Speaking of the future of AI, Tech Nation is collaborating with Teens in AI, an Acorn Aspirations initiative, which aims to increase diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence by engaging with young people aged 12 - 18 years and providing them with early exposure to AI for social good. The aim is to democratise AI and create opportunities for underrepresented talent through a combination of hackathons, boot camps, accelerators, expert mentoring and networking opportunities. Now in its 4th year, Teens in AI is running a two-week AI Accelerator for teenagers aged 12-18, where young people will have a chance to address climate change, health & wellbeing and education challenges. Originally founded by Elena Sinel, Founder of Acorn Inspirations, the initiative is a great opportunity for children to positively impact the AI of tomorrow. Diversity and inclusion is a huge goal for the organisation, as children from less privileged backgrounds often can't afford to attend the accelerator, a major part of Sinel's involvement is raising funds for them to be sponsored throughout the course.

Earlier this year, the UK Education Secretary called for the IT industry to work with educators to make "smarter use" of technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), to cut teachers' burgeoning workloads. Speaking at the 2019 BETT educational IT show in London, Damian Hinds said: "Education is one of the few sectors where technology has been associated with an increase in workload rather than the reverse." But he added that, if used wisely, it could also reduce the amount of time educators had to spend on non-teaching tasks, such as lesson planning, marking and general admin. Hinds cited the instance of Bolton College, which has deployed IBM's Watson AI programme as a virtual clerk called Ada. Ada, which can answer natural language questions, provides about 14,000 students with personalised learning assessments and handles queries about the curriculum and attendance issues, both of which teachers would previously have had to do in their own time.