At the heart of an industrial revolution is an innovation that changes everything. Building AI Boston sees artificial intelligence as a renaissance. From the heart of innovation and the mecha of tech learning, we bring you AI for real people, a conversation for everyone. Our guest today is Charlotte Duncan. Charlotte is an education AI leader who earned her masters in learning and teaching from Harvard. She's built a career at the intersection of education and technology. As the chief learning officer of the Mark Cuban Foundation, AI Bootcamp, she's dedicated to their mission of empowering students of all backgrounds to have the opportunity to harness AI as a tool for learning creativity and career success. Charlotte believes the future belongs to those who can think critically, act ethically, and create with purpose. And today we dive into why it matters to everyone in this rapidly evolving digital world, how we teach our students to embrace an AI-enabled future. Welcome to the show, Charlotte. Yeah, thanks for having me. Have full disclosure, I think this topic is one of the most important topics on planet Earth. And I'm not going to share my complete bias about that, but I really believe that empowering students is the way forward and you're sitting in that epicenter. So thank you, and we're really honored to have you with us. Oh, so glad to be here and to advocate for students in this platform. I'd like to just ask you a really basic question about your why. Why did you become a teacher? Well, I was a computer programmer first, and I did web development and database design back in the dark ages of the 1990s. I know, and then I had kids, and they were three in one, and I looked around, and I went, I want to send them to none of these schools. There was not a single school that I was really excited about where I lived. And so despite having a tech career, I actually went back to school to become an educator and to understand those systems, and then eventually merge those two passions together. That's cool. Were you living in Boston at the time, or did you choose to move here for your studies? Well, no, actually my family is originally from Boston, and so I was there as a child, and then spent some time away. I lived in Ohio for 10 years, currently live in North Carolina, and I went back, I've been back a bunch of times to Boston, both as a Harvard graduate student and an MIT fellow. Nice. I can so relate that I find it really funny that people don't really care about education, and they don't really make the connection that, hey, whether you have kids or not, this is such an important topic, but I really resonate with you on the, I didn't really care about education until I had a dog in the fight when I became a mom, and then I went, wait a minute, and I know that early on, and this is my kid was born in the 2000s, early on, I got her into ed tech, and then I was amazed that at two years old, she could keyboard better than me. I was like, wow, this is a very different world. So, AI in the classroom is controversial, and because I care so much about education, I keep my ear to the ground on it, and I'm just wondering, your program works very differently. You're representing the boot camp, and that is not taking place in the classroom, we'll get into your program and why it's different, but can you share as an educator and also a parent, why you feel like AI is in this questionable territory for most folks? Is it just a bias towards AI in general? Well, I think there's the difference between learning and teaching, and in our org, we actually, we have a big distinction between the two. Learning is what students do when they want to know something, or when they want to change a problem in their community, and so they are self-motivated, they probably have a little bit of fun with that outside of school learning, and they're able to use tools without the restrictions of thinking about a test, or they might still have to cite their sources, or say how they got some information, but they're really free to invent. And in that education environment, there's actually a lot of external factors that are important. We want to know that a credential means something. We don't want to eliminate testing entirely, right? But it's also important to say that we ask students every day to do things that they don't necessarily want to do. And sometimes that doesn't feel great, but it's also really important to expose kids to topics and ideas that are beyond what they would otherwise have in their community. So that's why we have kids take chemistry, that maybe they won't ever become chemists, but they do get to learn how the basic properties of our world work. And AI is the same, like if you're learning outside of school, you may employ these technologies to start a business or solve a problem, or otherwise just extend your learning in an interest area that's outside of school. Maybe it's about how to be great at your favorite video game, or like musicians might use tools to have a backing track that they invent to play with. Where in school, the AI can be appropriate, but it needs those same guardrails that we have for school success, and we need to put teachers in the driver's seat in many ways, or have some regulation to ensure data privacy and that kind of thing. So like the spaces are actually different, but they can be complementary. Where I worry is when we ban AI entirely, and we don't have those important conversations that should happen in school about ethical use and appropriate use. If we just ban it, if we just tell kids it's bad, then they're learning entirely on their own, and we know how that goes. Right, and then they won't have the advantage to knowing how to use these tools. So that they can