Northeastern University’s Oakland campus held a clinic for small business people on how to use AI.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Small business owner Ana Jones has subscribed to an AI-powered content creation tool for more than a year, but she had no idea how many things she could do with it until she sat down with Northeastern University student Esha Kanakapura.
Seated next to each other and scrolling through Jones’s vast archive of social media posts, the pair discussed ways that Jones, owner of the senior caregiver service Phlex65, could use artificial intelligence to repurpose some of her content to reach a broader audience.
“I had taken the time to try to figure out how I can use posts that target caregivers to create a compelling reel or post to attract families of seniors, but I gave up,” Jones said. “I’m going to try again today with Esha.”
Jones was one of 10 small business people who participated in a clinic on how to use AI to reach the next level at Northeastern’s Oakland campus on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon.
“As a small business owner, why am I sitting here on a Saturday?” Jones asked. “I know AI will help me reach the specific people I want to reach. I do understand it’s a huge part of our life. I have to embrace it.”
Like the other business owners present, Jones was matched with a Northeastern computer science student trained to suggest AI marketing tools tailored to her company’s needs.
It was the Oakland campus’s first time hosting a clinic that pairs entrepreneurs with students, but by the looks of things it wouldn’t be the last.
“What happens after today?” asked Kim Bardakian, co-founder of Town Love, which creates curated gift boxes featuring products made in Oakland. Bardakian said she uses AI to run her business, but not up to its full potential, and she hopes there will be follow-up clinics. “Sitting down and having a dedicated time like this for four hours and having the insight of the students has been valuable.”
Before meeting with the business owners, students were trained to use Adobe Express, which uses generative AI to create social posts, videos and flyers. Students were also trained in active listening — training that showed during one-on-one sessions with business owners.
Business owners said the event was an opportunity to explore features of AI that they might otherwise struggle with on their own. Chef Azikiwee Anderson taught himself to bake during the COVID-19 lockdown. Today he owns Rize Up Bakery and “dabbles” with AI.
“I give ChatGPT prompts to write me rough drafts of Instagram posts using a persona, so it is in my voice,” Anderson said. “Before today I didn’t know the architecture of context and persona and the ways you can be laser-focused.”
Those ideas are at the core of prompt engineering, replied Northeastern student Rohan Kathouria, who was paired with Anderson for the clinic.
“The more knowledge you give AI, the more specific it will be,” said Kathouria, who is a computer science major. “If you give it a large amount of context, it is essentially narrowing down its own data to be more specific. That’s why prompt engineering is so important.”
Together, Anderson and Kathouria worked to find ways that AI could help Anderson build a bigger community around his bakery business. While using AI makes a lot of sense, Anderson said, it can be hard to learn how to use it without support and hard to know where to start.
That’s why sitting with Kathouria and getting focused help was so helpful.
“Why wouldn’t I want to understand it?” Anderson said. “I already have 15 jobs. I’m a small business owner. But if I can use AI to take three jobs off my plate, then that levels the playing field to a certain degree.”
