Giving Compass' Take:

• AI4ALL is nonprofit focused on improving diversity in the growing field of artificial intelligence by offering summer camps to more women of color. 

• How can philanthropists in the tech space play a role in advancing diversity in AI?

• Read about the three ways to combat AI bias. 

AI4ALL is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, or AI.  While sectors as diverse as health care and education are adopting AI technology, the field remains largely white and male. Only 10 percent of those working on “machine intelligence” at Google and 15 percent of Facebook’s AI research group are women.  Numbers for African-Americans and Latinos are also low at both companies.

AI4ALL began in 2015 when Russakovsky—then a Stanford University PhD student in computer science—pitched the idea of an AI summer camp for girls to her advisor Fei-Fei Li. Li, a professor of computer science at Stanford and chief scientist of artificial intelligence at Google Cloud, loved the idea, and together they established the first program. In 2016, the program expanded to the University of California, Berkeley, and then to Princeton, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Canada’s Simon Fraser University in 2018.

Some AI4ALL branches are open only to girls, while others admit both boys and girls with a focus on racial inclusion. All programs include computer programing training and cover tech policy and ethics. Participants meet professors and graduate students, and visit organizations like Google and the National League of Cities.

After the program ends, AI4ALL connects alumni with industry mentors and offers grants for AI-related research or community projects. “We tap into their existing talent and passion,” says AI4ALL CEO Tess Posner. “They’re going on to do more creative things than we ever could have come up with.”

“High school students are way more advanced, motivated, smart, and capable than people give them credit for,” Russakovsky says. “They build things that have impact in the world.”

Read the full article about AI4ALL by Stephanie Wykstra at Stanford Social Innovation Review