Here’s what you need to know about AIEDU’s Forum on AI Education
By: Alex Kotran
Tags: Nonprofit, Education, Artificial Intelligence, Events, AI

Last week, The AI Education Project (AIEDU) hosted a virtual gathering of more than 100 leaders from government, K12 education, academia, and civil society for a conversation about how we can bring AI education to K12 schools. Our Forum on AI Education and Workforce Readiness aimed to identify concrete steps that these stakeholders can take to equip schools with distinct curricula that addresses the many ways that artificial intelligence will impact students, especially with regard to jobs and the Future of Work. We’ve included recordings of the event, along with an overview of some of the most important points below.

We encourage you to take a moment from your day to watch at least part of the video—but below are some of moments and discussions from the Forum:

Talking Workforce Transformation with Ohio’s Lt. Governor

The meeting opened with remarks from Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, who leads the state’s InnovateOhio Initiative and also oversees the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation. Lt. Gov. Husted spoke about the state’s work to help people gain the skills they need to participate in the economic success that technology will bring forth.

“There is a huge divide in access, both educationally and in terms of being able to participate in the modern economy, education system, and healthcare system. We have the opportunity and responsibility to help bridge those divides and educate people,” said Husted. “We have to get the proper incentives in place—this is why we are paying our high schools and career and technical education centers to equip people with the in-demand industry credential skills that are needed in the innovation economy.”

Husted pointed to TechCred—an Ohio grant program which reimburses employers for industry-recognized, technology-focused, credentialed training programs and certificates—as an example of what this looks like on the ground. Ohio met its goal to authorize 10,000 industry credentials within the first year of the program’s launch, covering the cost of short-term learning programs across multiple sectors. Educational institutions are responding by setting up learning programs in response to this demand.

Ohio has also allowed high school students to apply Computer Science credits towards their foreign language graduation requirements. Husted says this is one example of the ways states can begin to shift their education systems to adapt to the new demands of the 21st century economy.

A Conversation with Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi

Hadi underscored that we are in a unique moment in time at which it is critical to educate students about artificial intelligence.

“In particular, the rise of machine learning using neural networks enables us to pattern match and do basic recognition tasks much more easily than before. When I was in college, AI used to be a theoretical technology, whereas now you can train a neural network within seconds to recognize a smile, emotions, objects, and more,” said Hadi. “Whether it’s speech recognition, computer vision, natural language processing, weather prediction, medical diagnosis, crop optimization, these are so many different applications of the exact same technology.”

Over the next 10–20 years, the changes that machine learning will bring to society will be as significant as when the internet or the computer were invented—and for each of those technologies, our education system had to give students a basic introduction about how to use the technology.