Prepping the next generation for the AI future

Alex Kotran was sounding the alarm on the need for AI education before ChatGPT made it cool.  After starting his career in the political space during the Obama administration, Kotran transitioned into the education realm with his 2019 creation of AI Education, or aiEDU, a group aimed at giving instruction on artificial intelligence to K-12 students.  As his organization was working through the coronavirus pandemic to convince schools and investors of the utility of AI in classrooms, OpenAI was creating the AI tool that would eventually propel the issue into the national spotlight, ChatGPT.  “The challenge of preparing Americans for the age of artificial intelligence is not a technical problem. It’s a social, political, societal problem,” Kotran, co-founder and CEO of aiEDU, told The Hill in a recent interview.  The world of AI blew up in the public eye at the end of last year, when ChatGPT was released and almost immediately had millions of users exploring the new technology, growing faster than Instagram did when it first became available. ChatGPT shook the education world in particular — students figured out how to use it to help with their assignments, and teachers raised concerns about academic honesty.  At that point, Kotran’s aiEDU was already in hundreds of schools. Now, hundreds more are on the waitlist to bring the program into their classrooms. Despite getting its start amid a global pandemic, aiEDU was able to grow substantially, reaching 3,000 students in its first year and between 20,000 to 30,000 in its…Prepping the next generation for the AI future