First AI + Education Summit is an international push for “AI fluency”

This summer, 350 participants came to MIT to dive into a question that is, so far, outpacing answers: How can education still create opportunities for all when digital literacy is no longer enough — a world in which students now need to have AI fluency?

The AI + Education Summit was hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with speakers from the App Inventor Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of the City of Boston, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, and more. Highlights included an onsite “Hack the Climate” hackathon, where teams of beginner and experienced MIT App Inventor users had a single day to develop an app for fighting climate change.

In opening remarks, RAISE principal investigators Eric Klopfer, Hal Abelson, and Cynthia Breazeal emphasized what new goals for AI fluency look like. “Education is not just about learning facts,” Klopfer said. “Education is a whole developmental process. And we need to think about how we support teachers in being more effective. Teachers must be part of the AI conversation.” Abelson highlighted the empowerment aspect of computational action, namely its immediate impact, that “what’s different than in the decades of people teaching about computers [is] what kids can do right now.” And Breazeal, director of the RAISE Initiative, touched upon AI-supported learning, including the imperative to use technology like classroom robot companions as something supplementary to what students and teachers can do together, not as a replacement for one another. Or as Breazeal underlined in her talk: “We really want people to understand, in an appropriate way, how AI works and how to design it responsibly. We want to make sure that people have an informed voice of how AI should be integrated into society. And we want to empower all kinds of people around the world to be able to use AI, harness AI, to solve the important problems of their communities.”

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MIT AI + Education Summit 2024: Welcome Remarks by MIT RAISE Leaders, Abelson, Breazeal, and Klopfer
Video: MIT Open Learning

The summit featured the invited winners of the Global AI Hackathon. Prizes were awarded for apps in two tracks: climate and sustainability, and health and wellness. Winning projects addressed issues like sign-language-to-audio translation, moving object detection for the vision impaired, empathy practice using interactions with AI characters, and personal health checks using tongue images. Attendees also participated in hands-on demos for MIT App Inventor, a “playground” for the Personal Robots Group’s social robots, and an educator professional development session on responsible AI.

By convening people of so many ages, professional backgrounds, and geographies, organizers were able to foreground a unique mix of ideas for participants to take back home. Conference papers included real-world case studies of implementing AI in school settings, such as extracurricular clubs, considerations for student data security, and large-scale experiments in the United Arab Emirates and India. And plenary speakers tackled funding AI in education, state government’s role in supporting its adoption, and — in the summit’s keynote speech by Microsoft’s principal director of AI and machine learning engineering Francesca Lazzeri — the opportunities and challenges of the use of generative AI in education. Lazzeri discussed the development of tool kits that enact safeguards around principles like fairness, security, and transparency. “I truly believe that learning generative AI is not just about computer science students,” Lazzeri said. “It’s about all of us.”

Trailblazing AI education from MIT

Critical to early AI education has been the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, a longtime collaborator that helped MIT deploy computational action and project-based learning years before AI was even a widespread pedagogical challenge. A summit panel discussed the history of its CoolThink project, which brought such learning to grades 4-6 in 32 Hong Kong schools in an initial pilot and then met the ambitious goal of bringing it to over 200 Hong Kong schools. On the panel, CoolThink director Daniel Lai said that the trust, MIT, Education University of Hong Kong, and the City University of Hong Kong did not want to add a burden to teachers and students of another curriculum outside of school. Instead, they wanted “to mainstream it into our educational system so that every child would have equal opportunity to access these skills and knowledge.”

MIT worked as a collaborator from CoolThink’s start in 2016. Professor and App Inventor founder Hal Abelson helped Lai get the project off the ground. Several summit attendees and former MIT research staff members were leaders in the project development. Educational technologist Josh Sheldon directed the MIT team’s work on the CoolThink curriculum and teacher professional development. Karen Lang, then App Inventor’s education and business development manager, was the main curriculum developer for the initial phase of CoolThink, writing the lessons and accompanying tutorials and worksheets for the three levels in the curriculum, with editing assistance from the Hong Kong education team. And Mike Tissenbaum, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led the development of the project’s research design and theoretical grounding. Among other key tasks, they ran the initial teacher training for the first two cohorts of Hong Kong teachers, consisting of sessions totaling 40 hours with about 40 teachers each.

