Students at the Table: Co-Designing AI Tools for Education

MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

GenAI Misconceptions Resource

Ethan Mollick on the Hugging Face incident: Agency and Agents

Founder Tycoon Demo

All the students are part of Stemuli's The League

Amanda Bickerstaff

Amanda is the Founder and CEO of AI for Education. A former high school science teacher and EdTech executive with over 20 years of experience in the education sector, she has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that AI can offer. She is a frequent consultant, speaker, and writer on the topic of AI in education, leading workshops and professional learning across both K12 and Higher Ed. Amanda is committed to helping schools and teachers maximize their potential through the ethical and equitable adoption of AI.

Taylor Shead

Taylor Shead is the visionary founder and CEO of Stemuli, a Dallas-based gaming and AI company redefining how people learn and work. Under Taylor's leadership, Stemuli has been recognized as the United Nations Global Champion of AI for Good, honored by Forbes, Google, and the Gates Foundation, and partnered with Stride Learning (the largest U.S. online school) and LAUSD (the nation's second-largest district) to personalize learning for millions of students.

‍ 00:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Hi, everyone. We're so excited to have you here today. The start of school is here and as we always love to do is we're going to be focusing on some student AI literacy. But even more than that, actually like student co design, which is a really exciting opportunity. We talk so much at AI for Education about how important this moment in time is to bring people together, to learn together, because we are all in the same position. Everyone is learning about the same transformational technology at the exact same time. And so today's webinar is focused on students at the table co designing tools. And you can see I'm joined with Taylor, who I'll, we'll say hello to in a moment, who is going to be really like shepherding this new approach at Stimuli.

00:45
Amanda Bickerstaff
But also look at all these amazing young people that are joining us. We have a mix of students from both high school and college that became part of this co design lab. And we're going to talk to them about their experience. As always, we want you to say hello. So please say hello in the channel. Just make sure that you're doing it in a way that it's not just for host and panelists, but for everyone. Say where you are. If you do have a question specifically for the panel, please put that in the Q and A. We have a lot of students today, so it's going to be a little bit different. I was saying to the team, this is the most amount of people we've ever had in a webinar.

01:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I think if you're going to do it's got to be with students. So I want to start with, you know, Taylor. We have been. I was just telling the story literally today how when we started AI for Education back in 2023, I just didn't think about student AI literacy as something that we needed to think about because there had been student AI literacy initiatives for so long. But the more that we've seen the work, the more we see the reticence of colleges and high schools, and even in some cases just teachers, adults, parents, to talk to young people about these tools.

01:58
Amanda Bickerstaff
I think it's so great to see that not only are you talking to young people about these tools, but you're bringing them into the actual design of these new ways of approaching generative AI in terms of building out essentially educational tools. I want to start with, can you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your background? But then also, when you were coming to the seminal moment, what made you design this approach?

02:21
Taylor Shead
Hi, everyone. And thank you, Amanda and the AI for education staff for having us on today. My name is Taylor Shedd. I'm the founder and CEO of Stimuli. And my origin story starts in college, which was about 17 years ago, where I felt like I wasn't prepared for mentally, emotionally, definitely academically, but mainly with the career skills that I would need to succeed. And so I founded my first company that was a predecessor to Stimuli, with a main goal of how can we shrink the time it takes from a student to learn something to having economic agency and empowerment. So that's essentially what we do at Stimuli and you know, the name of our company, we're trying to make science, technology, engineering and math more engaging. And we happen to do that by leveraging AI and video games.

03:09
Amanda Bickerstaff
You know, it's. I think about it similarly. My background is, my first job out of college was I taught high school biology in the Bronx. And you know, I was a baby, 22 years old, did not know what I was doing as a teacher, probably didn't, let's be honest, didn't know what I was doing as an adult either. But it was really interesting to me about how that lack of economic agency, or even just agency in general was happening in these communities where things like one of the things that we started was like a community service program, but people were surprised that diverse kids were doing community service. But you're like, everyone can help everyone.

03:43
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that having those types of conversations where the goal is to create spaces in which kids can have positive opportunities to learn, to build, to engage, but also to develop their real world skills that are hireable, I think is even more important today. I don't know if you agree, but knowing that on day one, a recent graduate is going to be expected in most knowledge work to use generative AI. How do you think about that in terms of what you've designed at Stimuli?

