It is hard to fathom just how big an impact artificial intelligence will have — and is already having — on Mississippi. So it is hard to be critical of state officials who mean well and are doing what they’ve always done: plot a course for the future within their existing understanding of the issues — how the economy, education, and industry will adapt to a new technology.
What follows, then, is offered with generosity, not blame. The aim is not to cast doubt, but to shape the conversations that still must be had — the ones largely missing from the state’s recently released AI priorities framework.
Because what is happening in artificial intelligence right now is not a question of how to grow the economy in the traditional sense, or how to fit a new tool into the state’s existing economic and educational rubric. It is wholesale change in nearly every aspect of life, including how government itself operates. How humanity endures in that equation — not how to build a workforce — has to be…