The ethical demands of today’s AI “funhouse mirror”

Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, delivered the closing keynote. He described the current state of AI as a “funhouse mirror” that “distorts the world around us” and framed it as yet another technology that has presented humans with ethical demands to find its positive, empowering uses that complement our intelligence but also to mitigate its risks. 

“One of the areas I’m most excited about personally,” Huttenlocher said, “is people learning from AI,” with AI discovering solutions that people had not yet come upon on their own. As so much of the summit demonstrated, AI and education is something that must happen in collaboration. “[AI] is not human intellect. This is not human judgment. This is something different.”

Faces of MIT: Jessica Tam

The MIT Office of the Vice President for Finance (VPF) determines the best ways to allocate funds for the goods, resources, and services that support the research, education, and important work performed by students, staff, and faculty at MIT. The attention to detail and organization of VPF’s staff members help community members understand and use Institute financial resources. One of the 170 staff members in VPF who works hard behind the scenes to make life at MIT more effective is Jessica Tam, senior strategic sourcing analyst, travel and hospitality.

Tam has been in the travel and hospitality industry for over 20 years. She worked for hotels for 15 years before arriving at MIT, leaving one side of hospitality for the other. Tam is well-versed in forming and maintaining relationships with vendors, including travel companies and caterers. Those invaluable skills allowed her to comfortably pivot from what she refers to as “being a supplier” to “being a buyer.”

A member of the strategic sourcing and contracts team, Tam is responsible for everything related to travel and hospitality (catering, dining, tents, and events) that involves purchasing. Knowing how to connect with people is a significant part of her job, as she oversees reaching out to suppliers, both potential and preferred, managing requests for proposals (RPFs), negotiating contracts, securing concessions, and ensuring the best value for MIT travelers and event planners. When assisting with travel accommodations, she troubleshoots issues that a traveler may run into. Tam also answers vendor questions and works very closely with Institute Events.

Even though she is constantly meeting and speaking with new people, Tam notes that the hospitality industry is small. When she came to MIT there was a lot to learn, but knowing the major players in the industry helped her to acclimate quickly into the role. With her expertise, Tam was immediately able to help streamline the hotel side of travel. With her knowledge of the industry, she was able to rebalance MIT’s negotiated rates so that they were competitive and in line with what she believed MIT should be paying.

A significant part of Tam’s job is vetting vendors to be included on the list of MIT preferred businesses. For example, when a staff member asks for VPF’s list of preferred hotels, it comes with expected price points for each that have already been negotiated by Tam, eliminating the need for that staff member to carry out a selection of source — finding two or three other competitive quotes. Terms and conditions have also already been put in place so that after selecting one of the preferred hotels, it is simple to gain approval in the buy-to-pay process. 

In May 2024, Tam received an Excellence Award for Embracing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for a project she began in March 2020 that was put on hold due to the pandemic. The initiative’s purpose was to bring diverse catering options for events taking place at MIT. The preferred catering services list in place when Tam started her job was mostly known, big-box caterers. When she resumed work on the project, Tam issued RPFs to small, local, Black- and minority-owned catering businesses. At the project’s conclusion, Tam had almost doubled the number of preferred caterers available to the community. In her award nomination, colleagues noted that Tam’s work “fosters inclusivity, contributes to the growth and success of our local economy, and brings new, diverse culinary options to our very global community.” 

Soundbytes

Q: What do you like the most about your job?

Tam: I enjoy introducing people to resources at MIT that they did not know existed. Sometimes there is a travel hiccup for a faculty member, and I get them on the next flight. If a catering order does not show up for an event, I check which preferred vendor has availability to come up with bagged lunches on a tight deadline. I’m here to answer questions that make my colleagues’ travel and events as seamless as possible. I want the community to know that I am here to be a resource. It’s a little-known fact that the VPF website is a great tool available to the community that has every possible piece of information not just for travel planning and hospitality, but for expense reports, budget planning, and more. 

Q: What do you like the most about the people at MIT?

Tam: I am a member of the strategic sourcing and contracts team, and everyone is so friendly. When we come together on in-office days it feels like a family. Our Vice President of Finance Katie Hammer is approachable and will ask, “How was your weekend? How are your kids?” I can walk to her office and ask a question, which is nice and probably different from other universities where you might hear about your VP but you could never ask them a question directly or say hello.