04:12
Taylor Shead
Yeah, well, the first thing I would say, because we are talking about co design today, is when I first started in this space, I was working with corporations and trying to help them engage with young people. And all of these adults almost were afraid of the young people. They're like, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to engage them. And I know if I'm boring, they're going to tell me. And so oftentimes you have this space where you have corporations who for a long time have wanted to work with K12, but the two did not speak the same language. And so that's a large part of what we started to do.

04:44
Taylor Shead
But as far as like engaging in this work, I even think, or excuse me, as far as the young person coming to work prepared for the job, it sounds so novel, right? I think in a way in education we've kind of had this like pass the torch moment where K12, you're like, I'm going to focus on these core subjects and logic and a lot of the critical things that form the way we think. And then we're like, higher education will prepare them. But then what we found out is higher education also has the same problem where it's like a two year cycle to create a course and then all of a sudden AI comes out. And as you mentioned, at the top of this, we're all learning at the same time.

05:20
Taylor Shead
So my quick summary of where I think we are today is for a long time we've talked about like a digitally native generation and that was like 10, 20 years ago.

05:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
Right.

05:31
Taylor Shead
And now we're in a place where it's actually an AI native generation. And my big thought around that, which is like rolled into the product we developed, is these young people are not going to know how to run a business without AI. So they are like leapfrogging where I was when I graduated high school. And I think the conversation today will highlight more of what I mean when I say that. But I'm super excited for these young people to be able to step in to work and add value on day one.

06:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think that we are hearing a lot about how, look at mit, right? MIT just came out with this pretty watershed kind of approach of the act of doing business at mit, which I think all of us would be very proud of, our young people going to MIT is that they're going to change. They're saying they're going to change everything. They're going to change the way they think about assessment, the way they think about the what skills students need. Social learning is going to become more of a part of what they do. They also came out recently, which we know is true, that there's no traditional assessment that is longer going to be AI proof or even AI resistant really.

06:42
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so the idea of like that redesign I think is a really good canary in the coal mine because you would be very happy to have a kid go to your whatever consulting company or your tech company from mit, but they realize that it's no longer fit for purpose. And the types of skills that you're thinking about, these real world durable skills are the way forward. So what we're going to do is we're going to call everybody on. So you're going to see this wonderful group of young people that are going to represent a couple of things. One, we have Felix who is part of the Stimuli team, but is our kind of conduit between student and, you know, that stimuli leader. We've got some high school students as well as we have some college students.

07:24
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so what we're going to do is we have three questions for everyone and Taylor, feel free if you have like something that really comes up. But what we're going to do is kind of dive into first introducing yourself. We're going to start with Noah, who was chosen by Taylor. So he's voluntold everybody. So we have to give him all of the positivity. Just talk a little bit about your background but then also when you were thinking about joining the co design of this product, what made you want to do it. So let's start with Noah.

07:55
Noah Henson
Hello, my name is Noah. I've a little bit of my background is I've been very interested in like just watching technology as it's been advancing. And a little bit about me is I actually grew up with like very limited Internet access. So I ended up becoming very engaged with how technology formed from kind of the sideline until getting into it myself and eventually going into programming. And that's around when I stumbled across AI and I found stimuli which I decided to join because it was at a crossroads of a lot of things I enjoyed at the time. It was games, AI and trying to teach students, which I was really considering education at the time as well.

08:39
Noah Henson
So I decided to join Stimuli and my main, I guess view on it is if we can teach kids about AI, it would be kind of like how there was the era where most people didn't know about how to use like smartphones, but changing that to where everyone views AI kind of like how you view a smartphone to where people just know what it is and it's in like the common language I think would be a very nice way to innovate people forward and how they think about technology and what people are capable of doing. Because you have access to information that's great, dispersed pretty well.

09:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
And now you're. You taught, you're a college student in north Arkansas and so you're in your second year, is that right?

09:28
Noah Henson
Yes, I did my first year in high school.

09:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Great. So Oprah. Oh, lovely. Love that. And so really excited to hear more about that. But I do think it's really fascinating to come from a low Tech background and then kind of hyper accelerate, what like Taylor was saying to not only just technology, but this like brand new, disruptive, innovative technology, which is great. Okay, next we're going to go to Alana. If you can introduce yourself where you're from, where do you go to school and then what brought you to Stimuli?

