In an engaging conversation with Reshma Saljani, founder of Girls Who Code, the discussion revolves around the potential of AI to solve significant global issues, such as Covid, climate changes, and cancer. The emphasis is placed on promoting AI as an aspirational tool that women and girls can leverage to drive meaningful change in their communities. Reshma highlights the importance of making AI accessible and inclusive, ensuring it is not just a resource for the affluent or tech-savvy, but available to everyone, particularly underrepresented groups.

The conversation addresses the existing gender gap in AI usage, with more men than women currently engaging with the technology due to cultural perceptions and the "brand of AI." However, Reshma asserts it is not too late to become acquainted with AI, urging workplaces to act as gateways for exposure. She discusses initiatives to normalize AI's potential and demystify its application, such as introducing AI in everyday scenarios like banking or accessing Paid Leave benefits. The dialogue calls for cultural shifts and reimagining AI as a tool for good to close gender and societal gaps.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. aspirational [ˌæspəˈreɪʃənəl] - (adjective) - Relating to striving for personal achievement or longing for a certain ideal. - Synonyms: (ambitious, idealistic, hopeful)

We have to present AI as what I like to call aspirational AI.

2. undeniable [ˌʌndɪˈnaɪəbəl] - (adjective) - Clearly true or certain, impossible to deny. - Synonyms: (irrefutable, indisputable, unquestionable)

It is undeniable that we've moved on from the hype of AI and into the reality of it.

3. participate [pɑːrˈtɪsɪpeɪt] - (verb) - To take part or become involved in an activity. - Synonyms: (engage, join, involve)

What are the standard things that people need to know about AI in order to truly participate in it?

4. computational thinking [ˌkɒmpjuːˈteɪʃənəl ˈθɪŋkɪŋ] - (noun) - A method of problem-solving that involves various techniques derived from computer science. - Synonyms: (analytical thinking, logical reasoning, algorithmic thinking)

We went from recognizing that computational thinking was critical for everybody.

5. exposure [ɪkˈspoʊʒər] - (noun) - The condition of being exposed to something, like information or experiences. - Synonyms: (revelation, disclosure, unveiling)

Almost 70% of people get exposure to AI at work most of the time.

6. nefarious [nəˈfɛriəs] - (adjective) - Wicked or criminal in nature or purpose. - Synonyms: (wicked, evil, villainous)

When we talk about AI, we're often like, that's cheating. It's something bad, it's something nefarious.

7. disparate [ˈdɪspərət] - (adjective) - Essentially different in kind; not allowing comparison. - Synonyms: (distinct, contrasting, divergent)

I started with refugee camps and the most vulnerable. I said, if I could teach in schools where the Internet was disparate, then that meant that any child could learn.

8. empower [ɛmˈpaʊər] - (verb) - To give someone the authority or power to do something. - Synonyms: (enable, authorize, entitle)

I wish that we had even more time with you, but I guess we just have to tune into your podcast for that great conversation and empowering us today.

9. fear mongering [ˈfɪər ˌmʌŋɡərɪŋ] - (noun) - The action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue. - Synonyms: (panic incitation, alarmism, scare tactics)

It's this fear mongering piece that I find very fascinating.

10. revolutionize [ˌrɛvəˈluːʃəˌnaɪz] - (verb) - To make a major change in something, transforming its structure or character. - Synonyms: (transform, overhaul, innovate)

I always say this. It's like, you don't even know what you need, what you want, how you would build something, what the use cases are. And so, like, when are we gonna learn? That's my question. When are we gonna revolutionize something?

Leaders v. learners - It all comes down to AI accessibility

We have to present AI as what I like to call aspirational AI. We to present AI as a tool that you can use to solve Covid climate or cancer. And I think if we present it that way, if we introduce it that way, if we, if we ask girls to use it in that way, I think it will change the game.

It is undeniable that we've moved on from the hype of AI and into the reality of it. In other words, it's here and we'd better start taking advantage of it if we want to keep up. But there is a gap between people who are taking action and those who are still learning, or perhaps fear learning more than that.

Some people are left behind, even though they'd rather not be. So today we're talking to Reshma Saljani, founder of Girls who Code, about what she's doing to ensure that AI is accessible to all. So, Reshma, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you Albert, for having me. Let's start with the basics though. What are the standard things that people need to know about AI in order to truly participate in it? First of all, I always say AI is not going anywhere, right? The question is really about how fast it's really going to change everything about the way that we live and work.

And so I think everybody needs to be able to tinker and to play and to build and create. You know, I always say, like one of the things that people forget even about encoding. We went through this with coding, right? Where we went from having very few girls, very few poor people being able to code, to recognizing that computational thinking, you know, telling a computer what to do was critical for everybody.

