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.
“Starting in September, we are bringing AI literacy programming to BPS high schools, with a goal for our students to graduate proficient in understanding how to use the tools in front of them and ready for the world ahead — able to leverage it to take them further in school, in their careers and life,” Wu added.
In her remarks, Wu stressed that there would be no use of BPS families’ data, and that new BPS programming would involve teachers and students engaging actively and critically with AI rather than passively allowing AI tools to do work on their behalf.
“We … recognize the challenges, the risks and pitfalls that can happen with such a quickly evolving situation and as we’re headed into new territory,” she said. “So this programming is really holistic. It recognizes that every one of our students and every one of our community members deserve a good-paying, dignified job and a community grounded in human connection, with the tools to help support that in every way possible. And so part of the curriculum that [we’ve] already been planning and mapping out is really grounded in ethics, and grounded in understanding how to maintain and develop creativity [and] leadership and enhance the learning that’s happening, not replace or substitute for it.”
English said his $1 million seed grant will fund training for one teacher from each of Boston’s roughly two dozen high schools. Those teachers, who will be selected by BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper, will train this summer in an AI curriculum to be developed by UMass Boston and a local industry group, with AI instruction at the high school level beginning this coming fall. As part of the push, some BPS students will be able to take AI courses at UMass Boston.
In his remarks, English suggested that the new initiative will help cement Boston’s status as an “AI-forward city,” and will also have a beneficial trickle-down effect in the years to come.
“This will not only help the students in terms of becoming better students, using AI interactively to quiz them, keep them up to date, help them where they might miss something in the classroom and really working with the teachers,” English said. “It’s also going to help their families.”
“Many times [with] new technology over my career, it’s the young people who bring new technology in,” he added. “I look forward to the students of Boston Public Schools teaching their parents how to use AI and how they should think about AI ethically, how to tell when AI is not accurate, and how to use AI critically.”
The announcement of Boston’s new program comes a month after Gov. Maura Healey announced that Massachusetts residents would be able to take free artificial intelligence and career certificate classes from Google, a move Healey said would help make the state “the applied AI capital of the United States.”
While Wu stopped short of setting a similar bar for Boston at Thursday’s event, she made it clear that she has high expectations for what the new BPS program could become with the passage of time.
“The BPS programming will also deepen the relationships with our larger industry and with partners in the business community,” Wu said. “So our AI industry advisory board, chaired by Paul and Ellen Rubin, operating partner at Glasswing Ventures, will be made up of leaders from Boston-based companies on the cutting edge of AI.
”They will help give feedback on the programming, help provide access to opportunities, advise our educators and students and help organize learning opportunities for students to see things directly, hands on, out in the community. We’re envisioning everything from guest speakers and site visits to hackathons and internships.”
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.
