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Welcome to Unscripted with Jeff Pedowitz. I sit down with remarkable people from very different worlds, security and science, business and medicine, technology and the arts, for honest conversations about AI and where it's taking us. No scripts, no talking points, just what they actually think. I'm Jeff Pedowitz. Let's get into it. Almost everyone I talk to on this show builds AI, they sell it, they secure it, or they study it. But my guest today teaches it to the people that are most likely to be left out. As chief learning officer at the Mark Cuban Foundation, Charlotte runs free AI programs for high school students and teachers across nearly every state.The rural kids, the first generation kids, the ones who've never even set foot in an office building before they walk into hers.
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She was a programmer first, then she went to Harvard for education, and she's written state curriculums and some national frameworks for how a generation learns about this stuff. And here's the part that caught me. Her worry isn't actually that AI is too powerful, it's whether the humans coming up with will have any real say over it at all. So that's what I wanted to get into. What does AI actually mean for the next generation, and are we getting it right? Charlotte, welcome to Unscripted. Let's get into it. Yeah, thanks for having me.Oh, there's a, I don't think, unless you're living under a rock, right? You cannot escape AI these days. It's been all over the news. A lot of doom and gloom about how it's going to destroy humanity.
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What's your take?well you know i've been teaching ai since 2018 i wrote the first course in north carolina that's a version is still being taught and uh it's important to know like the technology is embedded in the things we already use so uh this hype cycle of like very high everybody's excited and very low like the world is going to end the reality is somewhere very much in the middle where, you know, I really like that my car auto brakes when I'm getting too close to the car in front of me. I really like that my credit card tells me if someone is using it and it's outside of the pattern of what I would normally shop for.I'm really excited for the right coupons to arrive in my mailbox for the things that I typically buy.
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And so Those are all instances of AI that we just accept. The things that people push back on, like we need to take those concerns seriously because people are concerned about their communities and they are worried about what's happening with kids. And I think the way that we ensure that brighter future is to educate our youth and our young people and our people in community colleges to make the positive change that they need to see in their communities. But it's not like banning it or pretending that it doesn't exist because we do want those things that are already in our society.You know, I have so many friends that are in marketing and tech, and of course, we use AI all the time, but we all have kids around the same age, and my youngest is 22.
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And we're all talking about it. They're all so diametrically opposed to AI. They don't want to hear anything about anything. I hear you. I want to teach them, want to educate them, but they're also like hands up, you know, that, you know, there's nothing that you can tell me that's going to like get through to me. So how do you teach someone that doesn't want to be taught? Well, the first thing is that we need to embed foundational understanding of computer science concepts in our K-12 curricula.So step one is if you have an elementary school where you have some influence, either as a parent or a school board member, it's making sure that those foundational concepts of computer science that include AI are part of the curriculum.
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And this is not like finding extra minutes in the day. It's just taking that lesson where you're already teaching patterns in math and talking about it requires investing in education for our teachers to be able to make those extensions for the lessons that already exist. And then the same thing for our middle schoolers who may have like a special or a quarter where they can have an opportunity to go a little deeper, providing both those ethical lessons and structure.structured tools and experiences for youth to have more agency to decide what to build. Because right now, it feels like if you're a student, you're competing against folks who are just cheating. They're like downloading a paper. And if you want to be that student that learns for yourself, yeah, you have a really negative perception of AI, but you also don't understand AI.
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and that you're not empowered to use the technology for your benefit or to even write maybe new rules if you're on your student government you should be able to have enough knowledge of the systems by having foundational education to be able to make some good decisions.Right now, I think we are all experiencing a lot of experts who don't have enough information about AI. Well, I think what you're talking about is something systemic, you know, that could be built over time, especially for the younger students. What do we do about this group that's about to graduate or has recently graduated? Are they perpetually lost? Or, you know, how do we actually help them get over this hump?
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yeah so my kids are 15 17 21 23 i think that runs the gamut my oldest one is a software engineer so she's definitely seen the market shift but those skills that are essential for the business world haven't changed and that's adaptability being able to learn new technologies embracing change.Doing what your boss needs you to do faster and better is always a good strategy. And also understanding that when you combine two of your interests, you're stronger as an employee. Becoming a specialist is when you combine that interest in law and that interest in board games to become an expert in that topic. And so if you can combine a and whatever field it is that you do, you'll be stronger.
