At Mass STEM Week, a focus on inclusion, civic responsibility, and AI education
Featuring a keynote by Prof. Cynthia Breazeal, MIT AI and robotics expert, the opening of this year’s event emphasized STEM’s ubiquity in and impact on today’s society
“STEM technologists will shape our future,” said MIT President Rafael Reif during the kickoff to this year’s third annual Massachusetts STEM Week, organized by the state of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Education and the STEM Advisory Council, in partnership with the state’s nine Regional STEM Networks.
It’s a statement that was echoed in various forms throughout the two-hour online event, which also featured remarks by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito, and representatives of state and local government across the Commonwealth. The theme of this year’s event, “See Yourself in STEM,” emphasized a specific need to reach women and people of color, groups who have traditionally been underrepresented in STEM fields and who run the risk of being left further and further behind as industry and society in general become increasingly tech-driven.
The opening ceremony was co-hosted by MIT’s Office of Community and Government Relations K-12 Outreach Administrator Rohan Kundargi, and featured a keynote address by MIT Media Lab Associate Director and Personal Robots Group co-founder Professor Cynthia Breazeal.
Breazeal’s talk, “Preparing the Creative, Empathetic and Ethical AI Designers of Tomorrow,” spoke to a brave new era in the use of artificial intelligence, one in which children are being raised alongside robots and AI technology, often without consideration of the impact their interactions with AI will have on their own lives and the lives of others.
While underscoring the vast potential for AI to make our lives better, Breazeal noted that left unchecked, AI can encode society’s biases–the technology is only as good as the humans creating and using it. Because school kids are touching and using AI every day, via social media, YouTube, or household systems such as Siri or Alexa, they need to be able to understand the technology and the responsibilities involved in using it.
“It’s no longer enough for kids to be digitally literate, they need to be AI literate…to be able to participate in the democratic process around this technology,” said Breazeal. “We want to prepare a far more diverse and inclusive group of students to have the potential to become the ethical designers of the AI solutions of tomorrow.”
To help integrate AI awareness into the K-12 curricula and provide learners and educators with research-based resources and activities, Breazeal has led the creation of a new website, AI Education, in partnership with the Media Lab, MIT Open Learning, and the Schwarzman College of Computing. Resources on the AI Education website build on the many programs and apps Breazeal and the Personal Robots group have created to help children understand artificial intelligence, learn to use it, and take ownership of their creations and their responsibilities as citizens in a digital society.
The AI Education effort aims to meet children where they are, working within their existing hobbies and interests to start conversations about AI. Pose Blocks, for example, is a new toolkit aimed at children with a passion for dance, sports, and movement activities; the program teaches them to create body-tracking apps while learning about the technology behind them. Breazeal also spoke about teaching artistically inclined children about GANs technology, which allows them to create photorealistic images and videos of people who may or may not exist, while also teaching them about the dangers of deepfakes and asking them to consider the responsibilities of creating something that could easily be mistaken as real.
The ultimate goal of the AI Education website and initiative is to “create a brand new, comprehensive AI curriculum” bringing together three themes: computational thinking, AI thinking, and human-centered design. The website builds on a series of public outreach programs including How to Train Your Robot, a pilot program for AI education in Massachusetts schools undertaken during last year’s Mass STEM Week with i2 Learning, and four week-long virtual pilot programs launched this past summer (one led by MIT AppInventor, the others by Personal Robots. These workshops trained 28 teachers to implement AI curriculum, reaching over 150 students, mostly from Title I schools.
The Personal Robots team participated in a similar initiative during this year’s Mass STEM Week, sending robots to underserved communities across the Commonwealth and teaching parts of the AI Education curriculum through online sessions.
Breazeal concluded her keynote with a peek at the AI Education effort’s latest project: a series of learning modules around thinking about future careers in AI, including a series of videos with STEM leaders across many different industries. “I hope you can appreciate [in these videos] different faces, different voices, so no matter what kind of kid you are, you can see someone you can identify with, and really see yourself in STEM.”
Watch the full video of the opening event, including presentations from the talented young winners of the 2020 Massachusetts Science & Engineering Fair.
