For North Carolina Policymakers
We're in your district.
The Center for Practical AI is based in Durham and works across North Carolina — with schools, libraries, employers, and communities. We offer state and local officials the same thing we offer everyone else, only closer to home: nonpartisan, sourced AI research, briefings on request, and free AI-literacy resources you can bring to your constituents.
A nonpartisan resource
The Center for Practical AI is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We provide education, research, and analysis, and we offer briefings and testimony on request. We do not endorse candidates or lobby for or against specific legislation. Everything here describes the evidence and the current landscape — the policy choices are yours.
How we can help
Local expertise, on request — for your office and your constituents.
Constituent education
Bring CPAI's free AI-literacy resources and workshops to your district — libraries, community colleges, senior centers, and schools across all 100 counties.
Briefings & testimony
We brief state and local offices and provide testimony when invited — grounded in sourced research, with no position on how you should vote.
Research & analysis
Ask for a plain-language summary or a two-page issue brief on a specific AI question relevant to North Carolina.
North Carolina context
Aligned with where the state is already headed.
North Carolina has set out a public direction on AI, and much of CPAI's work maps directly onto it. The following are the state's own commitments, described factually — they are commitments with deadlines, not programs already operating.
- ·Executive Order 24 (September 2025) created the NC AI Leadership Council and the NC AI Accelerator; the state's AI Strategic Roadmap (July 2026) sets 17 goals across Protect, Prepare, and Transform, with targets through 2028.
- ·The roadmap commits to deploying foundational AI-literacy training across all 100 counties — through NCWorks, community colleges, and public libraries — and to credentialing more than 50,000 residents in AI skills by 2028.
- ·Executive Order 24 established a statewide AI Literacy and Fraud Prevention Training Program — pairing the workforce and the consumer-protection sides of AI fluency, which is exactly how CPAI teaches it.
- ·North Carolina was among the first states to issue comprehensive guidance on generative AI in schools.
For K–13 education, the roadmap encourages — it does not require — school units to adopt AI policies. Statements above describe state commitments and public documents, not CPAI programs.
Issue briefs
Nonpartisan, sourced, and built to be handed to a busy office.
Each brief is a two-page summary you can read, print, or save as a PDF — and each one condenses a full CPAI research guide, so every figure traces to a primary source.
Education & AI literacy
Safe AI Use
The same AI tool produces opposite outcomes depending on how it is used — and usage guidance is largely absent while adoption is near-universal.
Read the brief →Cognition & wellbeing
Cognition & Digital Wellbeing
AI use reshapes thinking in measurable ways — and the best-replicated finding is that people cannot feel it happening.
Read the brief →Health & safety
AI Use & Mental Health
Millions turn to AI in distress, and consumer chatbots carry no professional duty of care — the gap between a wellness product and a clinician.
Read the brief →Workforce & economy
AI Proficiency & the Workforce
AI use at work has outrun training, and the fluency that helps the least-experienced most is reaching them last.
Read the brief →Civil rights
Bias at Scale
A biased human decides one case. A biased system deployed statewide decides every case the same way — silently, and at scale.
Read the brief →Privacy & data
AI & Data Protections
There is no comprehensive federal privacy law — so what happens to the data people put into AI depends on their zip code and the fine print.
Read the brief →Safety & integrity
Deepfakes & Non-Consensual Imagery
People cannot reliably "spot the fake" — detection is near chance — so the durable protections are legal and procedural.
Read the brief →Consumer protection
AI-Enabled Fraud & Voice Cloning
AI voice clones and synthetic identities are supercharging fraud against consumers — and older adults are losing the most.
Read the brief →Who we are
A North Carolina nonprofit built for exactly this.
CPAI is a Durham 501(c)(3) whose mission is equipping people to critically engage with AI. Every figure in our research traces to a primary or authoritative source. We already deliver free public education and cohort programs to North Carolinians — and we make that same rigor available to the state and local officials who serve them.
Request a briefing
Let's bring this to North Carolina.
Whether you need a briefing for your office, a research summary, testimony, or AI-literacy resources for constituents in your county, start here.
A nonpartisan resource
The Center for Practical AI is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We provide education, research, and analysis, and we offer briefings and testimony on request. We do not endorse candidates or lobby for or against specific legislation. Everything here describes the evidence and the current landscape — the policy choices are yours.
Working on federal or multi-state questions?
Our national policymaker resource covers the same research without the North Carolina framing.