In 2018, Economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues revealed a sobering truth: talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. Their research on "Lost Einsteins" demonstrated that countless young Americans with the potential to be great inventors never get the chance to develop their skills simply because they lack exposure to innovation and mentorship. The data was clear: if a child grows up in an area with a high concentration of inventors, they are far more likely to become one themselves. But for too many, particularly those in rural and lower-income communities, the door to innovation remains closed. Failure to find those “Lost Einsteins” has deprived us all of a better future. Chetty forecasted that "if women, minorities, and children from low-income families were to invent at the same rate as white men from high-income (top 20%) families, the rate of innovation in America would quadruple." That’s a more prosperous, dynamic America.
The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) carries the promise of realizing that brighter future if we learn from our prior mistakes. A lack of broad exposure among our youth to AI and the individuals shaping its development threatens to leave behind an entire generation of would-be entrepreneurs, scholars, and thought leaders. We risk creating "Lost Sams"—referring to OpenAI's Sam Altman as a stand-in for AI innovators—and "Missing Fei-Feis"—a nod to Stanford AI researcher Fei-Fei Li. Without urgent action, we will reinforce the existing gaps in AI leadership, limiting who gets to shape the future of this transformative technology.
To bridge this divide, we need a grassroots solution: AI Guides. These guides should be trusted figures within their communities—teachers, local entrepreneurs, librarians, and civic leaders—who are trained to introduce AI concepts in an accessible and engaging way. They must not only be knowledgeable about AI but also be representative of the communities they serve. Chetty’s research indicated that exposure to innovation had a larger impact on students when it involved a young person learning from someone who shared their background. If AI remains a field dominated by those from elite institutions and urban tech hubs, we will continue to miss out on the perspectives and innovations that could emerge from diverse backgrounds.
AI Guides can serve as the crucial link between communities and the AI revolution. They can run after-school programs, host workshops in community centers, and partner with local businesses to demonstrate real-world AI applications. By working with startups, big tech companies, and public universities, these programs can provide hands-on exposure to AI tools and career paths that young people might never have considered.
Why Local Action is Critical
Waiting for federal action on this front is a losing bet. While Washington debates AI regulations and corporate leaders focus on AI’s role in competition and security, communities must take the initiative. The disparities in AI adoption are stark. According to a study from the MIT Sloan School of Management, AI adoption is concentrated in high-income, urban areas, leaving rural and economically disadvantaged communities far behind. Similarly, research from Deloitte shows that trust plays a significant role in AI adoption, particularly among women. Building that trust in new technology requires learning opportunities in comfortable, familiar settings, not just top-down initiatives.
Consider the success of community-driven AI initiatives abroad. Estonia, for example, has launched an ambitious program to integrate AI education into high schools, ensuring students graduate with foundational AI literacy. The United States, in contrast, has no national strategy for ensuring AI exposure for young people beyond select STEM programs that often fail to reach the most underserved populations.
But this is not just an education issue—it’s an economic one. Studies from Harvard Business School show that women are already avoiding AI tools in the workplace, which could have long-term career consequences. Meanwhile, research from the National CIO Review highlights that younger generations are more likely to adopt AI, but that doesn’t mean they are receiving structured guidance on how to use it effectively. If we don’t intervene now, we risk deepening existing inequities in AI participation and leadership.
What AI Guide Programs Could Look Like
The AI Guide model can be easily adapted to different community needs. A few possibilities include:
- Elementary School AI Clubs: Volunteers from local startups or university AI programs could run interactive sessions where kids learn about AI through games and simple coding exercises.
- Community Center AI Nights: Public libraries or town halls could host monthly AI workshops, focusing on topics like how AI affects job markets, healthcare, and daily life.
- Mentorship Pairing with AI Professionals: High school students interested in AI could be paired with mentors who work in AI-related fields, whether in big tech, academia, or startups.
- AI for Small Businesses: Local entrepreneurs could be trained on how AI tools can help them streamline operations, from customer service chatbots to marketing automation.
These programs don’t require massive federal investment. They require committed local leaders, support from tech companies willing to provide training materials, and partnerships with public universities.
A Call to Action
We have the talent. What we need is exposure. AI Guides could be the key to ensuring that the next generation of AI innovators doesn’t come solely from Silicon Valley but from every corner of the country. Every town has the potential to produce its own AI pioneers but only if we provide young people with the mentorship and opportunities they need.
If we fail to act, we will look back in twenty years and see yet another generation of “Lost Sams” and “Missing Fei-Feis.” But if we rise to the challenge, we can ensure that AI’s future is shaped by a truly diverse and representative group of thinkers, creators, and leaders. It’s time to build the bridges that will connect every young mind to the possibilities AI has to offer.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.