OAKLAND, Calif. — Last month I spoke at a gathering of African-American technology professionals. I’m a transactional lawyer at a tech company and my husband is an engineer, so the industry is at the center of our lives. We have careers that allow us to help create products and tools our grandparents would never have thought were possible and to provide the kind of life for our family that they couldn’t have imagined. And it’s important to us to ensure that other people of color have a chance to contribute to the field and reap its benefits. With all those things on my mind, I left the conference energized and inspired by the ways in which tech is changing the world and the possibilities it holds for our community.

At the same time, I’m terrified for what these advances mean for my two young children. The same technology that’s the source of so much excitement in my career is being used in law enforcement in ways that could mean that in the coming years, my son, who is 7 now, is more likely to be profiled or arrested — or worse — for no reason other than his race and where we live.

Of course I’m not alone in feeling that technology is both a gift and a curse. This tension exists for anyone who enjoys the real-time conversations on Twitter but loathes the trolls, loves Facebook but abhors fake news, or depends on the convenience Alexa offers but frets about violations of privacy.

Yet in my life, because of the way artificial intelligence and machine learning are being increasingly used by law enforcement — the technology is seemingly growing up alongside my kids — it’s especially acute.