AI for Good as SL

Our Service-Learning class is learning how to use AI (artificial intelligence) for a good cause.  They will be teaching AI to communities in three places during the winter break: Yunnan in Mainland China, Manila in the Philippines, and Phnom Penh in Cambodia.  They will be teaching young people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to learn about this exciting technology which is said to hold great promise for so many areas.  Out teams will be teaching them to use easily accessible tools to develop AI applications. And they will learn how AI can help people.  

Hence our students are learning how to train an AI to play popular games, specifically rock-paper-scissors.  Starting by recognising hand gestures for rock, paper and scissors. The technique, obviously, can be easily extended to recognise other things, play other games, etc.

They are also learning how AI can be trained to assist a blind person to recognise flags for different countries.  This way AI can help a blind person do common tasks such as to mail a letter.  The perhaps other types of tasks as well.  

The students in this class come from all disciplines, not just computer science or engineering.  But in a few weeks’ time, they can all learn how to train and program an AI to do these tasks.  They also learn how to teach other people - young children in this class - to do that.  All in one semester.  Then during the winter break, three teams will travel to Yunnan, Manila and Phnom Penh, for one week, to carry out their service-learning project.  

Out students learn to serve, to train an AI, to use AI for good, to teach others about AI, to work with other people, to connect with people different from themselves, and to discover about themselves. 

The children they serve learn about the exciting technology AI, hopefully getting more excited about technology and learning.  And in the process, appreciate that technology can and should be used for good.  

We are excited about this whole thing.  And grateful that we can be part of the movement. Such is the power of service-learning, and particularly impactful, cross-cultural service-learning.