A programming language textbook might not be the first thing you'd expect to see when walking into a correctional facility. The creators of the Brave Behind Bars program are hoping to change that. Founded in 2020, Brave Behind Bars is a pandemic-born introductory computer science and career-readiness program for incarcerated women, based out of The Educational Justice Institute at MIT (TEJI). It's taught both online and in-person, and the pilot program brought together 30 women from four correctional facilities across New England to study web design. One of the co-founders, Martin Nisser, a PhD student from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), explains the digital literacy and self-efficacy focused objectives: "Some of the women haven't had the opportunity to work with a computer for 25 years, and aren't yet accustomed to using the internet. We're working with them to build their capabilities with these modern tools in order to prepare them for life outside," says Nisser.

One of the co-founders, Martin Nisser, a PhD student from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), explains the digital literacy and self-efficacy focused objectives: "Some of the women haven't had the opportunity to work with a computer for 25 years, and aren't yet accustomed to using the internet. We're working with them to build their capabilities with these modern tools in order to prepare them for life outside," says Nisser. Even for the students who became incarcerated more recently, it can be difficult to keep up with the fast pace of technological advances, since technical programs in correctional facilities are few and far-between. This scarcity of preparatory programs undoubtedly contributes to high and rising recidivism rates: More often than not, those who are released from prison eventually return. While working at TEJI, Nisser had a fortuitous meeting with his two co-founders, Marisa Gaetz (a PhD student from MIT's Department of Mathematics) and Emily Harburg (co-founder of Brave Initiatives, a nonprofit that develops coding bootcamps for young women).

How developers are humanizing their virtual personal assistants. The virtual personal assistant is romanticized in utopian portrayals of the future from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It's the cultured, disembodied voice at humanity's beck and call, eager and willing to do any number of menial tasks. In its early real-world implementations, a virtual receptionist directed customers ('To hear more menu options, press 9′). It wasn't until 2011 that Apple released Siri and the public had its first interactions with a commercially viable, dynamic personal assistant. Since Siri's debut with the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple's massive customer base has only gotten larger; the company estimates that more than 700 million iPhones are currently in use worldwide. Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana debuted in 2014; Google Assistant followed in 2016.