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Research has shown for a long time that there's a digital divide between schools in teaching new technologies. So wealthy suburban schools are more likely to have computer science classes than districts in poor, urban or rural areas. Well, now, new research shows that's also playing out with artificial intelligence. Educators worry that could leave some students behind in an AI-powered economy. Lee Gaines visited a summer camp in New Jersey that wants to help close the gap.
LEE GAINES, BYLINE: Before this summer, 16-year-old Esraa Elsharkawy was an AI skeptic.
ESRAA ELSHARKAWY: I just thought AI just was kind of creepy and it just figured out stuff.
GAINES: She worried it would take jobs away from humans, and she didn't understand how it worked, but she wanted to. Esraa couldn't get that kind of education at her high school in Katy, Texas, so this year, she applied and was accepted into a free AI summer camp at Princeton University.
ESRAA: Now I'm very supportive of AI 'cause I believe AI is a tool and that if we use AI as a tool to do, like, simple things, then we'll have, like, I guess, clearer minds to, like, think of, like, things that are way ahead of our league right now, like solving cancer, for example.
GAINES: Esraa is 1 of 30 high schoolers from low-income families who spent three weeks at Princeton's AI4ALL summer camp. They learned how AI works and how they might shape it, and they worked on AI solutions to real world environmental and medical challenges.
ROBIN LAKE: I think it's so exciting, and we need much more of that across the country.
GAINES: Robin Lake is director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education based at Arizona State University. She studies how schools are beginning to use AI in the classroom.
LAKE: The AI divide is starting to show up in just about every major study that I'm seeing.
GAINES: Her research found that affluent and suburban districts are more likely to provide AI training to teachers than high-poverty or rural districts. And a recent Gallup survey found students in low-income and rural areas are the least likely to say their schools let them use AI or have rules about it. That hasn't stopped some students from using AI for a leg up.
LAKE: And they're starting to use AI to improve their grades, you know, improve their essays, improve their research skills, things like that. And then other students in the classroom have barely even heard about AI and don't know how to use it effectively.
GAINES: Princeton computer science professor Olga Russakovsky wants to be part of the solution. She's a co-founder of AI4ALL.
OLGA RUSSAKOVSKY: There's so much that this technology can do. There's so many problems in the world that it can address. And what we want to make sure is that this technology really benefits everybody.
GAINES: Which is why she's trying to bring AI education to students who otherwise wouldn't have access to it. On a mid-July afternoon, a group of teens listens closely to Princeton professor Jaime Fernandez Fisac as he explains how AI can help drones fly better.
JAIME FERNANDEZ FISAC: By allowing the robot to correct a little bit each time it makes a decision.
GAINES: The lesson is especially meaningful for 16-year-old Anthony Papathanasopoulos, who says there's no AI education in his rural community.
ANTHONY PAPATHANASOPOULOS: In Oregon, I had to evacuate my home in 2020 due to the Beachie Creek fires that happened, and I'm really interested in seeing how AI can be used to solve problems like that.
GAINES: He says AI could help drones map and monitor forests for wildfires, and people from his community are uniquely positioned to come up with that kind of solution.
ANTHONY: I think having a rural background is really important to understanding how AI can be used.
GAINES: Esraa Elsharkawy, the 16-year-old from Texas, agrees that it's not just about who has access to AI, but who is building it. It's part of what drove her to attend the AI4ALL camp in the first place.
ESRAA: Like, as a woman, Muslim hijabi, I'm not really represented in a lot of things. And so I wanted to, like, be one of the people who change AI, who shape AI for the future.
GAINES: Esraa says the broader the range of people shaping AI, the better it can serve everyone.
For NPR News, I'm Lee Gaines in Princeton, New Jersey.
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