If you’re looking to learn about something, Kanwar Bajwa’s advice is to hit the books and do your research. But instead of going to the library, he prompts an AI tool to help locate sources on a subject.
That’s exactly what the Grade 12 student from W.P. Wagner High School did when crafting a research project he presented on Wednesday at a student AI conference put on by Edmonton Public Schools.
The project was all about the math behind neural networks, a type of machine learning model inspired by neuroscience and used in AI tools that do image recognition, language processing, and make predictions.
Bajwa said he’s interested in math and technology, and wants to take that passion into a career in engineering.
But Bajwa isn’t a blind adopter of AI. He’s part of a group of young users who hold some skepticism about the technology but want to mould it into tools for doing good.
For Bajwa, AI shouldn’t be the thing making art, writing literature, and coming up with the “big ideas.”
“We should be doing the art, the literature, design process, engineering, and AI should just be stuck with, ‘All right, I’m gonna do the dishes now,’” Bajwa said.
‘Ability to critically think’
Bernice Pui, the chairwoman for Edmonton public’s Student AI Conference, said more than 300 students from across the division attended the event.
Students took part in breakout sessions hosted by data scientists and researchers with the University of Alberta, Google and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).
Those talks covered everything from career pathways to AI robotics and how AI is being used in medicine.
The goal of the conference, Pui said, is to buff up students’ AI skills, learn about real-world applications, career possibilities and how AI will fit into their lives.
“It’s about learning about AI literacy, those considerations and limitations, and really making it work best for you,” Pui said.
Adam Danyleyko, product owner for the training team at Amii, has a similar take.
He said Amii has been working for a few years now to bring tools into Alberta classrooms that help teachers and students better understand AI and how to use it, with the goal of producing learners who think critically.
“As knowledge becomes democratized, the ability to think critically is going to become more and more important,” said Danyleyko.
Danyleyko said AI is already having a large impact on education, and that there is a gap between students’ use of the tools and teachers’ comfort with talking about it.
Asking big questions around AI, having conversations and questioning the use and impact of the technology is going to be crucial in education, Danyleyko said.
“Digital skills and AI literacy being a big piece of that is really the literacy of the future and something that we’ll see across all subject areas in school.”
Earlier in the week, the Government of Alberta made an announcement formalizing a three-year partnership with Amii on building learning kits for K-12 classrooms. The province said it would spend $2.7 million to help fund that work.
Next to Bajwa’s presentation, another W.P. Wagner student showcases a project where an AI-powered camera is used to distinguish healthy plants from sickly ones in a hydroponic garden.
Sarah Kelland, a Grade 11 student who built the gadget, said the project stemmed from a passion for the environment and robotics.
Kelland is part of both a robotics club and a climate activism club and wants to get into artificial intelligence engineering and environmental sciences after graduating high school.
While AI is a helpful tool, Kelland isn’t ignorant of the impacts the technology can have, and wants to be part of the solutions.
“AI has a very big impact on our environment, and oftentimes that outweighs the positives of it,” Kelland said.
“So if there’s a way that we can make the negative impact it has on our environment less, so that AI can be more readily used to make the world a better place, I think that’s absolutely a great thing people should do.”
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