1. General
Category
SDG 4: Quality Education
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
SDG 10: Reduced Inequality
Category
Education
2. Project Details
Company or Institution
PSNC – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
Project
AI4Youth
General description of the AI solution
AI4Youth program was developed by Intel Corp. in response to the AI competence gap in education and the expectations of governments to prepare their citizens for the coming of Industrial Revolution 4.0. Increased digitalization of the world’s economy demands expanding the public's Digital Readiness, understood as a combination of digital skills, trust and responsible use of technology whereas the program goes beyond digital access and inclusion to more comprehensive & meaningful outcomes for the society. PSNC is the primary technology partner of Intel Corp. in the implementation of the AI4Youth program in Poland and other European countries.
AI4Youth introduces youth from diverse backgrounds to a getaway that leads towards greater AI readiness, by increasing the knowledge of AI technology; improving their social skills; strengthening attitudes based on creativity and innovation. Consequently, the production of solutions – prototypes that use AI, and at the same time have a positive social impact, correspond to SDG 9 (on industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 4 (on quality education), and SDG 10 (on reduced inequalities). The program addresses students aged 13-19 from countries in Europe, Asia, and Americas with teachers and educators also playing a valid role in the program. As trained and certified Lead Coaches and Coaches, they are key to ensure high-quality delivery and content implementation. The program’s content is age-appropriate, engaging and its modular structure makes the program fully customizable to the audience's needs and capabilities. Most importantly, the program equips the youth in both technical and social skills that allows them to demonstrate tangible outcomes – students develop AI-based solutions in response to a selected social problem on a local or global scale. The program participants gain access to licensed, free educational materials of varying degrees of difficulty and advancement, and use open source software, such as: Jupyter Notebook, OpenVINO.
Website
Organisation
PSNC – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
3. Aspects
Excellence and Scientific Quality: Please detail the improvements made by the nominee or the nominees’ team or yourself if your applying for the award, and why they have been a success.
The uniqueness of AI4Youth program lies in the fact that it touches on the most important issues related to AI and provides free access to certified teaching materials. The program is run on the basis of three AI domains – NLP, Data and CV. The material comes in the form of different modules taught in four stages and covers tech and social skills. The skills covered include coding, data science, computer vision, natural language processing. In terms of social skills the Program teaches students AI ethics and biases, critical thinking and problem solving, system mapping and solutions building, how to explain AI in easily understandable language and social impact presentation.
PSNC, as a main implementation partner has developed its own program implementation model based on own cloud based educational platform. Multiple users can work on-line simultaneously with IPython Notebook that allow code execution in a browser. The most important feature is that the entire environment is ready and work with whenever the course is planned to start. There is no need to install any software packages or libraries on students’ computers, yet students can adjust the environment to their own projects and needs, thanks to the platform ability to upload additional data sets and ability to install custom software libraries.
After its pilot editions in 2019, the program was subjected to a third party evaluation run by Oxford Insights (an AI readiness global think tank) and was proven to have a positive impact on building a better future with new and relevant skills in eight key areas: AI awareness, Python programming, data management, AI ethics & biases, AI solution building, 3 key AI domains.The report highlighted that a project-based approach worked well throughout each country despite the difference in educational systems, which allows the program to be easily scaled internationally.
Scaling of impact to SDGs: Please detail how many citizens/communities and/or researchers/businesses this has had or can have a positive impact on, including particular groups where applicable and to what extent.
In 2019, AI4Youth program started in three pilot countries: Poland, India and South Korea. Since its launch, more than 150K students participated in several editions of the program worldwide in 15 countries thanks to the partnerships with governments and more than 5000 institutions that include NGOs, R&D centers, Universities and enterprises
The successful implementation of the program depends greatly on the cooperation of the government, implementation partner and ecosystem of institutions involved. In the example of Poland, Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center has run the latest edition fully on-line, it was successfully concluded with over 200 learners impacted and over 20 new AI solutions with a social purpose created.The program continues to scale-up – thanks to the government's commitment, the next edition for 1,800 students is financed entirely from public funds.