09:55
Ilana Belov
Hi everyone, my name is Alana, I'm from the Bucks county and Philadelphia area and I am a second year student at Drexel University. And what brought me into Stimuli was just like kind of the opportunities that they gave out. And one of those opportunities that I was given was I was given an internship with them that I'm currently working on as a business analytics and finance student. So I'm able to look at different types of analytics, not only with games, but also the social media. And what brought me here was kind of like the AI part and just being able to learn what AI can do in a good way.

10:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
So yeah, absolutely amazing. And so, but I like that you're coming from a slightly different side than Noah. Right. More that data analytics side versus building the tech itself, which I think is really interesting today as the tools start to get better at like doing that type of work. So thank you, Alana. And next we're going to go to Felix. So Felix, you're kind of, you're the interesting intermediary where you know, you were your recent graduate, but also you're starting anything through the work that you do at Stimuli, but also how to support young people at the seminal moment. So can you just yourself and talk a little bit more about what you do?

11:08
Felix Naroditskiy
Hello. So my name is Felix and I do cybersecurity and student engagement here at stemwide and actually been with STEM for the last three years. The same years I was actually at Penn State Abington, which is kind of our local Greater Philadelphia College. And I think what kind of brought me here to Stimuli was that intersection between cyber security in which actually protect student data, work with student data, also kind of teaching AI. And I've worked with probably nearly 100 students at this point at semi and it's been also the of help students work more ethically with AI, prompting with AI, becoming more like thorough with AI and being able to actually make artifacts and documents and slides and research and from there learning about entrepreneurship since that's probably the next big thing coming to us.

11:57
Felix Naroditskiy
And it's been a super unique experience coming from both sides. And I feel that my work is super impactful. That kind of encourages me to do more and more every Day.

12:08
Amanda Bickerstaff
Well, I love that as someone that when I was similar age was teaching in a school like, I think that, you know, it's great to see that your commitment has gotten stronger. I also love that you immediately talk about ethical use. Right. That you're not, they're not. It's not just about using the tools, but what does it actually look like in ethical approaches? And I think it's a really big question for work. Right. Because not just about academic integrity, which we think about a lot, but like, are you building tools that are ethical? Are you thinking about your own use? Are you sharing data that's protected? Are you using those types of copyrighted materials? Like, those are questions that are seminal to and important for anyone building today. So next we're going to go to Brayden, who's in a magical forest.

12:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
Brayden, I love your background but can you talk a little bit about who you are and then what brought you to stimuli, please?

12:56
Brayden Camp
Hello, my name is Brayden Camp. I live in the out in Alabama. And what really brought me semi is well before I was asked to join stem, my team. I've actually worked with semi before for my school system earlier that year and I was given the opportunity to work on this game that was supposed to help our education system. It seemed really fun game and I wanted to see where it went next and I just thought it would be a great opportunity to do so. So I took the chance to now this familiar ish company and take the chance since it is well, my first job and a great opportunity for me to learn.

13:47
Amanda Bickerstaff
That is wonderful and I love that. It kind of like Taylor, what a good job of building a pipeline. Right? You've got Brayden in school and then now it's your. Your first job which I think is a very smart business plan for anybo there working in education. And so next we're going to go to David. So David, can you introduce yourself and talk a little bit more about what brought you to stimuli?

14:07
David Alvarado
Yeah. Hello, everyone. I'm David Alvarado and I'm leaving Alabama. Something that brought me to stimuli was it sounds like a challenge for me. Before that I, I started like technology AI and I see I need to learn because this is the future and I need it for me so it pop up the opportunity stimuli and I say let's try, let's give a chance. So I joined and I like it so far. I make new friends. I learn a lot of things. I learn more confidence about me. I learn more English talking in front of everybody and I Like this opportunity and I would still like to learn more every day.

14:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
Amazing. Well, goodness gracious, David, if you just not the perfect example of why this work is so important. But also thank you for, you know, I know confidence building. We're asking you guys to be on a webinar with a hundred people. So appreciate your trust in us. And then, Nicholas, you get to take us home, sir, to talk a little bit about what brought you here and your background.

15:16
Nicolas-Kole Haggerty
Hello. Hello, everybody. My name is Nicholas Cole Hagerty and I'm from Texas. I'm a second year at University of Dallas. And what brought me to stimuli was first, like their internships. I was very interested in it because I like how it bridged education, interactive learning with technology and learning about all these different AI resources for ethical use for students. So that way they would have a, like more of an understanding whenever they would apply for jobs and have workplace school like skills when they get out of high school.

15:52
Amanda Bickerstaff
Amazing.

