Good AI: Assistive Innovation
Since ChatGPT burst on the scene in November 2022, we have been warned about the inherent dangers that the OpenAI tool poses to our children and education. These include ease of cheating, intellectual atrophy, destruction of independent and critical thinking. Threats in the greater society are the potential weakening of ethical guardrails, humanity willingly subverting itself to machines, and, of course, political sabotage, to name a few.
Such risks are real. Globally, all of us - the public, business and government leaders - must be vigilant and keep AI in its rightful place: A tool to help mankind. Anything that threatens us is not acceptable.
But AI also has the potential for great good. Good AI not only exists, it is already primed to deliver beneficial, life-changing solutions to people’s needs. Who are the innovators behind these new scientific wonders? Teenagers, still in high school.
Using science, math, creativity, ingenuity, a positive can-do mindset, and a passion to do good, these brilliant and caring teens bring out the best in Assistive Innovation a.k.a. Good AI. They view AI as a tool they can adapt to make the world and people’s lives better. They are remarkable young people who will assuredly safeguard our future and dramatically improve the lives and potential of those they help.
Listen to their eloquence, their joyful determination, their vision - summed up in two-minute videos.
Arav Bhargava, 18, a senior at The Potomac School in McLean, VA. Motivated to provide amputees in developing countries with low-cost prosthetics, Bhargava developed a universal fit, 3-D printed prosthetic for forearms that its user can adjust to last a lifetime.
Gavriela Kalish-Schur, 18, a senior at Julia R. Masterman High School in Philadelphia, PA. Interested in understanding what happens on a cellular level that could lead to the development of more effective treatments for anxiety, Kalish-Schur used AI and fruit flies to identify the answer.
William Gao, 18, a senior at Centennial High School in Ellicott City, MD. For rural patients who do not have ready access to health care, Gao invented an AI-diagnostic tool to identify areas of potential malignancy, thus shortening lab time diagnosis, and insuring quicker treatment and better results.
There are many more than the three teens cited here. Teens who understand how to use AI to do good for individuals and society. We have reason to be grateful for them and the future they will build.
Answer to Unpacking Education No. 30, Question of the Day:
The teens featured in this blog represent a group born between 1997 and 2012. They have neither fear nor awe of AI. It has always been part of their lives, and they respect the opportunities AI offers them to develop their ideas and open new pathways for good today and in the future. Pragmatic and innovative, dreamers and doers, they are d) Gen Z.