be better prepared for them in the workplace, because they're here. They're not going to. That's the next digital divide who has empowered AI use and who doesn't. So what tell us, so digital divide, like what does that mean? And what and how do you see the AI sort of the coming of AI, or it's already here, perhaps exacerbating that, or maybe not if we approach it differently? Well, I mean, if you think about, there's this amazing old commercially, you'll have to look it up on YouTube, where students are given tasks to solve, you know, answer questions academically, and they're on two sides of a stage. And one side, they're searching for the information, and they come up with the answers and the other side. They're doing the same thing, but as an audience member, you can see on the left, they have computers, and on the right, they have encyclopedias. So that same type of information, whether or not we have access to AI, or if we're using, we see some teachers going back to paper and pencil, and there's a place for that. I'm not saying no paper and pencil, but there is also a place to understand, use, site with AI, and, you know, accelerate what you know, because many workplaces are looking for those AI skills. We see examples that do a lingo and Accenture, for example, where they're saying, you know, the AI first is our priority. I think maybe we shouldn't say AI first. That's probably one step too far for me, but AI forward. So we don't want schools to be on the bleeding edge, but we want them to be AI forward enough that their students have the AI opportunities that are aligned to the markets in their region. So that means if you're out in a rural area, and you have, you're started by forestry, you probably need environmental AI, and conversations about the science related to that, rather than, you know, for a workforce that isn't in that region. Well, one of the cool distinctions that I want to bring out about the program that you work in the bootcamp is it's not, there's no question, it's valuable, and it doesn't right now tackle the major hurdle of, can we get this into the classroom? You are entirely run with teachers and volunteers, and Corp. sponsors, which is fantastic. And I think this is a model that works. This is why I'm happy to highlight you, but can we talk about the program and how it takes place? Go ahead and give us the nuts and bolts. Sure. So it's free for all students. And by free, we mean really free. So we provide technology, we provide the space. It's outside of school, so it's a cool corporation. Maybe you've walked into a corporation that had quarters for your very first time. Sometimes they're at universities, but they're never in the school. And so they're the mentoring relationships are really low. We have four to one to six to one professionals working with these students. So like every group basically has an adult to help them. And they get a ride, they get lunch. It's on Saturday, so they can participate over three weeks. It's 20 hours of instruction. And they have to be in a location within 30 miles of a bootcamp location. So right now, the biggest hurdle is how do we get more rural? How do we get across the country into smaller markets? And so we are diversifying our model with boys and girls clubs in a pilot right now. It's really important that we reach every kid. Right now, we have these great partners. And I think the fact that we're in a space where we hope someday a kid will walk back through the doors and look at the poster on the wall and say, oh, I got my start here. That's exciting. I really love that. And I've done a lot of non-profit with kids. And I know that sometimes even taking kids to a different side of the city and putting them in a park that they've never had the opportunity to go to. And they think, I didn't even know the world was as beautiful. And you've taken them five miles, 10 miles, like the aha and the opening. So I can just imagine what your program offers in terms of walking in, like you say, to a corporation or a building and going, here's where you belong. You're the future. Let's go. And as I'm, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. And is that, so I'm very intrigued by the purposefulness of not being in schools, right? Because that probably would have been the easiest tools to have after school programs or whatever. So tell us a little more about that. I mean, is that what you were talking about before with it's teaching versus learning and it kind of gives a different environment? Tell us more about that. Yeah, it's a different environment, but it's also structured very differently. So we have these professionals. They're not educators. So they don't have the same vibe as a teacher. And they can speak to different concerns that students have. So we have a conversation card deck. It's like a actual playing card deck with 52 cards. And it has conversation starters. Because these high school kids are big. They're actually quite intimidating if you're a tech professional who isn't used to youth. So we help them have these facilitated and guided conversations about topics like how did you get from high school to your current career? Or what was the hidden curriculum? Like how did you know what to wear your first day? And some of those things that are incredibly valuable but also not in a standard curriculum. And then also like understanding that the path is not straight is the number one thing that our mentors give to our students. It's like there's very few stories of I had a plan at 16 and I am 30 now executing that plan. Crazy. I think it's crazy that we make kids choose what their career is and then say, the only track is to go to school. And if you're lucky, it's Ivy League. I think we just psych them out