15:53
Nicolas-Kole Haggerty
Yes.

15:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I love how diverse the group is. As a Southerner, I love to hear some Southern people on the call. So, Noah, and then in the group we're going to go on. And one of the things that Taylor was talking about in our prep is that where you thought you were about like what you thought you knew about AI versus what you learned about AI through the process of actually developing tools. Can you talk a little bit about the way you thought about AI before you started and now how you think about it and how that's changed starting with Noah?

16:23
Noah Henson
I'd say before I started using AI, I found it to be a bit of just like a strange version of Google, essentially where it was just, you could just type stuff in and then it would just give you answers. But after using it for a while, I've learned it's closer to like a guessing machine that not always correct, but it can help speed processes along. And where I found it to be especially powerful is when using it to try and break down ideas and to get to kind of the root of issues to where you can generate an idea yourself and then have the AI attack it and then you refine your idea and it gets better over time. And I. That's the ultimate way I found to use it.

17:10
Amanda Bickerstaff
Oh, man. Yes. I mean, so we're going to drop in the channel. We have a misconceptions resource, Noah, where one of the key misconceptions is like Google, right. It's a search engine. But what you just said, the guessing machine, is that it's predictive. Right. And it can make mistakes, but maybe can we dig a little bit deeper? So when you think about breaking down a topic, are you using it kind of to poke holes in what you're doing or like how are you thinking about using it in that way?

17:37
Noah Henson
I essentially use like a debate partner where I'll come up with an idea and I'll say the idea in its like most basic form and then the AI will usually quote on that idea and then I will essentially attack the points that it has so that it starts attacking back. And that is essentially the setup. Sometimes I'll ask for like brainstorming on new directions if I think it needs to like pivot. But aside from that, it's usually just, here's the idea, let's break it down to its atomic parts and then go from there.

18:13
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And I think one of the things that's nice about generative AI is it's non judgmental, right. So you know, it's a machine, it's predictive. So if it doesn't agree with you or it has a different idea, it's like a safe place to try things out. And I think in some cases fail as well, which is going to be really important. When building software, the most important thing is figuring out how it doesn't work almost more than how it does, right. Because someone's going to break it if you build it, right? Taylor. Someone's going break it in a way you didn't expect. So I love that. Noah. So Alana, when you think about it from the data and analytics side, like what were you, what kind of beliefs did you hold about AI before you got started and how did those change before?

18:49
Ilana Belov
When I was in high school, I didn't really know that much about it and of course all of my teachers from then were saying, oh, it's really bad, don't like, don't use it, blah, blah. And then as I started going into Drexel and when I first started, it started at Drexel, everybody was talking about AI with stocks and just data analytics. And I was coming from somebody with a kind of mortgage and real estate background. I didn't know that much about it until as I started going through my classes and realizing how much AI could help a lot. And especially with the league, with the co design league as well.

19:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
So when you would, I mean it was pretty like you were, you know, just getting like out of high school when ChatGPT we kind of came on. Do you think that your teachers avoided talking to you or do you think it was just so New that they didn't. That it wasn't a priority yet.

19:46
Ilana Belov
So there's a story I remembered when I was obviously in high school this my. The social studies department was kind of like debating with like the English department about why AI could be helpful. And at the time I was taking an AP class for that department subject and it was very unknown. Like, no one knew about what AI could do until, like, until as I started going through with it and I didn't know that much as well. I've kind of just used AI to help me with some math problems, to make study guides for me, and now I've used AI to help me figure out what formulas I should use for different Excel tables and different data tables and kind of how to go along with it.

20:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, yeah, I mean, that's so really, I mean, Excel. I mean, Alana, you're going to learn so much about Excel in your program, even more. But it's nice to have that, especially something that is testable. One of the nice ways to use generative bi is when you can test it. And so if it's incorrect, you'll immediately know. And so I think that's a really great use case. So. Thank you, Alana.

20:50
Ilana Belov
Yeah.

20:52
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, Felix, when you. Because you're again, kind of that intermediary space, what were you thinking about AI and like, did you have it in college before you came on and then what's changed in your thinking now?

21:04
Felix Naroditskiy
So I have to think I come from the perfect transitional years. When I first started at Penn State, there was absolutely no AI. And I can tell you that AI has changed drastically over the last two years and how powerful it is. So a few years ago, you could pretty easily tell the difference between an AI paper and a normal paper. And by then they could just ban them and have different proofreaders and et cetera. And by the time I graduated, half the teachers are now allowing AI. They've added new AI classes to Penn State. It's a new AI major thing coming as well. New building that's going to make AI as well. So I've seen how it's changed drastically in that it's a lot more powerful kind of integrations you can use the tools you can use.

