Oklahoma Assembly for Safe & Strategic AI (OKASSA)

Founder Memo: 2026 Direction

Miles Mans

AI is or will be moving into every major system in Oklahoma. This is not regarding the theoretical, it is for the inevitable. Each day we are presented with a new AI opportunity, but with each opportunity comes a new risk that needs to be fully understood. The state of Oklahoma needs a foundation that can handle the scale of what is coming. Oklahoma deserves an Assembly for Safe and Strategic AI.

OKASSA is a statewide assembly that brings together working professionals and institutions shaping Oklahoma’s future with AI. It functions as a coordinating body, a standards-setting group, and a forum for shared understanding across industries. Through events, research, and ongoing collaboration, it provides the state with a dependable structure for learning, planning, and preparing for the changes AI will bring to every major domain.

OKASSA’s purpose is to advance public understanding across all industries of artificial intelligence. To conduct and disseminate educational programs, events, and research relating to AI safety, security, direction, and workforce development; and to promote informed, ethical adoption of emerging technologies for the benefit of the public.

OKASSA keeps Oklahomans informed while guiding AI adoption that strengthens the state rather than weakening it or letting it stagnate. As the field evolves, the ethos will remain anchored in safety, stewardship, longevity, and what best serves Oklahoma.

Our work centers on four domains. Good data, security, people, and technical safety. Each one is essential. Together they offer the foundation Oklahoma needs.

Data Foundations

• AI cannot rise above the quality of its data.

• Poor data creates silent failure and institutional risk.

• Oklahoma needs to be built on a strong foundation (engineered, governed, and held to real standards).

• Data is the ground truth. Without it, nothing built on AI will hold.

Security & Infrastructure Resilience

• AI increases exposure across every critical system.

• Threat actors gain reach, speed, and automation.

• Power, hospitals, logistics, finance, and agencies must not only meet industry mandates but model practices the whole state can follow.

• Infrastructure resilience determines whether AI is an advantage or a vulnerability.

Human Outcomes & Societal Stability

• AI will shape how people learn, think, and work.

• This affects long-term capacity, not just efficiency.

• Education, workforce development, and community life will shift with it.

• AI must strengthen human capability, not erode it.

Model Behavior & Technical Safety

• Institutions must understand the systems they deploy.

• They need clarity on how models make decisions, where they break, and how they stay contained.

• Alignment, robustness, and monitoring are operational necessities.

• Technical safety is the difference between controlled systems and unpredictable outcomes.

Oklahoma has a real opportunity to take areas such as healthcare and education and help them become examples of success for the country.

As a state, we need to bring the right people together, because if these areas are left unmanaged they could widen existing challenges; guided well, they can become defining strengths. Oklahoma deserves an approach that turns this moment into progress rather than pressure.

OKASSA’s role is clear. “We” will coordinate with the state’s leaders and best minds to facilitate the best approach to AI by setting shared standards, aligning agencies and industries, and establishing a unified structure for decision-making. It will evaluate risks, guide adoption, and ensure Oklahoma’s major systems move through the transition with clarity and consistency.

AI is moving into Oklahoma without a shared foundation or a common direction.

OKASSA is going to give the state both.