As AI enters the collective impact field, the challenge is to harness its power while safeguarding truth, relevance, ethics, and relational integrity. This session shares how Resilient DNATL—a rural, Tribal-land collaborative on California’s North Coast—and ThinkPlace US are using AI ethically in the context of community-led systems change to reduce child and youth neglect by strengthening parent capability. Local partners conducted and anonymized empathy interviews to understand diverse experiences of parenting, including experiences of crisis and system involvement. An AI-assisted, human-guided synthesis process, accelerated analysis to surface system patterns while maintaining human control of interpretation, privacy, and nuance. The resulting journey maps and system-flaw analyses now guide community-led dialogue with system leaders to widen shared understanding of root causes. Participants learn practical ways to use AI as a reflective instrument that enables complex analysis and expands insight, without eroding human judgment, care, or collective purpose and values. 

Learning Questions: 

• How can collaboratives ethically integrate AI into community-driven design and learning using its analytic power while protecting truth, privacy, and human pace?

Drawing from the Resilient DNATL parenting-journey project, participants explore how to direct AI as a reflective instrument rather than an authority: how to balance speed with emotional integration, and how to translate AI-assisted synthesis into shared, actionable understanding across sectors.