And then, you know, because we didn't actually start teaching coding to the most vulnerable from the beginning, we were always trying to play catch up. Well then in that case, if you're not already using it on a day to day basis, are you already behind? Look, I think it's not too late. I think part of it depends. Like I say this as a parent, do I think that my 4 year old needs to be, you know, on ChatGPT right now? Probably not, right? Do I think that like the people who work with me at Moms first need to be playing in building stuff and creating something and understanding AI? Absolutely.

And that's what's interesting. I read a stat somewhere that almost 70% of people get exposure to AI at work most of the time, where people are actually learning what generative AI is, is often at work. So work ends up being that gateway for most people, absolutely. And sometimes people are using it and they don't even know that they are. And I think that's what's been, for me, like one of the big problems that we're trying to solve both at girls who code at Moms first is really the gender gap that is now being created, you know, with Gen AI.

So right now, 50% of men have used Gen AI before, compared to 37% of women. Oh, wow. Right. So you're already starting to see this gap and you ask yourself, well, why is that? Part of the reason why I think you're seeing this gap is because the brand of AI sucks. Right? When we talk about AI, we're often like, that's cheating. You know what I mean? It's something bad, it's something nefarious.

And here's the thing. Women, we're, you know, we're. We basically follow the rules. We don't want to be labeled as cheaters. We don't want to be labeled as doing something we're, quote, not supposed to be doing. And so I think that's one of the reasons why you're often seeing this gap.

And so part of what we think it's important to do is like, bake it into things that, like, you're going to be doing in your everyday life, like banking. Right? You're going to be balancing your checkbook in your everyday life. So if Jenny is already baked into when you go to bankofamerica.com you're already using it.

You know, a tool that we built at Moms first is called Paid Leave AI. And what we find is that oftentimes the people that are searching for whether they have Paid Leave benefits are women. And so then they use the tool Paid Leave AI and like, oh, wow, this is it. Like, it's not scary. It's not something that's bad, it's not something that's nefarious. It's not something you have to be like a math PhD to be able to use. Right. It's accessible, it's available, it's transparent, and it shifts people's consciousness and thinking about AI.

So throughout your work then with young women, what are some of the factors that end up limiting their potential or trying to hinder versus what are some factors that bolster that potential? Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing to remember is that usage is important. So we forget that the world's first programmer was a woman. Ada Lovelace in 1995.

If you went to any gaming camp in America, it would have Been half boys, half girls. When computers became lucrative, you know, when it became cool, we pushed women out. And today, you know, you might actually have more computer scientists in 1995 than you have today.

So ever since then, we've been trying to, you know, we've been basically trying to play catch up. And culture hasn't helped. You know, you watch, like, movies like Weird Science, Revenge of the Nerds, and it's like some, you know, cool guy coder, or not cool guy coder sitting in a basement somewhere, and girls are like, I don't want to. You know, not only do I not want to be him, I don't even want to be friends with him. But the culture of technology turned girls off.

The exact same thing is happening with AI because we present artificial intelligence as a tool that's going to displace workers as a tool that's about cheating. We turn off women off, which is why you're seeing a gender gap in a tool that was only introduced, what, a handful of years ago already. You're already seeing it.

And so to me, the big thing is, how do you change that? Because the reality is AI is here to stay. And how do you meet girls where they're at? So when it came to coding, we knew that if you were trying to. If you portrayed coding as a tool that girls could use to actually solve problems they cared about.

When you talk to a teenage girl, she'll say, when you say, what do you want to do with your life? She'll say, I want to make the world a better place. Maybe her brother's dyslexic or her grandma has diabetes, or somebody in her, you know, in her class is being bullied. She thinks about what she can do to make it better.

So when you present a technology as a tool that you can use to help change, make. We changed the game, Albert. We went from having 20% of young women graduating with a CS degree to today, almost 50%. We have to do the same thing with AI.

We have to present AI as what I like to call aspirational AI. We present AI as a tool that you can use to solve Covid climate or cancer. And I think if we present it that way, if we introduce it that way, if we. If we ask girls to use it in that way, I think it will change the game. But that also means that there have to be examples of AI as a tool for good.

And so that's why I'm so excited about what we've built with paid leave AI. And so I think the Other thing you were asking is, look, if you asked girls, they would have told you that you were going to have deep fakes that AI was going to be used to sexually exploit girls.

So at Girls who Code, it's incumbent upon us to be introducing these tools, getting them comfortable with it, so that they can be change makers in building responsible, good, aspirational AI. You're talking about building change makers. You're talking about building leaders. Yeah. What does it take to be a leader in AI?

First of all, I think anybody can be a leader in AI. I think what it takes right now is making sure that AI is simply not just for those who have wealth, who have access, who have exposure to me. When I built Girls who Code, I started with refugee camps and the most vulnerable. I said, if I could teach there, if I could teach in schools where the Internet was disparate, then that meant that any child could learn how to code.

