# Cheryl Contee: We Asked for Flying Cars, We Got LLMs Instead | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026

- Channel: [Funding the Commons](https://streameth.org/funding_the_commons)
- Date: 2026-05-09
- Duration: 16:05
- Topics: Cheryl Contee, Brightworks AI, Change Agent AI, AI and nonprofits, AI leadership, AI equity, AI and society 2026, mission driven AI, AI policy 2026, AI governance 2026, ethical AI leadership, AI and inequality, AI and institutions, Intelligence at the Frontier, Funding the Commons, tech for good, AI for nonprofits, AI adoption, human values AI, future of AI
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-jzHtSIg8o30
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHtSIg8o30

## Description

Radio took 36 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took seven. ChatGPT took two months. Cheryl Contee's message is simple: we don't have the luxury of waiting to figure out what we think about this.

Cheryl, CEO of Brightworks AI and Change Agent AI, has spent years helping nonprofits and mission-driven organizations navigate technology transitions. She opens with a memory of her grandmother's washboard — kept in the basement just in case the washing machine broke — and builds from there. We are in a moment comparable to electrification and industrialization, but moving faster than either. The institutions collapsing around us are not the destination; they're the precondition for something better.

Her argument is that the question is never whether technology will change society. It's who gets to shape that change. Only around 10% of nonprofits she works with have an AI policy. That's a leadership failure. And leadership, not technology, is what she came to talk about.

Speaker: Cheryl Contee (Brightworks AI / Change Agent AI)

This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco.

Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io