21:44
Felix Naroditskiy
And especially for my time at st, we are kind of an AI native company, right? Not just that we're using AI to help build, but also kind of teaching AI to students. And I think that's probably the most important aspect, that AI is essentially a partner, right? It's become powerful enough to be a Partner for you in whatever you're learning or researching. And that's how I use it most times. Right. The thing with cyber security, we always have these threat actors and they're using AI nowadays to move faster. They can pretend to look like somebody, they can pretend to sound like somebody. The fake emails you get are more realistic than ever before. Right.

22:18
Felix Naroditskiy
And as a company doing kind of student data, staying on top of that and learning how AI can help us and also learning how AI can protect students and keep students up to date has kind of been my. One of my biggest priorities.

22:29
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's great. And it's. Oh, gosh. I mean, I think we're going to have this, like, this capsule, right. Of like kids that were at different points of their lives when generative AI happened.

22:38
Taylor Shead
Happen.

22:39
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I'm going to actually, Taylor, I'm going to pull you in right now because when you and Felix, if you don't mind, before we move on to Brayden, is when you think about the building of the AI literacy before they start building with AI, like, how do you do that? How do you start to build that AI literacy?

22:54
Taylor Shead
Yeah, great question. So we built a game by the name of Founder Tycoon. And in Founder Tycoon, anyone, no matter how old they are, can go into our platform, decide what problem they want to solve and command a fleet of AI agents to help them grow this business and solve this problem. And the reason we wanted to do that is because we started thinking about the future of work. Everybody's like, what job is going to be in existence? We don't know if entry level jobs are going to be there anymore. And so what we wanted to do is we wanted to say, one, let's give this community access to feel like they belong and that they can create something. So that's the number one thing an identity shift is what problem do you want to solve?

23:39
Taylor Shead
The second thing we wanted to do is we actually wanted them to do real work. Some people define AI literacy as like, learning what a large language model is or what a token is. And for us, were like, what if we could give the next generation the agency to be able to create their own economic value with AI? So the way that we do this is by providing a personalized experience. So each of these folks on the phone with us have probably created multiple businesses in our platform. Founder Tycoon. And they have learned and kind of had these aha moments about what's possible with AI. But the last quick thing I'll say to wrap this up Is a lot of times we're moving from what is, like, the definitions and what is the knowledge of AI.

24:19
Taylor Shead
And we wanted to be at the practical application place. Right. And then if you think about it a lot, oftentimes what we are grading, whether that's in school, whether it's in, like, business, is we're creating the output. We're looking at how much revenue somebody has, or we're looking at the final paper they have, but the information we don't have, or what are all those decisions? What were the constraints that person was dealing with that led them to make this decision? And so one thing that I'm super excited about with all of this is the ability for these young learners to be able to see their own progress and improvement on an axis of them becoming great founders and great entrepreneurs. Which, by the way, I think a great founder entrepreneur makes a great employee at any business.

24:59
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's very true. I have a couple. I love that because I do think the process over product, even though, of course you want the revenue. But, like, what were the constraints? What did you learn? But how do you. Do you all teach about, like. Because, like, Noah did a good job. How do you teach about the limitations, though? Because, like, you know, agents have a ton of limitations. We just saw what happened with Hugging Face Breach and others. But how are you instilling the critical distrust that's so important when using generative AI?

25:27
Taylor Shead
Well, in the game, we built a consequence engine which is supposed to mirror entrepreneurship. So in entrepreneurship, all of us have either sent an email and we said, hi, Tim, and were supposed to say, hi, Taylor, or we've had some presentation where there's a typo in it. Right. We've all experienced that personally, in this environment, if the learner misses one of these flaws, whether AI is omitting something, whether AI is hallucinating, then there's a consequence that happens. So when you're growing up for that business partnership and you're speaking to a character in game that you're an investor, all of a sudden you had an opportunity to maybe get half a million dollars worth of investment. Instead you get 50,000 because you missed a flaw.

26:06
Taylor Shead
And so we really wanted to teach by doing and creating a safe environment for people to take these risks and miss them, as opposed to, like, unleashing people in the real world and learning at that time that AI might make some of these big flaws.

26:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I think it's one of the things that we struggle with a bit and the last question we're going to ask would be a little bit more about the next steps and what's important. But how do you really instill that if something goes wrong with generative AI or AI, it's not the bot's fault, it's you as the individual. We have like our every framework but it's kind of hard to do that because it's abstract. Right? But I love that you built this consequence engine because that's real, right? If you are using something and it's AI or it's the numbers are wrong. Alana, where you're the spreadsheet queen and the numbers are wrong, that's going to have some pretty significant issues down the road.

26:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
So I love that and we just shared in the chat the website but this is very cool. So Brayden, when you think about the work that brought you here because you were a student first that experienced this, what did you think about AI before and then what do you think about it now?

27:17
Brayden Camp
We all heard about AI before. Well, Stimuli was mostly from the Internet. It was not treat. AI was seen as this thing that would recreate, even possibly steal other people's things. Since it pulls from every source, there's concerns with copyright around that and it trying to replace what some cannot be replaced and some things and people just use it to do the lazy thing. But when I got into Stimuli I saw, well yes, you could use it for like write your whole paper on this subject and you would get some stuff wrong in it. You can use it to advise a situation or maybe you can give it your own data and maybe come up with a situation.

28:18
Brayden Camp
I, I know I've done more than once asked for an estimate of what this book will come out because with some past information I see as a tool that where you can let know something it's good to come up with situations you may can use it to pray prepare for.

28:51
Amanda Bickerstaff
I'm muted so I think I love that it's like I. It's interesting. It's like giving yourself like a scaffold, like you're supporting yourself right? You have something that you need to do and it's helping you kind of understand what's necessary before you get started. For some of us it's really important to be able to have that level of structure and it's not always available. So I love that Brayden. So when we think about that, David, what did you think about AI and then what do you think about it now?

29:18
David Alvarado
Well, back then I wasn't a student. I Think I remember I was in seventh or eighth grade, probably in the year. So I just. Everyone start talking about AI, the teachers, everyone. I don't pay a lot of attention about it. I just think it was like something like every year something came up every talk and then everyone forget it, like in a couple years. But then I just, I started using it. And the first thought that came out in my head it was, this is like bad because it will. It won't help you. Like a lijia is gonna give you the answers for everything and you won't learn about it. Even the teachers, even everybody says don't using it is. This is bad for you, this is bad for the school, for everyone. Don't use it.

30:12
David Alvarado
But then I started using it in my daily life and I start asking questions about it and I just figure out it depends how you use the AI. And now that the way I think right now is you can use it, but use it properly. And don't try to use like for everything. Try to think about yourself. But if you cannot just use AI, that's what I do. Like, for example, a couple of days ago, I have a dream. Like, whoa. I question what is my possibility to be a formula one? You know, the ones who drive that AI tells me the truth. They don't tell. They don't give me dreams in my head. Just tell me you don't have any possibility. You have one in a million. And I just say that's true.

31:03
David Alvarado
And yeah, AI can help you in a lot of things, can tell you the truth or can give your things a lot of dreams and basically everything I just say use it properly and that's it.

31:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think Taylor in the chat said this, but it's the idea of we really see general AI literacy as decision making, right? The purposeful, intentional decision making. And I do think it's funny that you like an F1 is a funny thing. You might not have been comfortable asking an adult that, but you ask the AI. And unless you have a whole bunch of money, David, and also amazing neck strength, apparently, because that's the thing. It's really not possible for most of us, but it doesn't mean that other things are not going to be very clearly, very possible for you. So, Nicholas, when you think about the work, where you were before and now what's changed?

31:56
Nicolas-Kole Haggerty
Well, before I thought it was just like a tool for you to have it do your papers for you, do like your assignments for you, but now I see it as like a tool that can help like with your education, for example, it can go more in depth about, like, a math problem or, like, what a formula, but it can go in depth in a way where it doesn't give you the answer, allows you to think for yourself. It can also help you, like, with writing, like, for different, like, synonyms possible, like essay structures and stuff like that. Yeah.

32:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so, Nicholas, when you. We're gonna. We're gonna go backwards, everybody. I know I told you I was gonna keep you the same, but there was a great question in the chat, so I love that. I think all of you have come to what we believe AI literacy is, which is the knowledge of how the tools work that lead to these kind of safe, ethical, and effective practices. But all of you have come around this idea of either it was the most negative thing you heard about or the most positive, but it's somewhere in between. And it comes down to you, right? You are the responsible user. But one of the questions, and we'll start with Nicholas, is. And we'll do it really fast, but what do you think is the most important human skill?

