A casual Saturday morning of karaoke and learning about AI and deepfakes in Oakland on April 20, 2024. Photo by Lam Thuy Vo for The MarkupDespite a year of headlines about AI, immigrant communities, particularly seniors, have been outside the conversation, leaving them vulnerable to dangerous uses.Last Saturday, I was at a community gathering of around 30 Vietnamese immigrants, all in their 50s and 60s, in Oakland, when I asked if anyone knew anything about AI or artificial intelligence.
And in this room full of elders from my community, the Vietnamese community, no one knew about it, which meant no one knew to look for it. It was the third time I had visited this group to better understand how their lives were impacted by misinformation and how to give them the information they needed to navigate it. They were gathered in the morning, as they do every Saturday, to sing karaoke with their friends at the Vietnamese community center. But on this particular Saturday, I was also teaching them about deepfakes.
It reminded me of the kind of role that children of immigrants generally play in families: we often become interpreters for our parents and grandparents, translating for them anything from important tax forms to cultural norms. I grew up mostly speaking Vietnamese at home and I had only used it to ask for the foods I loved or to tell my parents about how school was going. Nguyễn and Lê had similar experiences.“Nó giống như một cỗ máy. Nó học mặt của nhiều người xong nó làm mặt giả.”“I support CalMatters because climate change and the environment are important issues for planet Earth. Knowledge should be driving action.