AI Workshop Aims to Reduce Fears and Promote Adoption

Last month, TNBA held a small, half-day AI workshop led by AI expert Carlton Davis and hosted by Twin Lakes with sponsorship from JSI and Calix.

The workshop was designed to be practical and useful for daily life, instead of overwhelmingly technical, as AI discussions often can be. But all members agreed by the workshops’ conclusion that as this technology grows and expands, learning how to use it well is becoming a new kind of literacy.

Carlton began with a simple explanation that an LLM, a learning language model like ChatGPT, is not a database of facts but a predictor of words based on learned patterns. This is why AI can sound confident but also can be wrong.

Throughout the session, Carlton stressed privacy, including what not to share in public AI tools, and encouraged participants to double-check important information.

He also gave a rundown of various AI tools and their use cases, particularly for broadband organizations, as well as how to engineer prompts using a simple framework to get better results by clearly defining the role, context, task, and follow-up questions.

1 of the most exciting parts of the workshop was a live demonstration of “vibe coding,” where simple web apps were built using simple instructions and letting the AI run with it. While vibe coding is a good first step, human oversight often leads to more accurate results. Carlton also showed how AI can help build interactive, data-driven dashboards.

The real highlight came afterward. Darren Duke, CTO of WK&T Telecommunications Cooperative, built an interactive fiber calculator during the session to help field technicians with fiber-to-the-home installations. That moment captured the spirit of the day: AI does not have to be intimidating. With the right guidance and a willingness to experiment, leaders and teams can start benefiting right away.