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If you're going into finance, just take a course in AI and finance and you'll be better prepared to compete with students who aren't doing that. So Mark always says, you know, a student who has the AI skills is going to be more competitive than one that doesn't.So the kids who are opting out, unfortunately, they may not be as interesting to employers as those who try a course. So you brought up Mark. It's awesome what he's doing to build this. How did you come to meet him and get involved with the foundation? So I have a long track record with AI, as I mentioned, since 2018. I worked on the AI for K-12 guidelines, which were the first national K-12 ideas about AI. They had the five big ideas.
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And then I worked on the national guidelines, and I was an MIT teaching systems fellow. And I had done all this work about educating teachers from K to 12 during that time.And so Mark, in 2024, asked me to come work for him. So I've been running the foundation ever since. How did he find you? I had a small contract with them. They were writing some curriculum and I contributed to that project. And that's kind of how they knew me. I had written some things that were in the 2023 book. So, I mean, I think a lot of, I mean, we see Mark on television, right? We know him as an entrepreneur and we see him on Shark Tank. I don't know how many people know about his philanthropy side or some of these things that he's doing.
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So tell us the side about Mark that we don't know.Well, one funny thing is if I need to ask for something, it is like being on Shark Tank. I better come prepared. I better pitch, right? um no he's a really genuine man who wants to do good in the world wants to help young entrepreneurs if you're a young person and you're thinking about how do i get started you know ai is a really great way to learn the industry that you're interested in start that business and he really does have a heart for for young people and helping them But he also asked me this year to develop a program for community colleges.And in particular, we have a pilot for 50 plus and making sure that workers who are, you know, never had the opportunity to learn AI, they're prepared either for the work that they're doing or for that second career.
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And I think people would be surprised at the. amount of empathy he has for the changing marketplace and how hard it is when you're an older worker to adapt. So besides doing work with the high schools and work with the community colleges, tell us a little bit more about the foundation, the charter, some of the types of things that you guys are trying to do both currently and then in the next year or two ahead.yeah so um our student programs our boot camps are a flagship program we also work with non-profits including reaching students who are deaf and hard of hearing We make sure that we're reaching all 50 states. We're working with 4-H to be in rural communities.
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We're working with Boys and Girls Clubs to be in various communities where students may not otherwise have the opportunity to learn AI. Those partnerships are really vital to what we do to make sure more students have the opportunity to learn. And then our community college program is in pilot in eight states. And we have extensive teacher programs. So this year we're serving just over a thousand teachers. None of our programs are short.There's nothing where you can just go watch a video on. online, these are 20 hours or more of instruction for all of the programs that I'm talking about. Our teachers participate throughout the entire school year, and they actually create deliverables that are used in their classrooms and communities according to their own needs. So over half of our teachers are not computer science educators. they're adapting to whatever rules are in place in their district and school, and they're really being very mindful of the students who are in their classrooms. So mostly those are the populations we work with, but we do have curriculum available
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And we're working on building a museum exhibit right now. So in 2027, it'll start touring the U.S.And our youngest learners will have the opportunity to come and experience AI and understand it in a playful setting. Are you still running into resistance from educators and administrators on the role that AI should or shouldn't play? Well, one thing we do that is helpful in in our space is we don't have the structure, we don't have to worry about the structures of school. So if you're a standards writer, you typically revise your standards every seven years. And if you are a national writer, and then you have that change at the state level, it can take three or four more years in the cycle. So it can be 10 years before your standards are updated.
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Even if you're a curriculum writer, if you write the AP exam, it takes a year to make the changes and then a year to train the teachers. So the fastest you can update curriculum is two years. And if you think about the AI cycle, that is an enormous- That's an eternity. It's an eternity. So all of our programs are updated every year. And that's why we don't typically work directly in schools. Our teacher programs, our student programs are after school or on the weekends. We are trying to reach folks who can adapt to that pace of change. And so the teachers that we tend to attract are those who are those first adopters.or they're just responding to this moment for their students and teachers. And that allows us to be more current.
