AI education for the masses: an interview with Aashika Vishwanath
In today’s news, AI is often used in a negative context. Robot takeover this, identity fraud that. But here at AI Daily, we believe these negative perceptions on AI can be mitigated by spreading awareness of how AI is used and how one should evaluate its threat to society having assessed both its good and bad contributions.
Aashika is the founder of Acadaimy - a YouTube channel hoping to bring AI to the masses using bite-sized videos. This article was written off the back of a fascinating interview with her about all things AI….the good and the bad!
Where can AI go in the future? Aashika believes that AI’s utility is as broad as it is powerful, from revolutionising the education system and the way children are taught to customer service.
Every so often, there’s an innovation that fundamentally changes the course of the future: the printing press; the lightbulb; the cloud. I think that the next major innovation is definitely artificial intelligence.
Yet despite this, she hypothesises that the “AI revolution” will have a limit - not one imposed by technology but rather by the barriers humans put on AI development. Although AI and Machine-Learning are emerging technologies, the ‘acceptance cycle’ for new technologies is not. Take the example of the aeroplane: the first plane was built in 1903 yet civilian airplane travel only really took off (no pun intended) following the Second World War. Aashika believes something similar will happen with AI - that we will only begin to accept it once we see proven records of success through its use - if we haven’t already.
Yet Aashika stresses that these human barriers placed on AI development are necessary to control the destiny of future AI innovation.
We must embrace the concept of ethics in AI as in doing so, we can perpetually ensure that autonomous innovation is always there to help us, not to overrule us.
She emphasised how AI developments of the present can be used to show why we shouldn’t be afraid of the AI developments of the future. In particular, she’s fascinated by “AI for AI” - that is, using AI to help automate the processes involved in creating, deploying and managing AI models themselves. This could potentially enable AI to improve upon itself again and again.
How should Computer Science be integrated into a future educational curriculum?
It is vital that future generations should be provided with enough of an opportunity to embrace CS (Computer Science)
Aashika emphasised her support for teaching Computer Science even from an elementary school age, saying that “no age is too young to start teaching CS”, though obviously the depth at which the subject is taught would vary on the students’ age. She is optimistic that teaching Computer Science from an early age can potentially increase the number of people interested in the field…which can only be a good thing!
Check out one of Aashika’s videos below!
A huge thank you to Aashika Vishwanath for this interview. This was not sponsored in any way.