from the get go. So this is like this this warm spire that you're having real conversations. Kara and I have some experience in this. We were at a college locally WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And we were on a panel talking about the future of the workforce. In in AI and I am not a tech person whatsoever. And Kara is a tech founder. And I think the eyes lit up the most when we said, well, we didn't start out this way. And this is certainly not what we trained for and welcome to the club because there's all these data scientists, biotech students and thinking, where's my future? And we're like, guess what? Nobody knows. We're creating it together. So it sounds like your program is a version of that but very purposeful as Kara said. Very intriguing to me that you have conversations like, what AI is and what AI isn't. I mean, how eye opening is that? Do you want to talk about that at all or? Sure. The one thing we do is we give students, especially on day one, a foundational knowledge about AI. And there is a big difference between like, they all have used CHAPGPT. That's super common now. But we also point out where AI may be invisible to them. And that can be your cell phone camera that magically takes pictures in the dark. Like, do you remember the old days where you needed a special apparatus in order for that to happen? Well, that processing is AI. The also like selection algorithms that exist in their world. We kind of point out that they exist. Like, how did YouTube know what you wanted to watch next? Or how did those ads get to you? Or what influences in your community are happening because of an algorithm? And then like, the flip side of that is like, there are a lot of things that aren't AI. So like, you can ask an AI to be a creator. It can generate things for you. But ultimately, the essential important part is right here in the humanity. And there's like just normal coding that does not have a predictive algorithm in it. So you can have computers that don't have AI. And so we try to show them ways to use AI and also to create with AI and then also to not give up those other things that aren't AI that may also accelerate you. So this year, the bootcamp, we're focusing on doing something for real. I think a lot of times we talk to kids about projects. Or we have them come up with an idea. So we're asking them to actually do something. And that's where you get at the multitude of tools and activities that you can do to become a creator. And ultimately, that's what we value. That's very cool. Yeah. That's so cool. And I love that they can walk out with something that they've built, and that it's not just theoretical because we'll circle back later and talk about a particularly cool tool that one of your students built. But right now in Boston, it's October 1st, so as we're recording this, and it's Boston AI week. So there's like 110 AI events going on across the city. And so I've been hanging out with a lot of cool people and talking about a lot of interesting things. And one of the themes that's coming up and I just love your thought on this, is that AI is kind of introducing, oddly enough, a technical advance like this is introducing, actually, the need to be good at human skills. Because if AI is going to be taking over more of the sort of computational or things that you still require a lot of human effort, the software skills become actually more important. And was talking to one of our last guests from Cargoo Roo's Progshaw. He was talking about, as he sees engineering students coming out and looking for jobs at Cargoo Roo's, they're lacking, some of them are lacking sort of the interpersonal skills. So does your, it sounds like your approach is, even though it is tech, you're not teaching the tech. You're teaching how to interact with the tech. And I feel like that could be getting at one of the biggest things that's coming for the workforce is knowing how to get back to being human. I don't know, could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So the first thing to realize is that all of the students in high school today have been COVID kids. And they've also been in high school, all forever for the whole high school career where AI existed. Their frame of reference only goes back to 2018. Like they were, they were a little kid in 20. Yeah. So their whole frame of reference is different and that includes interpersonal skills. So they have relationships on discord. They're having, they don't like email, right? They have a different frame. And it's okay to acknowledge that, but those essential personal skills haven't changed. So the bootcamp, we not only give them these hours of in-person instruction, but we have what we call the alumni network and that's after bootcamp. You don't leave us. You actually stay with us until you graduate. And students have many opportunities to continue learning. So we have technical lessons and mentors that come. And if you're actually building something for real, we'll plug you in with a professional that'll help you continue on your journey. But one of the things we offer is called the Ambassador Program. And this is an application program for our students who a small subset of them are chosen and we continue to develop their leadership capabilities. They practice public speaking. They, we just had some girls this spring in New York City who presented at the stock exchange. They'll be in California and doing an important event out there in February. And they sometimes come to podcasts and things like that. So we do think that those skills of communication collaboration are super vital. And we give them lots and lots of opportunities to practice it. So if they're building something, they're having meetings, they're