Mayor Michelle Wu is launching a new program she says will make Boston the first major city in the U.S. to ensure that all high school graduates are proficient in artificial intelligence.
The push is funded by a $1 million seed grant from Paul English, a tech entrepreneur who co-founded the travel website Kayak as well as an activist behind Embrace Boston. He is also a graduate of Boston Public Schools who helped found the Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute at UMass Boston.
“This is a public-private partnership between city government, higher education and industry that will position Boston Public Schools as a leader in AI fluency, as well as the understanding of all of our students to recognize the full context of this world,” Wu said in a press conference at the Eliot K-8 Innovation Upper School in the North End….
…’Erik Berg, the president of the Boston Teachers Union, struck a guardedly optimistic note when discussing the BPS AI push with GBH News later in the day.
“As we understand this initiative, which we only learned about a few hours ago, it provides for some professional development for educators in the use of AI, which we support,” Berg said. “But the jury’s out about whether … that’ll be the most effective training.”
Berg also said the BTU believes that everyone using AI needs to learn to use it ethically; that data security needs to be aggressively safeguarded; and that new educational initiatives that rely on one-time grants raise the “question of, when that funding runs out, [whether] progress is sustainable.”
“That’s another thing that we hope the school department and the city have given some thought to,” Berg said.’