33:09
Amanda Bickerstaff
I know this is a hard one, so maybe what we'll do, Nicholas, we'll start with Taylor, because she's an adult and I can pick on her. But what do you think is the most important human skill that's necessary, even maybe more today than it was before AI? So, Taylor, you want to go first?

33:23
Taylor Shead
Yeah. Thanks for putting me on the spot. I'll give you guys a little bit of time to think about your great answers. This is going to sound so silly, but being human and what I mean by that is I think everybody's individual lived experience is so important in this age of AI because that's the thing that AI can't replicate. Like, David loves soccer. Okay. He's like a big World cup fan. He speaks Spanish. We're working with him on the founder tycoon. And he's like, you guys need a Spanish version. And within a couple of weeks, I think we spun up a Spanish version. But I say the human part in this lived experience part, because all of these young people on the phone are on this call have experienced problems that other people haven't.

34:07
Taylor Shead
And so them being able to say, I see this problem and I have a tool that makes it faster, more affordable than ever before to solve that problem is just tremendous. And so I almost think, like, we just need to continue being ourselves, living these lives, encountering problems and bringing those problems to the AI and then being able to ask it great questions to help us realize how we solve that problem.

34:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And Taylor, not to get too nerdy, but I'm an entrepreneur too, right. I started AI for education. And people talk a lot about like product market fit, which is this idea that you pick the right thing and people want to buy it. But I think what you're talking about, that human layer is like founder market fit. Founder product fit. Are you the right. So David and Brayden and Noah and Alana, Felix and Nicholas, like, who are you? Like, what do you uniquely bring? And how are you the only person that could solve this in that way? And I think that is something that. Because of the predictive nature of the tools, there's so much research that shows that even with good prompting and even with a lot of context, that things start looking towards a generic middle.

35:15
Amanda Bickerstaff
And what you're talking about is that we are not a generic middle. We're actually 9 billion different extremes in different ways. And I think that's something that's truly special. And so, Nicholas, what do you think is the most important human skill now? What do you think?

35:30
Taylor Shead
Think?

35:33
Nicolas-Kole Haggerty
I would say it would have to be innovation, the ability to be able to, you know, prompt and be able to see, like what? Because like, if you like, prop something like an AI, like on the idea for like writing, you would still have to have the ability to, you know, fulfill it and then make it, like, grow creatively and make it, like, go to its fullest potential. So I think innovation is like a good skill to have.

36:02
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think one that is sorely underrepresented in most curriculums. So I love that and the work that you all are doing. So, David, now we know so much of David. David soccer star wants to be F1, but David, what do you think is the most important, like human skill now?

36:20
David Alvarado
Okay, okay, I have a lot of them. But I would say healthcare, be good with yourself and have peace in your mind because that technology today and a lot of these things today are making people like thinking too much or sometimes replace their thoughts or somewhat other thoughts. Just be you and be strong and mental and be. Also do exercise. Because today in these days, we don't. You. We don't do too much exercise. And that will. That will be a problem in the future. So just.

37:10
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, so first of all, everyone has to get up from the webinar and go for a walk in honor of David. But also I think what you're talking about is the idea of not over relying on these tools. Right. That doesn't replace your friendships, your own mental Health and well being, it could easily do that. We see that happening not only in children and young people, but also in adults. So Felix, what do you think is the most important or the skill that is more important than ever now?

37:37
Felix Naroditskiy
I think the most important skill is accountability. And one example is at a class with Professor. Professor said, I don't mind how much AI you use, but if I ask you what you wrote down, you have to be able to explain it. And the idea is that any work you produce with AI to steal your work, you have to take accountability for what you wrote down or what you supposedly wrote down. And it's an idea of understanding where you have to still keep yourself accountable for understanding a topic instead of just kind of relying on AI for it.

38:05
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think the best AI detector, Felix, is just asking you what was your favorite part? What did you enjoy writing? How did you construct this? And if you get a deer in headlights look right, then pretty sure you didn't actually engage with that, whether AI did it or you weren't paying attention or something along those lines. So I think that one is absolutely important. So, Brayden, what do you think.

38:31
Ilana Belov
Is.

