This article was written by Manav Subodh, co-founder of 1M1B and global senior fellow at the Innovation Acceleration Group, University of California, Berkeley.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a technology of the future – it is well and truly here.

In many ways, it is already shaping human interactions by getting out of research labs and entering the real world. And it is changing the world as we know it.

It could not be more apparent that AI can change the world for the better – from creating new healthcare solutions to designing hospitals of the future, improving farming and food supply, helping refugees acclimatise to new environments, enhancing educational resources and access, and even cleaning our oceans, air and water supply.

“The potential for humans to improve the world through meaningful innovation with AI is truly endless, as long as we know how to make it work for us. I have found that is where the biggest roadblock still remains”

The potential for humans to improve the world through meaningful innovation with AI is truly endless, as long as we know how to make it work for us. And, in my experience with AI skilling initiatives, I have found that is where the biggest roadblock still remains.

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Stop teaching for the world of yesterday

According to a collaborative report by the Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education), the Education Commission (EC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), there will be a gap between the skills that 54% of the youth in South Asia will possess and what is actually required to land a good job by 2030.

Even more concerning is the fact that more than 50% of the youth in India are not set to have the skills or education that will help them find employment by 2030.

Another report by Pearson revealed that the millennial generation – perhaps the last generation to have been accepting of the rote system of learning – is being forced to relearn and reskill. They are adding to their formal education and degrees with courses on new and emerging technologies.

If they sense a gap between what they know and what they are expected to know in an evolving work ecosystem, millennials are doing all they can to gain new knowledge. This is a DIY approach that has been thrust on this generation. Nearly two-thirds of learners in India, China, Brazil and Latin America have reskilled over the past two years.

We have all read with jitters the headlines about AI eventually taking away many jobs that exist today. This could be a real threat if AI was not going to create new jobs.

In fact, Gartner predicts that AI will eliminate 1.8 million jobs that exist today, but replace them with 2.3 million new ones. This promises to be just the tip of the iceberg, with further growth predicted in the AI job market over the next five years.

While there are close to 300,000 AI professionals worldwide, there are roles that need to be filled. The supply of AI talent is just not meeting the demand.

The challenge is that our school and college curriculums are not evolving fast enough to keep up with this drastic change in the job market.

Education systems in most parts of the world, especially emerging economies like India, have continued to focus on skilling students for a world that will cease to exist in less than a decade. And, even in ecosystems where AI skilling exists, it is limited to STEM streams, when the potential for AI far exceeds the STEM world – especially when it comes to meaningful innovation.

Academia, governments, corporates and other interested individuals and organisations need to act quickly and effectively to make up for the burgeoning skills gap that exists in the AI job market today.

How do we scale the idea of “What can AI do for me?”

I believe the answer to this question is to build a mainstream relationship between human intelligence and AI, outside of labs and within communities.

So far, the ebbs and flows of AI in our lives have more or less been controlled by a small number of technology leaders – a minuscule percentage deciding for a world of 7 billion people what impact AI could have on their lives.

AI skilling is going to have to break some boundaries and go into places it has not before – far beyond the walled gardens of STEM. I see four pillars that will drive this transformation:

  • Starting skilling initiatives as early as possible – in school – and making them fun and experiential to build a stronger, healthier relationship between AI and its future builders.
  • Making AI skilling more inclusive and taking it beyond the walled gardens of STEM streams in order to solve real-world challenges that sometimes exist outside the realms of STEM, such as climate change and social issues. This is the key to meaningful innovation through AI.
  • Including teachers and professors in AI skilling, especially to make up for the mistakes of digital literacy initiatives of the 1990s, when teachers and professors across subjects were kept out of skilling initiatives that focused only on computer science teachers.
  • Engaging with governments and education regulatory bodies across schools and colleges to bring about sustainable change in curriculums, instead of making AI skilling a parallel initiative that exists in silos.

With the far-reaching consequences of AI, the relationship between creators and builders and these technologies needs to become far more personal and engaged.

Schools play a very crucial role in building these relationships. I believe that the key to bridge the gap of both skill and a nuanced understanding of AI can be found in our classrooms.

Bringing tech to the many

Over the last year or so, I have personally been invested in driving this change from the ground up together with my organisation 1M1B ( 1 Million for 1 Billion). We are doing this primarily by bringing together governments, academia, education regulatory bodies and corporates towards a single goal: AI For Good, AI For All.

We have partnered with IBM to deliver an AI-enabled Seva Program in Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) schools. CBSE India, the highest school education regulatory body in India, is inducting AI into mainstream school education (there are approximately 20,299 schools in India and 220 schools in 28 other countries affiliated to CBSE).

By mid-2020, the 1M1B-IBM initiative would have trained over 5,000 students in more than 100 schools across Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. With this initiative, we are breaking new ground in technology education.

Here is what we are doing differently. In India, the relationship between technology and students has been constricted at best. Students, even the ones in STEM streams, never really experience technology deeply and curiously enough to understand its true impact on the world.

“When students are allowed to get creative, break structures and imagine the impossible, and are given the tools they need, they can achieve amazing things”

When students are allowed to get creative, break structures and imagine the impossible, and are given the tools they need, they can achieve amazing things. The new era of technology education is about finding the sweet spot between left and right brains.

Empathy, creativity, innovation and fun will have to go hand in hand for technology to make a meaningful impact and solve real challenges in the coming years.

And that is exactly what we are trying to achieve with this initiative. Take, for example, Sanah Imani, a grade-11 student who is using AI for drug discovery. Imani asked what AI could do for her and then built on it. She tells her story here.

Another example is Dhruv Deshpande, a grade-eight student who is bridging the digital divide by teaching AI and coding to underprivileged students and including them in future skilling conversations. See his amazing work here.

Today, the team of AI instructors in this initiative has theatre, arts and language teachers among others. Policymakers such as CBSE and corporates like IBM have also joined hands.

The initiative is as inclusive as we had imagined and it is bringing incredible results. We are now expanding this and hosting the AI Youth Skills summit in January 2020 in New Delhi and the AI for Good Olympiad at the University of California, Berkeley, in June 2020.

Making a dent in the universe

When human intelligence and AI come together, amazing things will happen.

I am excited about the meaningful innovation that will come from communities, individuals and entrepreneurs bringing their human empathy and vivaciousness to the world of AI.

We need to skill youth, not just to leverage AI from a future jobs perspective, but also to inspire them to use it for solving the big challenges our world is facing today, like the climate crisis, access to water, mental wellness, financial inclusion and many others.

Application of AI, I believe, will make an unprecedented dent in the universe. But it can only happen through comprehensive, sustainable and effective AI skilling through a collaborative approach between academia, governments and corporates. And that is exactly what I have been working towards.

I am looking to scale AI Youth Skills to 10,000 schools and 1 million students over the next few years. Exciting times ahead!

— Manav Subodh

Picture credit: Disruptivo on Unsplash