Key takeaways from CIAA's Tech Summit House: AI, cyber, Black innovation and more
At a time when diversity, equity and inclusion principles are getting dismantled throughout the country, Maryland's biggest city made a basketball tournament an opportunity to showcase Black excellence to the country — including in its tech scene.
This year's Tech Summit House took place toward the end of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association's (CIAA) annual contest last month. The historic conference represents historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the East Coast.
The CIAA's decision for Baltimore — which has two HBCUs, but no schools in the conference — to host this tournament through 2026 is part of a multi-year agreement that recognizes the city as a hub for Black excellence. While it is foremost about basketball, it goes beyond to showcase Black leadership across different sectors. The Tech Summit House, which this year hosted a mix of innovation-focused programs at the Inner Harbor's Rita Rossi Colwell Center, embodies this concept.
'It is the only tournament that does more than sports,' said Paul Plymouth, director of state government affairs and local engagement for Tech Summit House title sponsor Verizon's Maryland operations. 'It also prioritizes community building, education and innovation.'
This year's event featured conversations chock full of lessons about AI, cybersecurity preparedness, youth entrepreneurship, social media and the African diaspora. Here are just a few of them.
AI is the next gold rush, but who's mining the wealth?
Aaron Dante, host of the 'No Pix After Dark' podcast and Technical.ly's 2024 Creator of the Year, recorded a live episode with guest Amen-Ra Mashariki, AI and data strategies director at Bezos Earth Fund. They explored the rapid expansion of AI and the economic opportunity for the Black community.
Mashariki drew on history in words of caution about who benefits from this expansion.
'AI is the modern gold rush,' Mashariki said. 'But remember who profited the most in the gold rush — it wasn't the miners. It was the companies selling the picks and shovels.'
He contrasted the infrastructure giants, or 'hyperscalers,' (OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, etc.) with the 'gold miners' who sift and refine the gold — or companies like Grammarly that build AI apps and sell to consumers. Finally, at the bottom of the supply chain lies the consumer, like a student who wants to check their writing.
Mashariki stressed the importance of developing AI rather than just using it.
'As a community writ large, we're on the bottom of that supply chain,' Mashariki said to the room. 'We need to flip that paradigm and actually start playing a role.'
Without Black innovators building AI businesses, the technology will continue to be controlled by a select few, leaving Black communities at a wealth disadvantage — and will likely lead to further algorithmic biases, he said.
Constraints breed creativity: Lessons from DeepSeek for HBCUs
Mashariki shared another mental model he hoped listeners would take away: how constraints can breed creativity.
Earlier this year, the DeepSeek event rattled markets after the Chinese AI company claimed to have produced a more powerful and cost-effective model than household names like OpenAI. This initially shocked markets because it came as a surprise — due to US export controls, Nvidia was selling China less powerful chips than what was available to US companies.
Mashariki compared this domestic reaction to the ways that Black people got frozen out of the US economy throughout history — and can organize in the face of these structures.
'This was, euphemistically, the US government looking to put their foot on the neck of China to keep them from gaining AI supremacy,' he said, adding: 'Think about the Black community and how the government, whether it has been local, state or federal entities, have made decisions and policies that have kept the foot on the neck of African Americans throughout history.
'China is in a position where they get garbage technology,' he went on. 'So what did the DeepSeek team do? They literally had to hotwire the cheap technology we sold them to make it even better, faster, and more capable and cheaper to use than what we were doing here.'
'If a small team out of China with inferior technology can change the world, how come we can't get Coppin, Morgan, Bowie, Lincoln [and other HBCUs] together and do the same thing?' he continued to applause from the crowd.
Cybersecurity for every generation
Another common theme of the summit was cybersecurity preparedness, on which panelists consistently offered advice.
When asked about safeguards around data and AI, Tasha Austin-Williams, a principal at Deloitte and executive director of its AI Institute for Government, suggested strengthening data literacy, disabling voice assistants like Alexa and Siri and using 'AI sandboxes.'
These sandboxes 'help us have containers that can create prototypes, and enable us to be experimental while also compliant,' she said.
Thomas Byrd, VP and senior cybersecurity manager at T. Rowe Price, emphasized a more human touch.
'Be inquisitive, unplug from electronics and connect in real life,' he advised. 'Be analytical of the world.'
He also suggested that different generations can fall victim to different cybersecurity threats — and that we ought to learn and teach one another.
On an earlier panel, West Muhammad, a 14-year-old cybersecurity expert and Coppin State University's youngest-ever student, urged teens and adults alike to prioritize cybersecurity basics like using strong passwords with special characters, not answering unknown scam calls and verifying sources before sharing things to bigger audiences.
'Misinformation is one of the strongest ways to bring down an organization,' Muhammad said.
$10k for early-stage, Black women-led ventures
The Tech Summit House wrapped with cheers as founders Aalliyeh Clinton of 2025 Technical.ly RealLIST Startup Monneah's Engineered Materials and Angel Hobbs of Krave, each earned $5,000 by winning a pitch competition. A sizable crowd stayed around to support and hear from the emerging group of Black founders.
Throughout the day, conversations kept coming back to a core message: Novel technologies and ventures can either widen the existing digital divide or offer powerful tools to close the racial wealth gap. The difference comes down to who is at the table building these technologies, and for whom.
Check out some more photos to see who showed up to CIAA's table:
The CIAA tournament will be held next year in Baltimore as well, returning for the sixth consecutive year, but the bidding for the 2027 tournament is currently open.
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