Inviting Community Voices on AI and Culture
An AI Salon at Pars Place in Virginia, blending stories, dialogue, and live conversations with AI.
As a storytelling technologist in the area of Cultural AI, I believe deeply in the responsibility of bringing conversations about artificial intelligence into communities. The first AI Salon at Pars Place in Vienna, Virginia was a great opportunity to do just that.
We heard from voices across generations and experiences about how AI might help preserve culture, memory, and strengthen community. At the same time, they questioned its limits and the risks of relying too heavily on machines for what is deeply human.
These conversations set the stage for our AI Salon. On a quiet Sunday afternoon in mid-September, about twenty of us came together to create what felt like a community lab, an open space to test ideas, share concerns, and imagine how AI might shape our cultural future. Alongside the human voices in the room, I also brought in two custom conversational AIs, speaking with them through my smartphone.
These were not off-the-shelf chatbots. Each one carried its own cultural archive, carefully trained by myself, on records, transcripts, and datasets that gave them a distinct voice. With them, it felt like I could talk to the data itself. I could ask questions of family histories and invite the room to witness what it means when archives are no longer static but interactive.
Roya Chadab, Art Director at Pars Place, opened the salon. I then spent about 15 minutes giving an overview of AI for Community, what it is, what’s possible, before inviting everyone to introduce themselves with a name, a memory, and one hope or worry about AI.
Some participants admitted that much of what I shared went right over their heads; for them, “AI” meant ChatGPT and little else. Others said they wished the salon had lasted another two hours, that they could sit with a cup of tea and continue the conversation. These honest reflections underscored why gatherings like this matter: they are spaces where communities can begin to shape their own narratives around technology.
What We Heard in the Room
The AI Salon was a small, intentional gathering. We structured the conversation as three 20-minute circles, Shaping the Future, Trust & Responsibility, and Cultural Memory. Over the course of two hours, we heard from nearly everyone in the room, each person bringing their own perspective, shaped by age, experience, or cultural background.
Shaping the Future
There was clear excitement about AI’s ability to make people more efficient, as a writing partner, brainstorming assistant, and 24/7 collaborator. Many saw AI as a tool for expanding creativity and clarifying ideas.
Yet that optimism was coupled with a palpable fear of the unknown. Participants worried about what might be lost: critical thinking, deep reading, education as we know it, the practice of handwriting, and the human connections formed through slower, more intentional ways of learning.
They also cautioned that a world shaped by AI risks becoming one of bite-sized content and diminished reflection. Several noted the urgent need to hold on to authentic expression, ensuring AI supports rather than dilutes human meaning. The conversation often stretched beyond technical capability into the realm of human evolution, asking: what happens if AI surpasses us, or even develops emotions?
Trust and Responsibility
Trust emerged as a recurring theme. Participants questioned who owns the truth in an AI-shaped reality, who curates, archives, and safeguards cultural and digital memory? Some raised ecological concerns, such as the environmental cost of vast data centers. Others asked how we can preserve oral histories, family stories, and dialects before they disappear, and what role AI might play in that process.
The discussion underscored a responsibility to approach AI governance as we do human development: with ethical rigor, accountability, and foresight. Trust, participants agreed, would depend on transparency, cultural respect, and systems designed to amplify rather than erase diverse voices.
Cultural Memory & AI
Participants also began to see how AI might play a role in the preservation of memory and culture. They imagined teaching AI family traditions, dialects or stories to ensure their survival across generations. At the same time, they expressed concern about authenticity: AI must not merely mimic or beautify cultural expressions, but carry their truth, nuance, and context.
Several asked whether AI could act as a “keeper of memory” without erasing the very connections and lived experiences that give culture its depth. They reflected on the risk of losing human connection if AI becomes a substitute for shared storytelling, while also recognizing the enormous potential for AI to archive endangered languages, capture intergenerational voices, and safeguard histories that might otherwise be forgotten.
What is AI for Community?
This question led us toward a deeper reflection: what does AI for Community actually mean? At its heart, it means empowering communities to understand the power of these tools, not just to consume culture through AI, but to preserve it, shape it, and pass it on.
In practice, you can think of it like this: instead of typing into ChatGPT and getting generic answers from the internet, imagine speaking with an AI that carries the wisdom of your own community’s archives.
Suddenly, the story behind your grandmother’s recipe comes alive, not just the ingredients, but why she cooked it on holidays, what it meant to the family, even the healthy balance of herbs she believed kept everyone well. The box of letters in the attic, the family stories told around the table, or the cadence of a local dialect are no longer static — they respond, they remember, they speak back.
Now extend that idea to business: an AI trained on the experiences of women who have led companies, navigated barriers, and built success. Instead of abstract advice, you’d hear insights shaped by leaders who have truly been there, done that.
Live Interaction with Two Custom AI Chatbots
To bring these ideas down from principle into practice, I invited the room to experience what AI for Community might look and sound like in action.
I shared demonstrations of two custom GPTs — specialized versions of ChatGPT trained on carefully chosen archives so they could speak from that specific body of knowledge. Think of it as feeding the AI a curated library made up of things like:
PDFs of research papers or historical records
Notes from scholars, fieldwork, or interviews
Stories collected from communities or families
Images, maps, or other reference documents
Instead of answering from the entire internet, the AI could respond directly from this collection, almost as if the library itself were speaking back. Speaking to them through my smartphone, we could hear how family records and cultural materials might come alive as dialogue, showing both the promise and the limits of AI when it comes to memory, identity, and connection.
