At Make-It Springfield, teens learn possibilities, pitfalls of AI
SPRINGFIELD — Teens in the AI Innovators class Saturday at Make-It Springfield got to try out image generation, competing to see who could use written commands to coax a digital tool into spitting out an image most closely matching a real-life sculpture.
They also checked out This Person Does Not Exist . It's a random face generator used by both the curious and the nefarious.
Most of the students — ages 12 to 17 — said they've already been digitally accosted by social media accounts masquerading behind computer-generated faces, said Erica Rachel Andrews, who taught the class.
"How do you think this could be used to deceive people?" said Andrews, president of Springfield.community. "They were definitely connecting the dots."
Springfield.community President Erica Rachel Andrews shows the software Stable Defusion, which is an AI program that will be taught in the class. Andrews teaches a free class for local youth ages 12 to 17 titled "AI Innovators: Creating Your Own Free And Secure AI Platform" at Make-It Springfield, located downtown on Bridge Street. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Springfield.community is offering a free class for tweens and teens titled "AI Innovators: Creating Your Own Free And Secure AI Platform," starting last Saturday and continuing for two weeks. It's with the help of Baystate Health's Alliance for Digital Equity at Make-It Springfield.
Teens who wish to sign up for future classes may do so at makeitspringfield.org .
Andrews is teaching the teens how to install fully functional AI tools on their own computers — laptops donated by the alliance, which the students can keep.
"The goal is to inspire the next generation of innovators while giving them the tools to help all of us," she said. "Technology is always evolving: By putting the knowledge, skills and tools necessary to forge a new path in the hands of the next generation, we're helping create a future that serves the continued well-being of all of us, not just a select few."
All students who complete the class will receive the free laptop pre-loaded with tools like Stable Diffusion , an image generator, and Ollama , an open-source tool for working with large language models, or LLMs.
Andrews said both programs handle all information processing locally on the users' own devices, instead of relying on a data center.
The workshop also helps kids be aware that AI can present a danger. AI — artificial intelligence — is here; the only question is, will teens manipulate it or be manipulated by it, asked Kathy Bisbee, director of the Alliance for Digital Equity, housed at Baystate Health.
"It's very similar to the work we do all around Western Mass.," Bisbee said.
That work, celebrated recently under the banner of Digital Inclusion Week , includes classes, workshops and drop-in computer clinics for youth, seniors and anyone else needing help navigating the world or computers and the internet. It's a world people must enter to access so much, from health care to jobs to education, Bisbee said.
Last week, the alliance also announced grants for "community space" Wi-Fi, money that helps organizations like the New North Citizens' Council in Springfield, Amherst Survival Center, Friends of Grandmother's Garden in Westfield and the Wistariahurst Foundation in Holyoke to bring free wireless service to their locations.
It's "how to make sure that everyone is part of this online world," Bisbee said.
Stories by Jim Kinney
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