To inspire the creation of innovative solutions, workshops such as "Machine Learning in Medicine," "Will Biotech Save the World?

A summer program at Stanford University introduced high school girls to artificial intelligence this summer. Among the activities they learned more about were flying drones, how autonomous cars work, diving robots and machine learning for healthcare. The two-week AI program was developed last year by Olga Russakovsky, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher, and Fei-Fei Li, associate professor of computer science and director of Stanford's AI Lab. They were motivated by a "desperate" need to bring more women into the field. As Li told the girls during their first day, as explained in a blog entry, AI could in the future become the "Terminator next door," or follow a more humane direction, based on the people behind the scenes doing the research and development work.