connecting. They're also doing outreach in their community to share about that boot camps for future years because you can't come back unless you're an ambassador. And then you can go as Alper. So we are trying to build those other skills as well. And that's why there's like a group component to creating something in our boot camp. However, this year we're trying to see if we can work alone. Mark thinks maybe the next, you know, the next big thing will be from us, a kid alone with an AI in their garage. So we're going to try a single project and see how it goes. I love that. I love that you've embraced it. And you know, I'm lucky enough to peer into the Boston environment. We have some incredible education leaders and another former guest of ours is Mike Grandinetti, who teaches the Harvard, you know, business extension class. And his most exciting project is teaching high school students. And I will tell, I've told him, I've told Kara, my purpose in building this show is that I believe in the good, well hunting model that genius exists everywhere. So while I think what Mike does is great, he's crushing it, given the kids a green light to build and teaching them what it is is fantastic for those Harvard students, what I guess I'm circling back to you, Charlotte, is that you believe that opportunity exists and should exist for everyone. So how many cities are you in right now? Currently you're in about 30. Is that right? 30, that's right. Yeah, really impressed that you have something for everyone because you truly are reaching out to a wide variety of areas. You want to get more rural. Can you talk about why your program covers and has something for everyone? It's not just kids that want to be, you know, into technology. It's a lot of different ground that you cover. Yeah, I think kids who come to our camps generally have some interest in technology, but they're not sure how it plugs into their lives. So we offer six tracks for learning and students have an opportunity to explore before they choose and complete their project based on one of them. So that includes arts and entertainment. There are three sub tracks in there. Those are visual arts, 3D arts and gaming and music. And then we have business and entrepreneurship and that is just straight up create your business. We will help you ecology and food security. So those are about, you know, environmental issues or how to make sure we feed the world sports and fitness that allows students to enhance their own performance or their teams performance using AI. And we also talk about what happens when some people have access to those AI technologies in high school and others don't. I think you'd be surprised how often AI is now being employed in sports like volleyball, their nationwide. We also have AI in healthcare because we find that our students tend to want to be interested in healthcare careers and we're seeing a lot of AI across the healthcare space. And then AI and computer science is the only area where you need to have prior, you know, instruction in computer science. Perhaps you were able to take a class at school. And so we try to keep a very low floor. We assume that a ninth grader has not had any advanced science or computer science, but then a very high ceiling so that whatever your interest is, you can take it as far as, you know, you can go in the hours that you're with us. I think it's amazing. I want to talk a little bit about a superstar that's come up lately. One of your graduates from the program has grabbed the attention of Time Magazine as Time Magazine's kid of the year. Her name is Tejasim Anosh. And she came, she's a great story. She, I believe it came from her, her grandparents at being taken advantage of on an online scam. Do you want to tell that story about your stellar graduate? Yeah, so Tejasie, first I want to give a shout out. She's had a lot of support and a lot of programs. But she did write to us when she won Time Kid of the Year and said, your program was so helpful to give me the AI knowledge that I needed to build into my project. And so she's just helping make sure that a seniors are safe online, that they are less at risk of being scammed. And she's going to go far. Like we're really, really proud of her being an alum and also an ambassador. So she was in her more advanced application-only program. That's so cool. Yeah, and I can imagine the parents out there saying, oh my gosh, how do I get my kid into this program? And I think like I listen or ship, we have a pretty broad listenership. But there's also a lot of technology like gurus here in Boston and all around who maybe thinking, gee, I'd love to get involved as a helper. So yeah, I don't know if you have any advice on what's the best route if they, and how do we get you to Boston? What do you need? Well, the first thing I need is a company. We need a company that will have this space and welcome these kids three weekends in November. The second thing is like, although it's great that you want this for your kids to look left and right and see what other kids we can invite from the community, they can't otherwise opt into this. So we do have an application process that does allow for the best application is going to win. But if we have the same level of applications and we have a whole bunch of them, we do look at are these first generation college students? Are they low income students? And we tend to just slightly give those kids a bump so that they can have an opportunity that they wouldn't otherwise have. So the first thing is to bring a bootcamp to your region and you can connect with me to do that. And then the second thing is to make sure that we have a broad application pool. Great. That's awesome. Thanks in our show notes. And surely