July 24, 2026
BY JOHN BAILEY
“Open the pod bay doors Hal.”
“I’m sorry Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
So…anyone who knows me, knows I’m a longtime Science Fiction nerd of the highest degree, and that scene with Hal 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey” is the epitome of how wrong things can go with an Artificial Intelligence platform.
But then “Star Trek: The Next Generation” gave us Data.
As AI became more of a constant in our lives after 2022, and I’m talking about the more popular version of it in the form of generative AI, my immediate reaction swept through a list of negative emotions – disgust, hate, fear, uncertainty, resignation.
For more than 20 years before taking my current position at United Way of Catawba County, I was a reporter.
I covered everything from school board meetings, to Friday night football games, to natural disasters. My job was to build stories from interviews, research and observation. Then, by stringing subjects and verbs together in a series of sentences, I told an engaging, comprehensive and balanced story.
This means, me asking an AI agent of any type to communicate what I’m thinking, is like asking a Klingon to play a clown at a five-year-old’s birthday party – not gonna happen.
Using an AI engine to create graphics, logos, emails, flyers, social media posts, actual sentences just screamed the end of creativity to me. I railed against it to anyone who’d listen and even if they didn’t want to listen.
I was speaking out against this intrusion on human thought.
I was standing up for the creative human mind.
I was championing the need for human involvement and decision making in our personal and professional lives.
Then, the old reporter in me smacked my internal monologue, and I did some research, and I discovered…I was being unfairly prejudice towards AI.
Reading about research focused platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, as well as design platforms like Canva AI and Adobe’s Firefly, helped me realize that AI wasn’t just a replacement for thought and creativity, it could actually be a powerful tool to enhance productivity and efficiency.
And I didn’t have to look any further than some of my fellow nonprofits in Catawba County to see how true this was.
Streamlining admin, getting more time with clients
“I created new software through AI that brought all of our departments and software integration into one unified platform instead of 15,” Greater Hickory Cooperative Christian Ministry CEO Amanda Sowards said about her agency’s most significant use of AI. Greater Hickory CCM assists individuals and families in crisis with financial assistance, a pharmacy and a medical clinic.
The agency was quoted $30,000 to build the new integrated platform.
“We couldn’t afford that, so I used AI and built it myself. It changed everything for us,” Sowards said.
Kindness Project Hickory also found AI to be an ideal tool to help with administrative and operational tasks. The Kindness Project assists those in crisis, hardship, poverty and the unhoused.
“As a volunteer-led organization, we rely on these tools to improve the quality and consistency of our communications, and reduce the time spent on routine tasks,” Kindness Project Vice-President Amber Taylor said. “This allows our volunteers to focus more of their time and energy on serving our community.”
Taylor added, AI has played a key role in acquiring grants, using it to gather statistics and data for grant applications and developing draft grant proposals. Recently, this use of AI helped the agency win the One by One Charitable grant from 4imprint.
For Safe Harbor of NC in Hickory, AI has become a powerful, multipurpose tool.
“We have used it to create leadership training, social media posts, succession planning materials, and much more,” Senior Manager of Community Outreach Stefanie Robinson said.
Safe Harbor supports women in recovery and their children who are facing homelessness, by providing meals, support groups and housing.
“AI helps me organize and align the key points I want to communicate so that others can truly hear the story, feel the emotion the women are sharing and follow their journey,” Robinson said. “I don't think it could replace a position in the future, but it does save us time so we can be more present with the women and children we serve.”
Goodwill uses AI to help prioritize to-do lists, organize emails, help write better stories and use it for case noting a participant’s file, according to Goodwill Catawba County Career Center Mission Advancement Manager Sandy Williams.
Centro Latino in Hickory also utilizes AI as a tool to improve efficiency.
“Because English is the second language of our team members and many of our volunteers, AI helps us quickly translate documents, emails, social media posts and other information into Spanish or English,” Centro Latino Executive Director Ginny Romero Hill said.
However, the agency is careful to review and edit every translation to ensure it's accurate, culturally appropriate and reflects their message.
“It does not replace human judgment, oversight or creativity,” Hill said.
Centro Latino is a community resource center for the Hispanic/Latin community locally and in surrounding counties.
More than your dad’s search engine
So, after hearing from my fellow nonprofits, I actually felt bad about not being more open minded when it came to the potential of AI.
I still believe we can’t give it too much power over creativity and how we think, but as a tool for efficiency and a way to consolidate operating costs and a path to create more time to spend interacting with clients, AI has potential.
I know there are other concerns with this new technology – the environmental demands of data centers, cybersecurity, Large Language Model data privacy issues, but the genie is out of the bottle. We just have to be vigilant and make sure we stay in control and remember AI is a tool.
For me, I’ll stick to my initial statement that AI will never think for me, but I may think about ways it can help streamline some of my daily tasks, like compiling impact statistics.
In the end, I hope AI becomes more like Data, who worked side-by-side with the Enterprise crew and nothing like Hal 9000 who was ready to flush his out the airlock.
Want to share your AI story, email me at jbailey@ccunitedway.com.