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NMSI Blog

Culturally Responsive AI: How Minista Jazz Created an AI Family

We recently sat down with entrepreneur and digital innovator Jasmaine A. Cook to hear about her latest initiative — pioneering heritage technology by developing proprietary cultural AI frameworks.
 
Cook, more commonly known as Minista Jazz, has more than 20 years of experience bridging entertainment technology, education, and digital innovation, crafting culturally resonant platforms for Fortune 500 companies and institutions.

 

Where It All Began

“Growing up in Hampton, Virginia, I was surrounded by Black excellence and I didn't even know that was a thing,” Jazz explains. “Most of my teachers were Black women and men; and from the time I was in 6th grade on, my principal was a Black man. At the time, I didn’t realize how blessed I was” to be among Black educators and other Black professionals in our community.
 
Jazz continued to describe her upbringing, reflecting on the fact that she grew up with equitable opportunities. But as she got older, she realized that this isn’t the case for many Black children and teenagers who grew up much farther away from opportunity.
 
While progress has been made, we’re not there yet. The 2024 Black Students and STEM Report analyzes anonymized data from 328,000 Black U.S. middle and high school students from 2019 to 2023 and looks at the way interventions in middle and high school can help Black students succeed in STEM careers.
 
Jazz experienced this herself with the opportunity to participate in a variety of gifted programs in high school. One example was her 10th grade trigonometry teacher, Mr. Greene, who always left the door open for students to ask questions — even if they weren’t directly related to math.
 
“Math is life and life is math.” Mr. Greene, Jasmaine’s Trigonometry Teacher
 
“Because Mr. Greene taught us that math is life and life is math, it opened my mind in such a way where a realization hit me,” Jazz said. “Oh! Life is about problem solving. Life is about recognizing patterns.”
 
And this set Jazz on her way to becoming an impactful problem solver — not just in terms of STEM subjects, but also as it relates to her passion for culturally relevant resources and equitable opportunities for all. Most recently, this has driven Jazz and her team to pioneer a new way to move the needle on culturally relevant content and communications in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

 

How Does AI Impact Cultural Inclusivity?

Before we dive into Jazz’s AI family approach from her brand Much Different, let’s look at Character.AI, which is an artificial intelligence chatbot web application that can generate human-like text responses based on a user’s customization.
 
Built on large language models (LLMs), Character.AI is driven by deep machine learning with an emphasis on conversations. During the machine’s training process, it reads massive amounts of aggregated text and learns how to put sentences together logically. This leads to Character.AI’s ability to interact with users in a human-like way.
 
Laurie Segall, CEO of Mostly Human Media, suggests thinking of “Character.AI as an AI fantasy platform where you can go and have a conversation with some of your favorite characters or you can create your own characters.”
 
“When I look at how people are engaging with AI bots, it's like having an imaginary friend,” Jazz says. “So I thought … what if they weren’t imaginary? What if we took it beyond a bot? What if we created a family?
 
Now, Jazz leads a team of innovators dedicated to crafting an AI family that embodies the values of empathy, inclusivity, and cultural depth. From Jerome AI™, the digital soul with a passion for music and culture, to Aunt Jackie, the wise and welcoming guide, the AI characters are designed to connect with users in meaningful ways. Jazz believes that the interconnectedness of the family unit makes them more real and empathetic.
 
"The future unfolds not in the cold glow of screens but in the warmth of shared stories. Each line of code we write carries the rhythm of double dutch ropes, the wisdom of Sunday dinners, the fierce joy of being seen. We're not just building technology - we're weaving dreams into digital spaces, showing our children that their voices can echo through every pixel, every program. That their cultural inheritance isn't just something to remember, but something to build with, to grow from, to revolutionize the future with. Because when a young person realizes technology can move to the beat of their own truth, that's when magic happens." 
- Minista Jazz
 
A lot of times, miscommunications (online or in-person) are because cultural nuances are being overlooked or understated. Jazz believes that this AI family approach can mitigate some of those misunderstandings when using AI — and it can spill over into more respectful real-life conversations.
 
Traditionally, Black people have been sidelined when it comes to tech. So, rather than being created based on generalized inputs, these AI family characters are being informed by voice-first input from Black users, resulting in culturally relevant conversations built upon familiarity and respect.

 

What is Culturally Responsive Education?

National Math and Science Initiative’s definition of Culturally Responsive Education echoes the work of Geneva Gay and Zaretta Hammond. This approach to education uses students’ “cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them.”
 
NMSI conceives culture as the lens through which each individual views the world, a lens impacted by the intersectionality of their identity components (including, but not limited to race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic class, gender, and sexuality) and their lived experiences. You can learn more in our free Culturally Responsive Education Playbook.
 
Students are complex and knowledgeable, carrying with them meaningful past experiences that should inform their classroom experiences. The NMSI team believes that Hammond’s claim of culturally responsive education is a pedagogical approach firmly rooted in learning theory and cognitive science. This aligns with her focus on relationships among students, teachers, and communities as cornerstones in this work.
 
At NMSI, we strive to advance STEM education to ensure all students, especially those furthest from opportunity, thrive and reach their highest potential as problem solvers and lif​e-long learners who pursue their passions and tackle the world's toughest challenges​.
 
Jazz embodies this mindset of life-long learning, which began as a child when her parents taught her to never be afraid. She reflects on how her parents empowered her to make decisions and encouraged her to find the answers herself. Jazz’s mom would tell her, “You don’t have to ask me about every single thing. I know you can figure it out.” And so she did.
 
“I was told I could do anything. I could find the solution.”
- Minista Jazz
 
“I learned how to figure things out because I wasn't given those answers all the time,” Jazz explains. “I became super resourceful and researched solutions. It’s a lifelong discipline in training, but most importantly I wasn't taught to be afraid.”
 
Minista Jazz is definitely not afraid of the future and wants to encourage educators to consider the possibilities of what AI could do for their students. And just like teachers scaffold learning for their students, teachers can scaffold their own AI learning — giving everyone a chance to think bigger.