areas—the San Francisco Bay Area plus 13 early-adopter regions—account for over half of U.S. AI activity, leaving rural and underserved communities behind (Muro et al. 2023). In other words, AI development is highly concentrated in tech hubs like Silicon Valley, and much less so in rural or underserved urban areas like those that make up much of Pennsylvania. This uneven landscape raises the stakes for digital equity advocates: if we do not act intentionally, AI could deepen inequalities. 
 
Digital equity requires access to knowledge and opportunity. An engineer in Pittsburgh may have ample opportunities to learn about AI, attend workshops, or even contribute to AI projects, whereas a student in a small rural town or an under-resourced school might barely hear about AI. As AI becomes integral to healthcare, finance, agriculture, and beyond, communities without AI literacy risk being mere passive consumers of AI-driven services rather than active participants or creators. I 
 
What can we learn from the ongoing work to close the digital divide? Across the country, libraries, schools, local governments, and nonprofits like KINBER are actively expanding broadband access, building digital skills, and distributing devices to those who need them. These efforts are not new—they reflect decades of community-led work that began in the 1990s with public computer labs, early rural broadband initiatives, and local training programs. Those early investments laid a foundation for today’s digital equity movement. They also offer a lesson: meaningful progress takes time, coordination, and commitment. The same will be true of bridging the algorithmic divide. We need to continue expanding high-speed internet access (still lacking in many rural and low-income areas), ensure affordable devices that support AI tools, and deliver community-based AI education and training. This could include coding camps in inner cities or AI clubs in 4-H programs for rural youth. 

Joining Forces for an AI-Literate Future 

 
The country has navigated transformations like this before. We expanded public education to universalize literacy in the 19th and 20th centuries. We retooled our workforce and infrastructure during similar waves of transformative technological change. Those efforts offer a roadmap:  we can choose to shape technology to serve society rather than passively letting it shape us. The key is broad engagement. AI Literacy Day should be more than a date on the calendar—it should reflect a lasting commitment embedded across our communities, institutions, schools, and workplaces.