Just last week, President Trump rescinded the Biden administration’s executive order on AI safety. In its place, his administration announced an AI advisory council stacked with tech executives. This isn’t just a bureaucratic shake-up; it’s a turning point. With fewer protections and more corporate influence, AI risks being shaped by those who see it as a tool to dominate markets rather than a means to improve lives.
This feels deeply personal to me. I’m 22, a student and the co-founder of a nonprofit that works with AI. AI touches almost every corner of my life: it curates my playlists, suggests matches on dating apps and fills my social media feeds with a suffocating amount of content, shaping how I see the world. Students will live with the consequences of today’s AI decisions longer than anyone else. We have the most to gain — and to lose.
The current state of AI
Right now, we’re losing. Deepfakes are growing more convincing, eroding trust in institutions and the truth itself. Generative AI amplifies misinformation at speeds we can’t contain. Algorithms prioritize outrage and division because they generate clicks. And while policymakers drag their feet in debate, bad actors are moving faster.
But turning away from AI isn’t the answer. Technology itself is neutral. The harm isn’t in the tool — it’s in how it’s used. If bad actors are exploiting AI to manipulate and mislead, we have to reclaim it and use it to create, connect and empower.
AI as a force for good
I’ve spent the past year trying to do just that. At Tomorrow in Focus, the nonprofit I co-founded with other Vanderbilt students, we use AI to amplify the work of impact organizations. Our production Imagine Land 2040, presented at COP16, was the United Nations’ first AI-driven film.
Using AI, we can tell stories that would otherwise remain untold due to financial constraints. Many of the organizations we work with choose to put their funding into direct action on the ground, prioritizing tangible impact over public relations campaigns. Meanwhile, these critical efforts are often siloed within intergovernmental spaces that highlight positive impact work.
At the same time, media outlets fixate on clickbait negativity — portraying a world burning but rarely shining a light on those actively working to put out the fire. This disconnect is exactly why we use AI: to amplify stories of solutions and progress that deserve to be seen and heard.
But this work has also revealed AI’s contradictions. The models we use to generate images and videos were trained on data scraped without consent, raising serious ethical questions about ownership and fairness. Running these systems consumes staggering amounts of energy, contributing to the climate crisis that many around the world are working to combat. The same tools we use to inspire could just as easily be used to distort.
Charting AI’s future
The solution isn’t to abandon AI — it’s to wield it better than those who use it for harm. Imagine AI tools embedded into social media platforms that can flag and fact-check misinformation in real-time, identifying altered videos before they go viral. Picture a generative AI platform that helps local communities visualize the stakes of climate change, showing what their neighborhoods could look like in 10 years if no action is taken — or what they could look like if renewable energy initiatives succeed. AI could also make systems more accessible. An app could simplify housing or immigration policies into actionable steps, connecting people to resources they didn’t know existed.
These tools wouldn’t just inform — they’d empower. AI could analyze satellite imagery to locate survivors after natural disasters or assess food insecurity in remote areas. It could help aid organizations respond faster and more efficiently to humanitarian crises, saving lives where it matters most.
This isn’t just about regulation or funding — it’s about reimagining how AI can truly serve humanity. The narrative around AI needs to change. Instead of framing it as a tool for exploitation, as a society we need to prove it can be a force for meaningful impact. By incentivizing organizations and individuals to create AI-driven solutions for the public good, we can steer the technology toward progress, not profit alone. Imagine a future where AI is a catalyst for the best of human innovation — a future built on systems that amplify solutions, foster equity and drive sustainability. But this can only happen if bold, creative action replaces complacency. AI’s future depends on the choices we make today, and we can choose a path that prioritizes collaboration, responsibility and hope.
The stakes for our generation
To my Vanderbilt peers, our generation is watching this debate play out from the sidelines, but we’re the largest stakeholders in this conversation. The choices being made now will define how we work, how we learn and how we trust in the decades to come. AI isn’t going away. The tools will only get smarter, faster and more convincing. If we don’t use them to build, bad actors will continue to use them to break. The future of AI is being written every day. The only question is: will we take the pen, or let someone else decide how the story ends?
