AI is the Terminator. AI is coming for your job. AI is taking over the world. If we compiled all the headlines about artificial intelligence from the last year, we'd have a picture of a dystopian world where jobs are scarce and AI and automation rule everything we do ...

But there's another story that doesn't often get catchy headlines. Imagine a world where AI supports and improves our human capabilities. Algorithms and the data sets used to train them are open and transparent, giving users control and democratizing access. AI and automation work alongside humans to help teachers personalize curricula for students who learn in different ways, enable doctors to make more specific medical diagnoses, and give the elderly and people with disabilities mobility through assistive robotics. And forward-thinking and proactive policies address the potentially problematic effects these new technologies may have on our lives.

AI consumers — that means all of us — must be involved in creating and shaping AI for the future. And that starts when we develop students' interest and experience in AI at a young age.

Education, mentorship, and outreach programs for underrepresented youths can make a big difference. At the San Francisco Bay Area-based organization AI4ALL (which I lead), we partner with AI labs at universities, such as Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Stanford, and University of California, Berkeley, to introduce high school students to computer science concepts and skills. It only takes a few weeks of basic training before students are ready to apply concepts to humanitarian projects with help from professors. Some students have worked on projects to make hospitals safer using computer vision to identify hand germs, used natural-language processing on Twitter to find people in need of natural-disaster relief, and made driving safer and more accessible through designing autonomous cars.

Read the full article about preventing educating underprivileged youth in AI by Tess Posner at edweek.org.