Oakland startup helps kids play with artificial intelligence
Christine Nguyen has led robotics competitions for a decade. As director of STEM education for the Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, she knows these competitions are grueling and typically require tons of preparation.
So when Ms. Nguyen found out last year that she had two weeks to help a group of young children — most in elementary school — prepare for a robotics event, she was floored. “... I was like, are you kidding? We have to get these kids ready, who haven’t done coding, in two weeks?”
The competition was put on by ReadyAI, an Oakland-based startup creating science, technology, engineering and math curriculum. ReadyAI’s approach to STEM is to introduce as many young children to artificial intelligence as early as possible.
If kids are constantly asking Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, for help with math problems or to tell them a joke, anyway — the thinking goes — why not help them understand the underlying technology at work?
As AI becomes more mainstream, it offers countless opportunities for students to learn skills that they may take to the workforce. It also offers an incentive for more companies to move into the K-12 STEM education space to both meet a need and reap a profit.
Except, there isn’t much AI curriculum in STEM education.
Carnegie Mellon University research professor Dave Touretzky said artificial intelligence in the STEM education space is practically nonexistent in the U.S, while countries like China have been at it for years.
“There is no AI in STEM ... almost none,” he said. “People are just now starting to wake up.”
A global market opportunity
Artificial intelligence, at its core, is a field of computer science that uses codified rules — called algorithms — to help machines complete tasks that typically must be done by a human.
While AI’s roots reach back to the 1950s, it’s only recently become pervasive in the culture as voice assistants creep into more U.S. homes each year and as smartphones get smarter.
To keep up with the pace of innovation, children must be acquainted with the technology at a young age, said Andrew Chen, president of ReadyAI.
The point is not necessarily to teach them to code and create their own artificial intelligence program, as that’s still pretty ambitious, but rather to inspire curiosity.
“As current K-12 kids grow up … we don’t know how AI and humankind will interact,” Mr. Chen said. “That really is the biggest driving force. We really want as many young kids as possible to know about AI ... rather than being afraid.”
The market for artificial intelligence education in the classroom is expected to grow significantly by 2024, when analysts believe it will be worth $6 billion, according to 2018 research from Global Market Insights, a Selbyville, Del.-based market research firm.
Of that growth, about 20 percent — or $1.2 billion — is expected to come from applications in K-12 education.
In 2017, the entire market for artificial intelligence education, including corporate training and higher education, was about $400 million.
ReadyAI, which was established in January 2018, is wholly owned by WholeRen, another Oakland-based company where Mr. Chen serves as chief learning officer. He did not disclose specific financials for ReadyAI.
Despite the growing market opportunity, Mr. Chen said his goal isn’t to make a bunch of money. At least, not in the U.S.
Instead, he thinks there’s more room to profit from the other two market segments ReadyAI is carving out.
In Europe and the Middle East, he said, the goal is to help kids get on board with artificial intelligence so that they don’t fall behind their U.S. counterparts. Mr. Chen foresees opportunities for both business and government to come up with AI education solutions.
And in China, many ambitious companies want “to use AI as a springboard to surpass the U.S. in the next couple of years.” Mr. Chen said ReadyAI is being careful as it moves into the China market, but added that there are plenty of wealthy parents in the big cities willing to pay for private tutors or afterschool programs.
“The Chinese are ahead of us, they’re already starting to publish K-12 textbooks for AI,” Mr. Touretzky agreed. “I’m not aware of any of those [in the U.S].”
Robotics for second-graders
ReadyAI, which has four full-time staff members, is piloting its “AI-In-A-Box” kit with local school districts and organizations that offer after-school programs, like the Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania.
Each set contains three Cozmo robots, created by Anki, a San Francsico-based startup launched by graduates of CMU’s Robotics Institute. The palm-sized bots have animated, happy eyes that emote as you interact with them.
Also included in the kit are three game controllers, three laptops and three Amazon Fire tablets, plus all the necessary software. The listed retail price for one kit is $2,999 and it should serve six to 15 students. The Boys & Girls Club is using the kit at no cost.
Through software created by Mr. Touretzky of CMU, called Calypso, students can learn how the Cozmo robots recognize their faces and older kids can write basic programs to make them perform actions.
“What I was trying to do is make Ph.D. level robotics available to 8-year-olds,” he said.
Younger kids, on the other hand, do more of the imagining and they complete creative exercises.
In both cases, students learn the basics of six different aspects of AI: visual recognition, object manipulation, facial recognition, speech generation, speech recognition and landmark-based navigation.
It’s not a perfect solution just yet, said Ms. Nguyen at the Boys & Girls Club. The order in which certain concepts are laid out in the kits don’t always make intuitive sense to the kids and sometimes confuse them.
Still, she’s glad students at the after-school program who come from financially strapped school districts will have a more equal playing field.
“We have kids with very limited exposure to a lot of STEM right now, which seems ridiculous,” Ms. Nguyen said. “It is a very low cost ... in order to start understanding what robotics and AI looks like.”
That competition last year ended up being different from her previous experiences with robotics programs. Targeted to younger children, it didn’t dive deeply into building and programming, but allowed them to experiment with creative ideas for the robot.
AI curriculum for all
While under the direction of Andrew Moore, former dean of the School of Computer Science, CMU — known for its artificial intelligence and robotics research — had set a goal of introducing AI concepts to K12 students.
A group of scientists, including Mr. Touretzky, was interested, Mr. Chen explained, but the university didn’t have an effective way to deliver the content. That’s not the age group it specializes in. CMU does not have a program to train future teachers, either, Mr. Touretzky noted.
So Mr. Chen paired up with Mr. Touretzky to license his software for the AI-In-A-Box kit. A self-proclaimed “bad businessman,” Mr. Touretzky also offers the Calypso software on his company’s website for just $14.99.
Assuming a household already has a Cozmo, which can be bought at Target for $180 each, a set of both the robot and computer program costs just under $200. You would also need a laptop and a tablet to create your own kit for one child.
That appears to be a less expensive option, so why purchase a ReadyAI kit?
Mr. Touretzky said schools typically prefer to purchase all equipment necessary for a given kit or module from one vendor, so they only have to cut one check — it makes the approvals process easier. Plus the kit includes the curriculum.
ReadyAI is still just a pilot and not widely used. And Mr. Touretzky said he isn’t aware of many other companies developing “legitimate” artificial intelligence educational tools, nor many schools teaching the concepts yet.
He’s leading an effort in conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Computer Science Teachers Association to develop national guidelines for teachers that will help them create AI-based curriculum.
Mr. Touretzky said the working group will release its recommendations this summer.
He expects to see more AI curriculum popping up over the next two years.
When computers were first invented, he said, they were ridiculously expensive, complex and usually used by Ph.D. students and researchers.
“There was a time when schools thought they couldn’t afford computers, but now you can’t have a school without computers,” Mr. Touretzky said. “We’re going to see the same thing happen with robotics and artificial intelligence.”