we want to have you come back. We recognize this is a really busy season for you leading up into November and that you're a very busy woman and we're honored that you could be with us. Is there any final words that you have? I would say this and then I'll let you maybe comment or take it wherever you want to go. But one of the things I'm encouraged about most is that the kids that I see care very deeply about ethics. They care very deeply and they're very loyal to their family wherever they are. They're very concerned about the world. And I just feel like helping them and empowering them and helping them understand it's not some dystopia. You really have a shot at it. I really believe in the democracy of giving everybody a shot to understand how the future depends on them. That's obviously part of your passion but you have any closing thoughts on that. Yeah, for the listeners out there, if you have teens in your life, have a conversation with them about what they're seeing in their schools and their communities and with their peers because they often have a very different perspective than what you and I see. And that perspective is valuable because they are our future. And they may have insights that are surprising or unexpected for you. They may also have concerns and that's a great time to have a conversation about potentially the negative parts of AI and how they can both protect themselves online, keep their data safe, protect their friends, and feel empowered rather than afraid of the future. Yeah, Cara, you're a mom too. Do your kids weigh in on this? I know my kids, my kid and her friends are not really excited about AI. They're in the arts. They feel like it's going to be a showdown between creators and AI. And I'm like, wow, you know, mom's got this podcast that learns otherwise, but I'm with you. I'm sure I have to listen to that and have to understand her fear, you know, and she's very thoughtful and gets a lot of information. She's very critical in her thinking about it. But Cara, do you see that at all in your kids? Yes. My son who is not a music, he's 16, one of my sons, and he's not a musician at all, but he's taking like an electronic music class right now. And so he's actually just really having fun creating music, using AI, which is something he would probably never do on his own. He's not going to be a musician, you know, but it's just it opens up this creative part of him. But where I think I personally get super excited and hopeful is, you know, like we're talking about the digital divide and AI could either exacerbate it or it could help fix it. And I sure hope, you know, with programs obviously, like the Mark Cuban Foundation, we're leaning more into the closing of the gap than widening it. So, but it has to be intentional, right? And we all have to agree that that's what we're going to do now. And it's up to us and the kids are going to push us because they, they do have more of a fairness meter than some of us do. Yeah. But Carol, like what you said, you what AI did for your son was take a non musician and help move forward in his musical journey. A lot of times AI raises the floor. Like who, who can access information? So there are places in the world where there are millions of teachers that just are not, our jobs unfilled and those are students that have no educator. But AI can fill the gap. Now, do I think we should have all AI teachers? Absolutely not, right? But for no teacher versus some access, I'll take some access every day. So I think a lot of times AI is an accelerator for the lowest tier of, whatever you're trying to learn. And then also at the highest end. So what we want to do is keep people in the driver's seat of AI. We want them, they call them centars, right? Like you got the human on the top and you got the legs, those legs going at the bottom. Yeah. And AI can really propel you if you're an expert because you can like get that first draft and then edit it. But you know the parts that you want to edit. And in music, you've got like what happened with, you know, hip hop and sampling. We get to do something like that again that's fine, right? But what we miss is the middle where if you're not an expert, but maybe you're trusting it or your someone is forcing you to use it, it's never going to be the tutor that someone just plugs you into. Unless you're the top five percent of students who you're going to, whatever tool they give you, you're going to learn it. But we need the middle, right? Where you're safe, where you're, you know, you're able to benefit from this technology. I worry about the middle more than anything else. Yeah. Well, that's the cause that you've taken up. I can see it. I mean, otherwise we stand on the sideline and spin the dialogue and nothing gets done. And the fact that I can go to a bootcamp and watch it in action and see you working your magic. Charlotte, again, we're going to follow you. So listeners don't think this is a one and done. Charlotte, please come back and share the good news. We're going to follow your evolution. We believe in you. We believe in people are going to want to join you. So we will again drop the links in our, in our notes and show notes. And thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us. Happy to be here. Let me bring a student next time. Yeah. Now you're talking. We're going to hear right from the horse's mouth. Okay. Well, this is a great conversation. We hope you like and subscribe and have these conversations with your kids. I love that takeaway. Charlotte, it's been really enlightening. Thank you so much. Thanks for that. Thank you for joining us on building AI Boston. Stay tuned for more enlightening episodes that put you at the forefront of the conversations, shaping our future.
