MIAMI, Florida — I’m late to artificial intelligence, and I’m not proud about it.

Nine weeks ago, I had no clue what this technology could do. I’d heard plenty about AI; I’d read a lot about it, too. I hadn’t used it, though. I thought I had no reason to use it.

I was wrong.

I learned how wrong I was when I went to the Miami Book Fair last month and heard Kara Swisher, a writer whose journalistic credentials in hi-tech might have no rivals. Talking about her memoir Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, she stressed the danger of ignoring AI.

Swisher pointed out something important to those people who believe in big ideas. Here’s what she said: invest in technology.

Maybe that’s a position people with money in the bank can do, but those who don’t should at least play around with AI and figure out what it can do. I know from my experimentation with it that AI can open the world.

Ask it to draw up a legal document, AI will do it for you, not that you should rely on it to replace your attorney. Ask it to draw a travel plan for you, it will. AI is more versatile than a Swiss Army knife.

Don’t leave home without it.

I know I won’t anymore. Call me the director of advertising for AI. I’m on the stump preaching the gospel of AI to anyone who’ll listen. My first client was the assistant basketball coach at UNLV, a good friend who I hung out with on a trip to Las Vegas early in October.

As John drove me around Vegas, I trotted out my AI material. It was all new terrain for him. He was uncertain about the merits of AI until I brought it up with his son Cam. We’d picked him up at his high school.

He was in the backseat, and I asked Cam: “Are you familiar with AI?”

The question was absurd. Not only was Cam familiar with AI, he trusted it to help with some of his assignments. AI wasn’t necessarily the first line of defense when he needed a helping hand, but it was an indispensable tool.

Cam’s response surprised John. He looked at AI as too big a crutch to rely on. I laughed at such a notion. I told him I saw artificial intelligence as comparable to calculators, which changed how I put math to use.

Terms like differentials, denominators, fractional equations soon went the way of the splendid poison frog. Is life any worse without them?

Swisher said it best: “Use for what it is.”

I can’t quarrel with Swisher, who counts among her interviewees the stars of the tech world. For what AI is, I’m telling everybody, is a changemaker, a tool of tomorrow that fell into our laps today.

Echoing Swisher, I’m preaching the value of artificial intelligence to everybody. I’m a disciple of it, because I recognize how much it’s transforming society. The benefits are both economic and intellectual. Nobody can afford to disregard it.

I have no way of speculating where AI will take us, but I think it’s a mistake not to go along on its journey.

More importantly, I hope it isn’t a technology Black youth embrace too late. They can’t afford to miss this ride.

Justice B. Hill grew up and still lives in the Glenville neighborhood. He wrote and edited for several newspapers in his more than 25 years in daily journalism before settling into teaching at Ohio University. He quit May 15, 2019, to write and globetrot. He’s doing both.