It's the same thing with AI. You know, right now, you're already seeing a disparity. You know, kids from Title 1 schools, they don't have chatgpt in their classroom, but you better believe that every school, every private school in New York City, the kids have already built their own personal chatgpt.

So to me, you know, if you want to have people that are problem solvers, that are leaders, if you want to solve our biggest and toughest problems, you need to make sure that everybody has exposure to this tool, into this technology. I'm loving where we're going because when we're talking about participants in something, learners in something versus leaders in something, and I know that the data often shows that learners tend to ask for permission before doing something, and leaders tend to do the thing, and then maybe, I don't know, you have to apologize sometimes afterwards.

Where do you sit on that? Are you someone who believes that in order to be a leader in AI, you should be acting first and then think about it later? Or does this require real thought before doing anything? I mean, I'm the girl who started Girls who Code when I didn't even have. You know what I mean? When I didn't even know how to code, you know, as a PI sign major, not a comp Sci major, but I had an idea of a problem that needed to be solved, and I thought I could do it.

So for me, it's the same thing with AI. You know, I. I basically, like I said right now, I lead an organization called Moms First. And so the things that I'm obsessed with is passing paid leave in childcare in America. And right now, one out of four women have paid leave. And the United States is the only industrialized nation that hasn't passed paid leave.

So to me, and part of the reason why is, is that you need to build a movement of parents that are demanding it in order to change it. So right now it's not a federal policy, but nine states in D.C. offer paid leave benefits. So if you live in New York and you know you have a baby, if your employer doesn't offer you paid leave, the state does.

The problem is, is that if you go to the website and you say, am I eligible for paid leave? It's really confusing and you often just give up.

So people instead take their sick days or their vacation days or lose up to $10,000 in wages to basically because they just again give up on whether they know that they're eligible for the benefit.

But now enter AI. This is a great use case for AI because what AI has been able to do is make it simpler. So within five minutes you can learn am I eligible, how much money can I get, and what's my action plan? So you have more people that will file paid leave claims because we've made the process simpler.

And so I had an idea that a tool could be built like this. I reached out to my friend and we just built it. And let me tell you, when we were building that tool, I had no idea what it was, how to build it, but I learned. And in the process I realized that like, oh, I can do this.

I, Rashmi Sajani Poli sci major, law degree major. You know, never took a coding class. I too could build a tool using generative AI to do some good in the world. And that means everybody can. What else can we be doing in order to use AI that would actually be benefiting underserved communities?

I mean, so like to me the benefit space is like ripe. Medicare, Medicaid, snap, right? Anytime a low or moderate income person has to go on a website, student loan forgiveness, anytime you have to go get something that you've already paid into. And listen, let's be honest, it's like when you go to the airport and like the duty free desk is like, you know, in the, you know what I mean?

All the way back there. Like, we sometimes make it so damn hard, but this is real money for people. This is the difference between paying, affording diapers, putting food on the table, making your rent, you know, sleeping in your bed or sleeping in the streets. Yeah. This is real. Yeah.

And so to me, I think everybody in this space should be thinking about, how do I build, how do I use this technology for good? Not just talk about it, but do it. And here's the thing. Because Moms first wasn't a company, we could actually put this tool out there and learn.

And if it wasn't perfect, if it. You know what I mean, got it wrong a couple of times, or if it just. Or if it was real slow, you know, and you're going to get complaints about it, it was okay. And I think right now, as different cities or municipalities have kind of tinkered and played with, like, introducing chatbots that are trying to serve the public.

Oftentimes when that chatbot isn't perfectly executed, they pull it down. And I think, we gotta be open to learning, we gotta be open to failing. We gotta be open to making mistakes. Well, then it's clear, what's in it for underserved communities if we start creating more ways for them to engage in AI but what's in it for the businesses, Reshma?

Like, why should a business invest in making AI accessible? You're not gonna make as much money as you can if you're leaving half the population behind, period.

You know, I always say this. It's like, you know, you don't even know what you need, what you want, how you would build something, what the use cases are. And so, like, when are we gonna learn? That's my question. When are we gonna learn that? Immediately.

When we're trying to revolutionize something, we gotta have women around the table, LGBTQ around the table, poor people around the table, men around. I mean, everybody needs to be sitting around the table thinking about how the technology can be used. When are we going to figure it out? I don't know. I thought you had that answer. You've been working on it. Listen, as they often say, like, we're not going to. We can't wait right now.

It's funny, I think with AI, we're just stuck in this conversation about, is it good, is it bad? You know, should we, you know, yes or no? I mean, I was talking to somebody the other day that, like, it's still banned in schools, which is bananas to me, right? It's here. It ain't going anywhere.

