A Summer Camp With a Long Plan: Keeping Bias Out of Artificial Intelligence

Anaya Bussey didn't know much about "artificial intelligence" when she arrived at a camp at Princeton University earlier this summer other than that "it was definitely blowing up." But after just three weeks here she and other students--all incoming high school juniors--teamed up to use the technology to help diagnose melanoma by looking at skin lesions. Bussey, 15, who is from the Bronx borough in New York City, has been interested in computer science since she was in elementary school. But there have been times when she's been one of only a handful of girls--or black students--in a computer class or program. That wasn't the case at the Princeton summer camp, run by AI4ALL, a two-year-old nonprofit that seeks to increase diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, and policy.