A transformative two-week summer program culminated in a range of new ideas on AI that I find exciting, as the summer winds down.

This program, put on here at Cambridge, involved 65 high school students working on their passion projects, with the power and opportunities of AI in mind. It’s part of a plan to transform curriculum for a new generation of students – to help all of us to meet the challenges that this new day brings.

It was called the AI Fellowship for Global Young Leaders, and it came together quite well. In full disclosure, I was asked to help put together this summer event, and I found the effort well worth it. We need to prepare our young people for an AI age, and showcase what they are able to do with this Promethean force. This gave our young people some excellent hands-on experience with the products of neural nets. There was an excitement in the air that was contagious. And I think all of our participants can go home proud of what they accomplished here.

So here’s some of what our intrepid pioneers came up with:

AI and Healthcare Applications

Some of the most interesting uses that students came up with for AI in medicine were about measuring trends: trends in emergency department triage notes, personal blood test results, lucidity in dementia patients, genetic variants, and medication results, just to name a few.

Students put together a project to track skin disease in Mumbai's Koli fisherwomen, where available estimates suggest around 55% of this demographic develops these conditions.

There was work on universal patient record systems, treatment plans, and diagnostic signal detection. All of this illuminates some of the ways that AI can take the burden off of clinicians, solve real problems, and enhance what our providers can do.

In short, our participants brought a lot to the table, in one of the most promising verticals for AI, in the healthcare world.

Aerospace and Marine Exploration

What about under the sea, and in the vast reaches of space? Will AI go with us to these places?

Students involved in the program studied the assessment of solar flares, collision-avoidance planning for satellites, and related forms of space traffic control. Then in the water, there was ocean monitoring, where a lot of the efforts in this field focused on sustainable practices for aquatic health.

In addition, students challenged what project managers called the “average diver assumption,” with personalized dive computer decompression models. I thought this was one of the more interesting proposals across the board, in drilling down into complex data and coming up with actionable outcomes.

Clearly, AI is going to play a role here, and some of these applications generated a lot of interest.

Some of the finance applications were of interest, too. A few of them were dedicated to finding the signal in the noise, for instance, in evaluating mispriced options on markets, and working on AI-powered detection and drafting for banking regulatory changes.

Another project had to do with assisting individuals in rural India with understanding the terms of loans, and offers from local lenders. A related project was aimed at translating information to citizens of various countries about their rights, in their own languages, where students specified three types of scenarios: a traffic stop, a rental dispute, or a deduction from pay.

And then there was a project related to the above lending tool, which was explained like this:

“The Exploitation Engine: Modeling how exploitative financial or contractual terms are systematically structured against consumers.”

Clearly, students were widely focused on the democratization of finance with AI. Thoughts in our conventions and events this past year have often acknowledged that the “unbanked and underbanked,” those poorly served by traditional banking systems, may have the most to gain from AI solutions.

The Environment, Infrastructure, and Agriculture

Some of the other projects involved addressing aspects of caring for land masses, systems and the biosphere as a whole.

A number of projects had to do with solar installation modeling, evaluating carbon claims, and thinking about what students called “urban twilight,” an era of biological challenge. In agriculture, there was a project on “crop memory,” projects to deal with environmental problems like smoke and land mines, and the search for the “self-healing city.” You have probably heard a good bit about smart cities and urban renewal: this kind of work supercharges those goals with real resources based on the knowledge that AI provides.

This is one of the biggest challenges of our time, so it made sense that students put a lot of focus on this.

In addition to the above, students came up with all kinds of other innovations around human psychology, quality of life for populations, demographic issues, and improvement in service workflows.

“The Vision Gap: Turning a homeowner's vague spatial vision into something visible and buildable before construction starts.”

And then there was this project labeled “Passive Signals and Cognitive Load” that went into how our own human brains work. Here’s the description:

“Testing whether passive behavioral signals — interaction patterns, task switching, response latency — can serve as reliable proxies for cognitive load, and whether elevated cognitive load correlates with susceptibility to social engineering attacks.”

So, in other words, thinking about how humans can be the weakest link in cybersecurity scenarios.

And let’s not forget this one: fans of interrogation techniques and law enforcement protocols will probably be interested in a project called What Your Face Says Before You Do , which is, really, quite a lot like what it sounds like - exploring the signals gleaned from non-verbal human responses.

And there was so much more. Sign language, music composition, doomscrolling, ADHD … the areas of study were diverse. I was so proud to be associated with this campaign and what it has brought us as these creative minds return home from “summer camp in Boston” with some great achievements under their belts. Let’s see what we come up with next year.

HERE are a 1000 photos I took from the student’s visit at MIT and their Poster Session