We got to accept it. It's reality. Now the question is, how do we make sure, right, that everybody has access to it? How do we make sure that we do build it responsibly? Right? That we do take. We do take an account of the, you know, for it to do really bad things and how do we stop that from happening? But we can't deny that it's here.

Well, look, we're about 40 years out from when the Internet first came on the scene for us and there are still people in certain communities that don't have access to high speed Internet. 40% of low income Americans still don't have access to high speed Internet. I can't tell you how many girls who co clubs still cannot operate for an entire hour because the Internet goes in and out.

It's ridiculous. And it's often poor people, it's often the most vulnerable. They're the ones that are. Not only do we get them the technology the last, but we scare them the most. It's this fear mongering piece that I find very fascinating. The same thing happened with the Internet.

I mean, I remember when I couldn't use, you know, my computer in my law school class or use Google, right? It was why is it right that the poorest communities were the last to get broadband? And so it's the same thing that's going to happen with AI if we don't change that now.

Is that gap widening or do you think we're still stuck in the conversation of is it good or is it bad? Give me something, give me something positive. What kind of hope? What kind of hope? So much hope.

Here's the thing. You should see the things that my girls are already starting to build and thinking about. Use cases for generative AI in science, in medicine, in education. Think about, for example, if every child who because of the pandemic is now a grade level or a grade level and a half behind, if every single one of them had their own AI tutor, how we could actually close the gap in math and science and reading.

Imagine if every mother, two thirds of the caregiving work is done by women. Imagine if every mother in America had a generative AI tool that helped them do the laundry, make the task, help them, you know, pick up their mom, make sure to remind their mother who needs to take her diabetes pills.

Like it's like, think about all the ways of that. You could use generative AI to make people's lives easier, better. Give me more because now I want to live in Reshma's world.

So can you give me an idea of what does five years into the future look like in terms of what has AI empowered us to do? How have we used this as a tool to create stronger communities but also for us to further each other?

We Know, for example, that what AI is going to do is, as workers, make us more efficient because we live in a capitalist society, and I'm a big believer in it still. I think, though, we have to make sure is that we just don't become a more efficient worker, so we just do more work.

I challenge us to figure out how we can actually use generative AI to solve our biggest problems. How do we use generative AI to make sure that people live longer because they have a better sense. Right. Of their own medical history or they have a better sense of what they can do to have more longevity?

How do we use generative AI to make sure that we help kids with educational gaps that make sure that we close the poverty gap between kids who have and who don't? How do we use generative AI? Like I said, in terms of the issues that I'm working on right now, like childcare and paid leave, how do we use it in terms of, like, benefits to make sure that people are actually.

That we're closing the income gap? I believe that AI can actually help close income gaps. And it's not just going to be through UBI Income. Right. Yeah. It's going to be through the actual tool itself.

What's one piece of advice that you can offer to folks who might still be a little bit timid, a little bit of afraid of approaching using genai? Yeah. And listen, and I don't want to gaslight people on their fear. The fear is real. Right. There are. There are. It could do some really bad things. And we know that.

Right. And we already see that, quite frankly, with, you know, deepfakes. I think the thing is that where we need to move towards is how do we use AI for good? How do we close the access gap before it even gets so big that it's impossible to close?

Now, Reshma, you are using your many talents for good. And I hear that one of those ways is through a podcast. Tell me about this podcast. I'm launching a podcast with Lemonado Media called My Soul, called Midlife. And I am obsessed about this.

And I'm gonna be speaking to amazing women like, you know, Cheryl Strayed and Julia Louis Dreyfus and Justice Ketanji Jackson and Esther Perel. And, you know, so I think a lot of women in their midlife, they've been sold this con that, you know, we're still supposed to be chasing the beauty of the twenties, that the older you get, like, you're done like that it's over.

That every day is Groundhog's day. And so. And I think that that creates a sense with women of, like, is this. But the reality is this could be and should be the best time of our lives because we're wiser. You know, we're at this place, like, I don't give a frick what anybody thinks about me, right?

I'm here or I'm entering the second act of my life that's going to be better than the first act of my life. I have freedom, I have wisdom. I have friends, relationships. And so how do.

But I think for a lot of women, we don't have the playbook to figure out how you even get there. And so this podcast, we're talking to really smart women and academics and celebrities about how midlife is, like, the best time of their life and about some real tips and tricks of, like, what we need to do to make sure that it is.

I wish that we had even more time with you, but I guess we just have to tune into your podcast for that. What a fantastic conversation this has been. Reshma, thank you for sharing your insight for empowering us today. And friends, thank you all so much for tuning on. And we thank you for spending your time with us. And I encourage you, just keep it locked on in. I know you were taking notes on Reshma. You can rewatch this again. All right, so we'll see you again soon.

Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Education, Gender Gap, Inclusion, Generative Ai, Ibm Technology