About Day of AI
The initiative was launched in Massachusetts this year, following the state’s highly successful STEM week. Across the United States, schools in almost every state are participating. The TDM Foundation is very excited to be bringing the Day of AI to Australia.
On Wednesday 27 July 2022, Year 7 to 10 students from secondary schools across Australia are invited to participate in a day of creative, fun and hands-on activities to immerse themselves in AI. Topics cover everything from the basics of what AI is, through to design and creation exercises using AI and understanding the benefits and potential risks.
The activities are designed to be easily delivered by teachers with little to no background in computer science and digital technologies and to be accessible to students of all abilities. The only requirement for schools to participate is an internet connection and laptops for students.
AI should be for everyone, which is why schools can participate in the Day of AI for free. Schools can register to participate here.
The Day of AI Australia is supported by the TDM Foundation, CS in Schools, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and Teach for Australia.
ATSE Fellows supporting Day of AI Australia
Dr Hugh Williams FTSE
Co-founder of CS in Schools
Why is AI important in your career?
I’ve used AI throughout my career to solve problems that humans can’t solve, whether it’s because there are too many things to consider in coming up with the right answer or because answers are needed faster than a human can solve the problem. One of the first problems I used AI to solve was answering image search queries in the Bing search engine. Image search is hard because people type in words such as “dog” or “Taylor Swift” and want pictures as answers, and there are thousands of people every second who want those answers. We built a sophisticated AI system to answer those queries and I kept working on that for over five years. I then went on to use AI to solve many other problems, particularly at eBay and Microsoft.
What aspect of AI are you most interested in or passionate about?
I’ve always been interested in how AI can be used to make peoples’ lives better. I enjoy the cycle of creating an AI-driven solution, testing how it works in practice, and continually iterating and improving the solution. I’ve found that AI-driven solutions make occasional mistakes when it comes to the rare or difficult things that people do, and it’s super interesting to understand those problems and try and solve them. I remember having to work hard to make eBay’s search engine smarter when new products were released by companies such as Apple — when Apple first released the iPad, the search engine thought people were searching for it were looking for iPods!
In your daily life, what are the positive impacts of AI that you see playing out in our society?
AI is everywhere today. It’s helping you in ways you don’t always realise – for example, its detecting possible credit card fraud, it’s filtering dangerous emails from your inbox, it’s helping you navigate when you travel, and it’s powering most of the apps you use. It’s working hard to make your experiences better and to save you time, money, and effort.
Why do you think it is important to empower young Australians with access to AI education?
Everything is being changed by AI. Traditionally, AI has been used by tech companies, but that’s really changed in the past 10 years. For example, education, health, banking, insurance, and governments are all using AI to build better solutions for their customers. Students today need to be equipped with an understanding of what AI can do, how it can be responsibly used, and where it’s headed because it’ll affect just about every career that they might choose in the future.
What advice would you give young Australians who want to learn more about and eventually work in AI?
Go for it! You can work on many of the world’s most pressing problems using smart solutions based on data and AI, and maybe even solve something that could change the direction of millions or billions of peoples’ lives! Imagine if you’re someone who solves one of the super hard problems in health, climate, or energy! It’s pretty incredible.
Dr Sue Keay FTSE
Chair, Robotics Australia Group
Why is AI important in your career?
AI is the key to making robots truly useful and able to work safely side-by-side with humans. Useful robots are key to making significant improvements in both our work and home lives to diminish dirty, dull and dangerous tasks and to allow us to focus on creative and caring activities.
What aspect of AI are you most interested in or passionate about?
The ability of AI to be applied at scale is what excites me the most as it will give us the support we humans need to tackle seemingly intractable problems such as climate change. For example, imagine being able to deploy robots to catalogue our biodiversity and to aid in the protection and remediation of the environment, and similar grand challenges which humans alone are unlikely to be able to solve.
In your daily life, what are the positive impacts of AI that you see playing out in our society?
AI is allowing increasing levels of personalisation of services, including health services, which will help us move towards prevention of disease rather than treatment, and will support us to live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Why do you think it is important to empower young Australians with access to AI education?
Fear of AI is often fear of the unknown. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, young Australians need to understand what AI is, what are its limitations and how AI may be influencing their lives and for them to be empowered to choose how AI is applied to them.
What advice would you give young Australians who want to learn more about and eventually work in AI?
If you can access the internet you can access plenty of information about AI and both its good and bad sides as well as seeing the diverse range of careers available in the field, which are really only limited by the imagination.
