The city held the workshop series in October, building on its ongoing community-centric approach to technology adoption, which includes its Digital Rights Platform and its Digital Inclusion Implementation Plan. The workshops were intended to deliver on the need to make AI part of digital literacy training.
“I think the biggest takeaway was that, yes, there is demand for city-led training in AI,” Małgosia Rejniak, program manager for AI and data governance in the city's Technology and Innovation Department (TID), said.
TID developed the curriculum for the October series internally with support from the Technology and Innovation Commission and Data and Society, and it was informed by a community survey on AI that launched in April. The survey revealed a wide spectrum of community needs related to AI, so the series catered to a skill set somewhere in the middle, focused primarily on using generative AI tools to serve as a writing or personal assistant, per Omar Moncayo, TID data privacy analyst.
More than 70 percent of the people who signed up were age 55 or over, Moncayo said.
Older generations sometimes face knowledge gaps in using technology, and certain phishing scams specifically target seniors. One lesson taught in this workshop was how tools like ChatGPT can be used to help identify scam attempts, Moncayo said.
The city played a large role in the development of this series, but also worked with partners including Emily Woodman-Nance who serves on the city’s Technology and Innovation Commission, to ensure that the lessons would be engaging for participants. (Woodman-Nance has a company focused on enabling older adults to use technology.) The series included interactive games in which participants could work with AI tools and explore potential use cases, to make it more engaging.
In addition to residents seeking information about how they can use AI in their lives, officials found they were also lacking information about the city government’s use of AI.
Before and after the workshop, participants took a survey that included questions about how informed they felt on the city’s use of generative AI. It revealed a dramatic improvement, from 61.5 percent of respondents saying they were not at all informed prior to only 3.9 percent saying that after the workshop. Sentiments about city AI use improved, too.
This workshop series was at its core, Moncayo said, an opportunity to build trust with residents. The survey before and after demonstrated an increase in those who fully trust the city to be transparent and accountable in the collection and use of personal data — from 4.9 to 11 percent. These results, he said, demonstrate the power of community engagement.
“The people definitely came out of it with a dramatically improved understanding of AI,” Rejniak said. There is still room for improvement, though, she said, noting that the workshop series was “just the beginning.”
City officials have applied for a California Advanced Services Fund grant to support more workshops next year, which Moncayo said would focus on serving older adults. Pre- and post-workshop survey data may help demonstrate the series’ impact.
The question city officials are seeking to answer now is how the initiative can be scaled, Rejniak said, exploring funding and staffing as well as the potential to partner with other entities like public libraries and community organizations to build on existing programming.
The city’s approach looking ahead may not be limited to workshops, Moncayo said, “because this is critical information our residents need to know about.”
While the workshop series model worked for residents of Long Beach, Moncayo noted that this may not be the most effective way to educate every community in every city. What he does recommend other cities replicate, he said, is using community feedback about AI to guide the work — and to build public trust in the process.
“If [other cities] want to earn more trust, digital inclusion — educational empowerment — opportunities are critical for earning trust in my opinion,” he said.
*This article was originally published by Government Technology, Industry Insider – California's sister publication.
