TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) – Students, educators, business owners and workers gathered for the 2026 Mississippi Digital Innovation Conference.
The conference, held Tuesday in Tupelo at Huntington Bank Arena, covered topics including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and fiber internet.
Students compete in fiber splicing rodeo
Students from across the area competed in the 2026 Splicing Rodeo at the arena.
Scott Hendrix, CEO of Tombigbee Electric, said fiber splicing has been a growing employment area.
“At Tombigbee, I’ve hired approximately 50 people in the last six years for this industry,” Hendrix said. “The internet, in my mind, is a commodity. Service is not. Service requires people; it requires people like these youth behind me.”
AI panel addresses workplace skills
On the other side of the building, attendees took part in a speech and panel on artificial intelligence.
Chris Chism, superintendent of the Pearl Public School District, spoke at the event.
“This will be 308 presentations and trainings in 25 states, and it’s really giving the baseline of where this begins, what skills do you need to know, and what are the skills that are upcoming,” Chism said. “I think this is a great place for people to do that.”
Chism said jobs of the future will require users of AI to have AI literacy, including choosing the right model for a task.
“I think of ChatGPT as being the 160 IQ English teacher. Claude is your 160 IQ engineer,” Chism said.
Chism also said knowing how to prompt AI systems is important.
“Human in the loop is the most important thing, and again: garbage in is garbage out. So, in the end, if you’re using this in business or industry, or if you’re using this in education, you just got to make sure that either students or the people in your company are using it the right way,” Chism said.
The conference continues Wednesday.
Chism said he plans to return to Tupelo early next week to train educators on incorporating AI into their workflows.
He said using AI has streamlined his own job by up to 50 percent.
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