38:31
Brayden Camp
The ability to speak clearly and with attention that these days it may be harder for some people to clearly communicate with each other, even though we have the ability to communicate to almost everyone now is getting hard to speak clearly of our own thoughts and, wow, some sort of misunderstanding or something. So we just need to be able to speak clearly and speak our true intentions and in a way to where the other person can understand them or our intentions here. But we think.

39:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think that is a very important part because it's going to change, right. The places we're going to be and what we're going to be expected to do and to be able to have agency, which Taylor's talked about, but also to be able to really not just explain Brayden, but also support. Right. And advocate and to be able to share that, I think is really important. So, Noah, you're going to be, we're going to do a little bit of a wrap up. And Noah, what do you think is the most important human skill now?

39:45
Noah Henson
Honestly, I'd say it's structural thinking. Just because the more you're able to picture, I guess, the full setup to something, the better you're able to engage with it. Because even if you use AI for like a specific part or specific subject, or if you even use it to create a whole thing, the issue is it's always going to be starting from Somewhere that isn't the beginning of whatever process you're looking at. And being able to know like where the origins are and having to see where it can go forward, I think is very important since it lets you know how to hold principles.

40:29
Amanda Bickerstaff
Right. I think that. Noah, just to pick on that little bit, I think it's two things. I think you're right with the structured learning, but also that you have enough that foundational knowledge to set the thing up correctly. Right. And like to understand it, but also to evaluate it. Right. Like, do you, can you do the starting place, the direction and the review? Do you, do you agree with that?

40:50
Noah Henson
It's, it's the skill to essentially see sideways so you see the whole structure and you're. It's how people usually innovate by building on to what they have.

41:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that lateral thinking, but also I think a big. And I'm going to lead to Taylor, but I think one of the things that makes a good entrepreneur is be able to see the little things all the way to the big things. Right. And to be able to diagnose, to understand, to reevaluate. And I think about that a lot. Even with the way we build AI for education, how much of what we do, like 99% of what we do, if you take an aggregate is non AI. Right. It's human. But then that 1 to 2% is incredibly strategic. Right. And some of it we've learned in the process that we thought we could write a curriculum with generative AI. And you know what? It failed spectacularly. But what we have found is it can help in other ways.

41:44
Amanda Bickerstaff
So I love that. So, Taylor, we're going to end with. First of all, can we just everybody heart and thank you to our beautiful panel. You all did such a beautiful job. I'm so excited about their young people and entrepreneurs and AI literacy advocates that exist so much. It's just amazing. But Taylor, we had some questions and this is an important one because you're taking such a beautiful leadership position on this. So what's your advice to either STEM leaders, teachers and adults working with students about how to actually start to build this kind of co design partnership with young people today?

42:20
Taylor Shead
Yeah. Well, I think most of us, even if we aren't educators in a way, consider ourselves educators and wanting to pass knowledge on. And so I think my advice would be it's okay to learn from the next generation and it's okay to have a lot of curiosity and hear what their thoughts are and then come back to Them, you know, you don't have to agree with them all the time, but just leaning in and being open to hear their ideas and insights. In Founder Tycoon, we've seen so many businesses started that were like affordable housing or like a faith based dance studio, or different ways to use AI that we've never had, I had never even considered before.

43:00
Taylor Shead
And so I think it's time for us to kind of switch who the teacher is in a way and allow them and their passions and the things that they want to understand more about the world. Allowing them to go deep in doing that.

43:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And we said something about having seniors. This is a perfect place to bring young people and seniors together in this really crazy time. The only thing I'll say in addition is that what we see is that even though kids like this, if you listen to their stories about what they thought AI was, until they had structure, support of what it really was, is they were operating with so many misconceptions and blind spots that the learning can't just be from student to teacher, student. It has to be collaborative because there are things that kids will bring, but there's also going to be things that teachers will bring as well. So I just want to, first of all, we are so thank you guys so much for being here.

43:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
I know it was a crazy process of getting everybody from all these beautiful walks of life to be a part of this. But if you're interested in STEM and the work, if you have students that are interested in becoming part of the league, I'm sure that's possible. And what we'll do in the follow up is we'll share the recording and then some of these resources from the team at Semuli. But let's just say thank you again to the team. For those of you that have started school, we're so giving you good vibes. For those of you that are going to enjoy Labor Day league weekend before, we're also saying good luck and we just hope that everyone enjoys. We'll have a new webinar kind of coming out in a couple weeks and we'll see you all then. But thanks everyone again. Thanks team. Bye.