I also love that at MIT you might not initially know the accomplishments of the person you are working with. I have been talking to Professor Tod Machover, who is a composer, and it turns out that the popular video games “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” grew out of Machover’s group at the Media Lab — something that never came up in our work conversations. My first year at MIT I had to reach out to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is the inventor of the World Wide Web. You never know who you’re going to meet or talk to.

Q: What advice would you give to a new staff member at MIT?

Tam: Try and meet the people you will work with in person, even if your job is hybrid. This is my first job in higher education, and I had heard that working at a university can feel like you work in a silo. In hospitality I learned that a five- or 10-minute conversation goes a long way, even if it is just to say, “I’m Jessica, I’m in this role, and I look forward to working with you.” When I first started, I found a list of departments and people that I knew I would be working with and visited their offices to introduce myself and have a brief conversation. Meeting in person gives you a good understanding of how people communicate.

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President Kornbluth welcomes the Class of 2028

Addressing MIT’s newest students and their families yesterday, President Sally Kornbluth and several alumni faculty offered some tips about how to thrive at the Institute.

“You belong here,” Kornbluth and others assured the audience, while emphasizing the many ways that the 1,102 members of the Class of 2028 are connected and interdependent.

“All of us together are responsible for the character of our community,” Kornbluth said.

The President’s Convocation took place under a tent on Kresge lawn, on a warm, sunny morning. Kornbluth introduced several of MIT’s senior leaders — Provost Cynthia Barnhart, Chancellor Melissa Nobles, Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education Dan Hastings, Vice Chancellor for Student Life Suzy Nelson — and then offered some guidance of her own.

Kornbluth advised students to take advantage of MIT’s “unmissable opportunity,” the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. She also encouraged students to try new activities and make time for fun, while also acknowledging that the MIT experience can be intense.

“But if you sometimes get frustrated or feel stuck,” Kornbluth said, “please know: We all do! And you don’t have to go it alone. It’s not always easy asking for help, but as everyone up here today will tell you, sometimes the only way to succeed in facing a big challenge or solving a tough problem is to admit there’s no way you can do it all yourself. You’re surrounded by a community of caring people. Please don’t be shy about asking for guidance or help.”

She urged students to care for each other even when disagreeing or having difficult conversations. “At MIT, the work we do is so important, and so hard, that it’s essential we treat each other with empathy and compassion, that we take care to express our own ideas with clarity and respect, and make room for sharply different points of view,” she said.

“Empathy and respect are central values here,” Kornbluth said. “And frankly, they are also skills — skills that we all have to practice, at every stage of life, because they turn out to be vital to every aspect of our success: as an institution, as a community, and as individual human beings.”

Kornbluth was joined by three MIT faculty who had also been students at the Institute.


Isaiah Smith Andrews PhD ’14, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Economics, described the MIT community’s commitment to making the world a better place through “concrete changes we can see, touch, and measure.”

He urged students to consider what they could do to make a better world, not just through new science and engineering advances, but also by figuring out how to ensure those advances benefit humanity. “You’re all here because you’ve excelled, and I know that you will excel here as well,” he said. “I challenge you to follow the MIT tradition and be more than just excellent: I challenge you to be good.”

Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, Institute Professor and vice provost for faculty, recalled that before arriving at MIT, she was excited to join a community of people pursuing their interests in STEM with “true nerdy exuberance.” But, upon arriving, she was intimidated by some of the experiences of her peers. “I was sure I was an admissions mistake,” she said. However, she found her footing by connecting with other students and learning from them.

“You are all meant to be here. You’re all brilliant in a spectacularly diverse set of ways,” she said. “It’s exactly those differences that make MIT a place of excellence and a true foundry of learning and shared knowledge. Without the many perspectives that each of you are bringing here today we don’t learn about new ways to address old problems or how to adjust our lens to see new problems.”

Physics Professor Aram Harrow ’01, PhD ’05 reflected on how unpredictable an educational journey can be — and urged students to embrace that. Harrow wasn’t aware that his own field, quantum computing, even existed when he began college, but he became hooked after attending a seminar with a friend.

He acknowledged some contradictions within the guidance he gives to students: “You’ll notice that I’m saying sometimes you should be flexible and open to new experiences, and sometimes you should fanatically pursue your dreams. That’s why giving advice is hard,” he joked.

But he urged students to seriously consider studying topics they hadn’t expected to. “You never know what will happen,” he said.

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