By John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE

Last week in these pages, I wrote about AI literacy as the civil rights issue of this generation. Literacy gets people onto the on-ramp, but the larger question is what kind of economy they find when they arrive, and who that economy was designed to serve.

That question is the theme of this year’s HOPE Global Forums, which returns to Signia by Hilton in downtown Atlanta on December 2 and 3: Capitalism, Tech, and AI in a Human-Centric World. Registration opened this week for our 12th year of convening here.

I wrote Capitalism for All because I believe free enterprise is the most powerful engine for lifting people out of poverty the world has ever seen. I also believe it works only when people can take part in it. A market that leaves out the barber, the home health aide, and the first-generation college student leaves growth on the table for all of us.

AI raises the stakes. The same tools that can help a small business owner write a loan application or a grandmother stretch a fixed income can also decide, out of sight, who qualifies for credit and whose résumé gets read. Whether those systems widen opportunity or narrow it depends on the values of the people who build, fund, and regulate them, and on whether the people affected are in the room when those values get set.

Atlanta has turned moral argument into economic progress before, from the lunch counters to the boardrooms to the Black-owned businesses and HBCUs that built a middle class. Today the city holds Fortune 500 headquarters, the Atlanta University Center, a growing tech workforce, and neighborhoods full of entrepreneurs ready to grow. Each December, HOPE Global Forums puts those worlds in the same room, and last year more than 5,000 delegates from over 30 countries joined us downtown.

The Forum is built to produce more than speeches. Delegates have made more than 2,000 HOPE in Action Commitments, pledges of time, capital, and expertise that carry the work back home. Our AI Ethics Council, which I co-founded with Sam Altman, released its first annual report on the Forum stage last year, and this December we will build on it.

I hope to see Atlanta’s business leaders, pastors, educators, students, public servants, and small business owners there. The next economy is being designed right now, and the people who will live in it deserve a hand in drawing it up.

John Hope Bryant is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE and the author of Capitalism for All. HOPE Global Forums 2026 takes place December 2–3 in Atlanta, and registration is open at hopeglobalforums.org/2026-registration.

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