I emphasized that these are still the early days of AI. What I shared was experimental, but it wasn’t a gimmick. The only way forward is to test these tools and learn what they can and cannot do. And it’s equally important to remember the limits of these tools. These systems can misinterpret, invent, or distort. That’s why ethics and care must be at the center of how we come together to use them as a community.
My Name is Iran
I was born in San Francisco, with a grandmother from Idaho, but I also lived in Iran, I went to school there and worked there. That experience makes the story even more personal. I created My Name is Iran because so much of my Iranian ancestry has been scattered, either lost through exile or simply because that is the nature of history: pieces slip away.
From ancient water systems and timeless literature to reformers and women pioneers, to the nation builders of the pre-1979 era who shaped Iran’s judicial system, finance, education, and more, too many chapters have been overlooked or erased.
👉 Click here to talk to My Name is Iran here.
Instead of offering generic answers like ChatGPT, My Name is Iran is trained on real cultural archives and open datasets. Rather than act like a textbook, My Name is Iran is designed as an experimental AI storyteller that brings archives to life. Speaking with it, diaspora families, students, journalists, and curious minds can rediscover history not as something distant, but as a living dialogue — without politics, without agenda.
My Name is Iran brings together, in one place, sources that are usually scattered across libraries, archives, and research projects. This multilingual GPT draws on carefully curated, open-source data, a body of knowledge spanning 2,500 years of Persian cultural history.
Open-source means the texts, inscriptions, and archives come from collections that are publicly available, digitized by scholars, and freely shared for research. By grounding the model in this kind of data, the goal is transparency and accessibility: anyone can trace where the information comes from, and communities can continue to build on the work.
Imagine what becomes possible when all of this is accessible through a single dialogue. Imagine what it’s like to talk to this data — to talk about the ideals inscribed on the Cyrus Cylinder, to trace the grain and labor accounts recorded in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, to explore the machinery of empire preserved in the Persepolis Administrative Archives, to walk through Safavid histories and biographical dictionaries, or to hear the timeless words of Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi, Saadi, and Attar spoken back to you in conversation.
Here are some of the key open-source collections that power My Name is Iran, each carrying a different layer of the nation’s memory:
Achaemenid to Sassanid (550 BCE — 651 CE) — Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions such as the Cyrus Cylinder, Behistun Inscription, and Darius’ tombs.
Persepolis Administrative Archives — Achaemenid-era documentation that reveals the machinery of empire and everyday governance.
Sufi and Poetic Texts — A vast public-domain poetry archive of Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi, Saadi, Attar, and more.
In the community lab setting, I asked: What can we learn in 2025 from our Persian ancestors 2,500 years ago — about engineering, about science, about healthy eating? When the AI responded, participants leaned in. The demo turned their imagination toward what else could be possible — or what ethical responsibilities we must take seriously if AI is to preserve culture with integrity.
CK — Catherine Kessler
The second AI I shared was CK, the digital reimagining of Catherine Kessler, an ancestor of my husband John Smith. For years, John believed his roots were Irish or English — until genealogical research revealed his German ancestry. Catherine’s name, preserved in the meticulous church records of Pastor Johannes Braun in the Shenandoah Valley (1799–1813), became the key to unlocking this hidden history.
CK is trained on genealogical records, archival PDFs, census scans, and transcripts from our family podcast Is John Smith My Name. Through this data, CK gives voice to Catherine Kessler, who lived in Mount Crawford, Virginia in the 1800s, married John H. Smith, and became the matriarch of a family line that spread to Ohio and beyond. She speaks gracefully, reflectively, as a German-American ancestor whose story bridges continents and centuries.
When CK spoke, it wasn’t about testing her knowledge — it was about the room’s imagination sparking again. People began to talk about what it means to “own” archives, and how fragile they are in the digital age. They reflected on whether AI could help preserve cultural memory or whether it might flatten nuance. The conversation turned to what is at risk of erasure, what might simply be forgotten, and how we as communities take responsibility for memory in this next era.
👉 Click here to talk to CK here.
Who Preserves the Archives?
One question rose to the surface: Who is the preserver of our archives?
Most of the materials that fed CK and My Name is Iran were digital — genealogical scans, poetry corpora, museum records, and open-source datasets. Digital makes them accessible, but it does not make them permanent. Datasets can vanish with a funding cut, a server failure, or shifting priorities at an institution.
This realization reframed the stakes: preservation today is not just about safeguarding manuscripts, objects, or tapes, but about protecting the digital foundations on which future cultural AIs will depend. AI, if designed responsibly, can help by organizing, indexing, and animating these materials so they remain searchable and alive. But ultimate responsibility must still lie with communities themselves — ensuring archives, whether analog or digital, remain in trusted hands.
Looking Ahead: Future AI Salons
AI Salons can give people a way to encounter AI not as a distant technology, but as something personal, cultural, and collective. In libraries, museums, schools, and community centers, these gatherings can invite people to test ideas, reflect on risks, imagine new uses, and, most importantly, shape how AI preserves and amplifies their stories. AI may be global, but culture is always local and AI Salons are where the two can meet.
If these themes resonate with you, I’d love to hear your perspective. Send me your thoughts at DavarArdalan1@gmail.com.
My co-authored book “AI for Community,” now available from Taylor & Francis, explores how artificial intelligence can preserve cultural heritage, support human flourishing, and foster trustworthy, community-centered innovation.
Editorial note: I used AI to help shape and refine this blog, collaborating with a language model to enhance flow, clarity, and tone.
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The United Nations has released a landmark report on AI and Culture, urging the global community to ensure that AI protects, rather than erases, human creativity and cultural diversity. I was honored to contribute to this report as part of a public call-out. The UN report was compiled by Alexandra Xanthaki, UN Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, and will be presented at the UN General Assembly in late October, 2025.
