AI’s Future, Reimagined
AI4ALL’s 5th Birthday Celebration Explored What’s Possible, and What’s Next
On March 7 and 8, AI4ALL brought together our community — Changemakers, education and corporate partners, staff and board members, and friends of the organization — to celebrate five years of growth and impact.
“By 2025, AI4ALL anticipates about 500 new AI leaders trained through our programs will enter the workforce, and hundreds more will join the workforce each year after that,” said Emily Reid, AI4ALL Interim CEO, as she welcomed everyone to the first day of the celebration. “This is not just about teaching kids how to code AI. We are here to build supportive ecosystems around these students, so they can go on to serve humanity with compassion and tremendous skill.”
The 5th birthday celebration, which was sponsored by EY, was an opportunity to look back at our wins and lay out our vision for what comes next.
Day One: Setting the Course for AI’s Future
“Our Changemakers are accomplishing audacious goals,” said Reid as she welcomed the audience. “Even in these very challenging times, the promise of these students and their leadership pushes us to serve them better.”
Changemaker Hajira Sheikh started the day by sharing her inspiring story of emigrating to the United States from Cairo, and moving to Texas to pursue an associate’s degree in computer science. She transferred to the University of North Texas to complete her bachelor’s degree and then to begin a masters in information science, and she discovered the College Pathways program, which sparked her interest in applying AI algorithms to benefit humanity. “I want to be a role model for others who have a story like mine so they know not to be afraid of the AI field,” she said. “No matter your background, no matter your situation, you can achieve your dream.”
Several representatives of schools in the College Pathways network joined AI4ALL’s Dr. Sean Peters for a conversation about the role minority-serving institutions play in advancing AI equity. Dr. Talitha Washington from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, Antonio Delgado of Miami Dade College, and Dr. Enrico Pontelli of New Mexico State University talked about the ways in which their programs wrap around students and take into consideration their full experience as they try to pursue AI as a course of study. “We quickly learned that the best way to reach out to students was through students,” said Dr. Pontelli, who described how undergraduates leverage a peer-to-peer model in their College Pathways programs. “That relationship becomes really mentoring relationships, where students share their experiences and they help the incoming students address the same challenges.”
We got a glimpse into the Changemakers’ journey with Maya De Los Santos and Maria Cheriyan, students who shared how they discovered AI4ALL’s programs, what effect those experiences have had on their trajectories, and how they are now expressing their individual brands of leadership in the AI field. “Being a part of AI4ALL has been a very big influence on me because it introduced me to AI ethics, gave me more of a direction of what it is that I want to do, and has helped connect me to some amazing people — and getting to see what they accomplish is also really motivating,” De Los Santos said.
Dami Osunsanya of SoftBank Group, helped us highlight the ethical, problem-focused projects that Changemakers Chidozie John Nnaji, Emily Wang, Brianna Alexandra Stan, and Claire Swadling have worked on and continue to explore. Writing a chatbot to help students explore and improve their own mental health? Using images of closed and open eyes to develop an early warning system for drowsy driving — a problem with which classmates struggle? Predicting air quality to help decrease pollution-related illness? Empowering other students to use AI to make strides in bioinformatics and precision medicine? “These students are thinking deeply about problems they want to solve that affect their friends and community members,” Osunsanya said. “They’re looking beyond themselves and applying the tools given through their exposure to AI.”
“I’m only a 17-year-old,” Wang said. “I didn’t really think I could have done anything with [AI] until I was introduced to AI4ALL. And I … developed the skills that I did to actually recognize an issue and start thinking, what can I do to be a part of the solution?” These Changemakers are already changing the world.
Melvin Anderson of exploreSkillz, Inc. and Dominick Sanders of the South Carolina Department of Education joined AI4ALL’s Sarah Judd to examine what happens when students learn AI literacy through AI4ALL’s Open Learning curriculum. By meeting students where they are — showing them how AI affects their daily lives, the brands with which they identify, and the interests they already have — these programs allow students to widen their apertures. “Once they get connected, think about all the products they can develop,” Anderson said. “Now you’re talking about economic development, you’re talking about family sustainability…We want to be part of that revolution.”
AI4ALL’s Jonathan Reynolds introduced Dr. Marina Sirota and Dr. Tomiko Oskotsky of UCSF, who shared their just-published research into how effectively AI4ALL’s virtual summer program at UCSF in 2020 engaged underrepresented students. The results? Not only was the virtual program as effective at engaging students as the in-person program, but students’ work, which was focused on applications of AI to biomedicine, was incredibly sophisticated. “You would not believe this is high school students presenting,” Dr. Sirota said. “They’re really talking and presenting work at a graduate school level.”