The program responds to the SDGs on quality education, gender equality, no poverty, reduced inequalities, industry, innovation and infrastructure through improving technical skills among students and teachers, women's empowerment through the dissemination of ICT, proposing development policies, strengthening international cooperation in access to science, innovation and technology. AI4Youth goes beyond contributing to emergence of AI-related companies on a small scale by shaping the attitudes among young people necessary in the modern labor market, creating socially meaningful AI solutions and global AI ecosystem for the SDGs, especially in the field of education, and facilitating international exchange of young learners. Under the Oxford Insight report, the vast majority of students said their favourite part was being able to work collaboratively and create their own projects.The hands-on experience allowed them to significantly improve their skills in each of the 8 key AI areas, mentioned above by grasping the concepts more easily and learn about practical and concrete applications of AI.
Scaling of AI solution: Please detail what proof of concept or implementations can you show now in terms of its efficacy and how the solution can be scaled to provide a global impact ad how realistic that scaling is.
In line with the RISE 2030 strategy, Intel pledged to work with the governments of 30 countries and 30,000 institutions from around the world by 2030 to achieve the goal of empowering 30 million people in the context of AI skills training. This bold commitment will be achievable thanks to the comprehensive and flexible formula of AI4Youth program, which has already proven itself in 15 different educational systems and is successful in fostering the fundamental skills, mindsets and toolsets for the AI-fueled economy.
The key to the program's success are demonstrable outcomes – young learners apply acquired knowledge into solving real-world problems, resulting in social impact. Only in Poland students have developed over 50 unique solutions based on AI technology, examples include a computer vision translator for the hearing-impaired community, ECG-based biometrics identification. The authors of projects very often continue to work on their solution after completing the program, which leads to the creation of new applications that can be further used in the R&D sector or initiate the creation of new companies and start-ups. To ensure international collaboration and community building, Intel, together with government and international institutions partners, set up a global students’ projects festival and local projects’ showcases.
The success stories of AI4Youth program learners regularly appear in worldwide media and many government websites. The program and its impact were showcased globally during numerous high-level conferences, most notably Intel CEO address to the UNGA on Digital Skills gap. Among the awards and distinctions the program has received so far are two prestigious WITSA awards (including Chairman’s Award) and Guinness World Record Title for “most users to take an online AI lesson in 24 hours” when over 13K students in India concluded an immersive learning session based on AI4Youth program.
Ethical aspect: Please detail the way the solution addresses any of the main ethical aspects, including trustworthiness, bias, gender issues, etc.
AI4Youth program addresses ethical issues on two levels – through its inclusive nature and non-bias orientation, as well as content delivery, where great attention is paid to the ethical aspects of using AI and developing solutions related to the SDGs.
The universal nature of AI4Youth allows it to scale to other countries including developing countries and be a part of the global ecosystem. Currently, talks are underway with government partners who have already participated in the Smart Africa workshops presenting the development potential of AI. The implementation of AI4Youth in African countries may contribute to breaking the deadlock on the Global North – Global South line. The program would support the implementation of policies developed by governments aimed at enhancing AI skills among students, which would prepare them to create innovations that are ethical and inclusive. This is an opportunity to increase the global competitiveness of the Global South.
Addressed to youth aged 13-19 from 15 countries in Europe, Asia and Americas, AI for Youth inclusiveness is clearly visible in several aspects. Participants gain free access to licensed educational materials, open source programming tools and the knowledge of specialists. The educational materials are prepared in such a way as not to exclude participants who do not have technical knowledge and programming skills and learn in different educational systems. All this is aimed at equalizing the chances of young people from different parts of the globe in accessing knowledge about AI, its ethical and equitable use in solving social problems.
All activities related to AI4Youth are carried out in accordance with the law, on the basis of ethical principles and with the utmost care for the quality of implementation of the Program.