“AI4ALL is changing this whole field by bringing in a diversity of perspectives and bringing in students from diverse groups into the field…and placing them at the head of the table,” said AI4ALL Co-Founder Dr. Olga Russakovsky of Princeton University, who closed out our first celebration day. “They are the ones that are going to hold the power to make this field better and to really transform our whole world through AI.”
Day Two: Bringing Diversity to AI and Industry
On the second day of the celebration, AI4ALL turned our focus to the industry, and how it might become a more welcoming place for the more than 500 Changemakers poised to enter the workforce in 2025. Dr. Fei-Fei Li of Stanford University, AI4ALL’s co-founder, kicked off our celebration with a clarion call to those who can open doors for the next generation of AI leaders.
“I believe this is the responsibility for me personally, as a researcher, a technologist, and most of all, an educator: a future where those who traditionally have been at the margin of the benefits of industrialization and technology can benefit and have a real seat at the table and feel like they not only belong here, but also can help to determine the future,” said Dr. Li. “Today you’ll hear from a number of industry leaders about why it’s so critical to open the doors to these future leaders and make them an integral part of your work.”
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity for AI technology to find new footholds in products and solutions throughout society. Dr. Telle Whitney of Telle Whitney Consulting LLC moderated a conversation with Abhijit Bose of Capital One, Yi Ng of Intuit, and Kristy Rasbach of General Motors about what that has meant for technology development, how their teams navigated remote work, and what role companies play in ensuring AI is developed and implemented in ethical and inclusive ways. “A lot of it comes down to transparency — how do we provide information within the organization so we can share appropriately within our own team to be able to measure our fairness and our bias,” Ng said. “Responsible AI is … a culture.”
Next, Dr. Li returned to the stage for a one-on-one conversation with Tony Ko of Slalom, who asked her questions about what inspired her to co-found AI4ALL, what its impact has been and will be on the field, and how well-thought-out policy will be a critical element in democratizing AI.
“Every business decision, from engineering development all the way to shipping the product to customers and customer support — it’s human decision making,” Dr. Li said. “This is when it’s so important that we have human representation, voices from all walks of life, especially traditionally underserved, underrepresented communities, from development all the way to deployment. That’s what AI for all is about. It’s about bringing the shared human value into this technology, through educating tomorrow’s leaders.”
Jeff Wong of EY, which sponsored our event, provided a glimpse into how EY and their AI Lab help support their thousands of clients all around the world. “I think we all realize that diversity isn’t just a nice-to-have,” Wong said. “It’s a financial and strategic imperative. We cannot answer the big questions about climate and social justice and equality without diversity.”
Wong invited Daphne Luong of Apple to join him to expand on that conversation and to share her story of her path to leadership in AI. The two talked about the way that Luong’s commitment to mentorship is helping build more diverse communities of entrepreneurs, how she navigates an ever-changing field, and why diversity matters in the tech world. “If something is interesting [to you] that you don’t understand … go ask…,” Luong said. “AI is growing and changing so fast that there’s so many things that you can do with AI.”
As a Changemaker, Jesus Villalobos is very interested in what’s waiting for him when he enters the workforce, and he had the opportunity to interview Vikram Chatterji of Galileo Technologies Inc. about where AI and ML are showing up successfully, what Chatterji’s vision is for the technology and the industry, and how creating a more inclusive space within the industry will change it. “My hope is that the Changemakers such as yourself can truly be the torchbearers when it comes to adopting these new kinds of techniques,” Chatterji said. “What kind of data is going into the model? Is it representative of the real world and real people, and also user-centric when it comes to trying to solve the right problems? It’s an incredible technology. We need to think about it as a strong force for good.”
Jensen Huang of NVIDIA closed our celebration by laying out a vision of how AI could truly change the world by becoming even more accessible and embedded in our daily work and lives. “AI can democratize computing and narrow the technology in the social divide,” Huang said. “Very few people can program computers. Yet anyone can teach an AI to perform a task. I’m delighted to see the team at AI4ALL do this important work and particularly pleased to see so many young people engaged. This is a very important and critical mission.”
The two days of AI4ALL’s 5th birthday celebration offered us and our guests the chance to look back at everything we have accomplished, and to look ahead to what’s next as we continue to expand our impact and fulfill our mission. We can’t wait for you to see what’s next.
AI4ALL wants to give a special thank you to our event sponsor, EY. Learn more about their work at https://www.ey.com/.
Thank you, also, to Accenture, Prudential, GM, and SoftBank Group for your ongoing support of AI4ALL’s important work. If your company wants to support AI4ALL as a partner, please reach out! You can get in touch at https://ai-4-all.org/contact/
To watch the talks in their entirety, click “View on Demand” at the bottom of the agenda for each day here.