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They say education is a calling, you know, for those that go into it. So what called you? Because you said you started off as a programmer.- Yeah, I do think it's true. It's a calling. I was a programmer first and then went into education. I went back and got a degree to teach English and history, actually. I had a certification to teach high school history. I never used it. And the reason is because once they learned, once they knew I knew computer science, they wanted me to teach computer science.um and and that that was fine i also did a lot of um out of school learning so that's a good fit for me i worked in museum education i started and ran a summer camp called tinkering camp it still exists today um and i i just played around the edges of what it meant to educate a student
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in and out of different types of educational systems and you know there's a lot of strengths to the public education system that we're not just churning out workers but we're returning out educated citizens who are empowered to you know drive their own lives and that's that's a wonderful thing but sometimes we want to create additional learning opportunities it's It's a completely different thing togo into a museum with a child, right? And to tinker at that bench or to imagine a different world. And I think it's both. We need both. And so I've always played around those edges of what it means to fully educate a person, whether that's a four-year-old or a 40-year-old.
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So, I mean, there's been a lot of arguments on the yin and yang of this, I'd love your take, but where does AI hurt the learning educational process and where can it make it much better or help it excel?yeah um it definitely hurts if a kid takes your homework assignment and copies it and puts it and submits that right that's that's a negative use and the students who are most tempted to do that are those who can least afford to do it but the reality is every student has access to that Every single kid can grab their phone, grab their school computer, hack their way beyond the guardrails of that computer and get that answer. And so it's our responsibility to help students move beyond that paradigm, give them assignments that are more engaging, that have different delivery modes.
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or you know those ethical conversations over and over about AI use so that they can become empowered ethical citizens.Is ethics something that you're born with, something that you learned, loaded both? Well certainly values are essential for who we are, like it really matters what you value. One of my children said, you know, he values fun. And, you know, that's a lovely thing, right? That's a really lovely thing to know that that's what you value, and then to structure some of your time around that. But I'll give you an example. In my family, we have five values. They're kind, creative, persistent, joyful, and healthy. And when you know your values, you can then make decisions and have conversations as a family about that. So should we sign up for that AI bootcamp?
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Does it fit in those values? Kind, creative, persistent, joyful, healthy.Well, I think going on a Saturday for 20 hours is very persistent. I really like this topic. That will bring me joy. This will help me to be a kind citizen by understanding and building technologies that help others. And so you can have that same conversation once you know your values and you can embed those ethics into like, what kinds of systems do we want to build? Our curriculum has an ethics lesson in every single half hour.so you can't get away from it and we don't necessarily give those answers we're wanting to have those conversations which is why we have mentors and uh you know in a very low ratio so that students are having those conversations with adults i love that so how did the two of you figure that out was this something that you decided when you were dating after you had your
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Like around the dinner table, over about 10 months, we talked about all kinds of different values that people have. There's a tool called a value sort. I did some research at Harvard about values that teachers bring into the classroom and we asked teachers who teach computer science to discover their values through this value sort.There's like little cards and then once you understand the values that you bring into the classroom like creativity or you know agency, those are very different values than like achievement. and there's some great research by richard weisbord he wrote a book called the parents we mean to be and he talks about how parents often um just sort of like hand a student a value like faith or uh you know love or something but what students actually hear is achievement And so it's really important that we are explicit about our values conversation with students and also that our actions match our stated values.
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I think it's, you know, I know this being a parent, it's a full-time job, but being consistent constantly and being on and then having to shape it for each kid. it's an exhausting process and inevitably we are people more fallible right so we're gonna make mistakes we're not always consistent we have bad days you know but i think it's great that you have that framework to be able to fall back on do you think that having that framework also helps the people coming from underserved areas because i would imagine maybe they didn't grow up with some of the same structural family concepts that the rest of us maybe would take for granted? Yeah, I think it depends on the community.You have to be really thoughtful of the communities that you work with.
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We do work with Boys Town, which is a facility in Omaha, Nebraska, and they have other satellites around the country where they work with youth with significant trauma. And some of those students come to our boot camps and they are actually using AI with a technology called Reality Coach, where they help teachers around the country to practice working with youth with trauma and and like. How do you have positive interactions? How do you praise that student for correct behaviors? How do you deescalate situations? And the AI allows them to practice those in low stakes environments.So social workers, doctors, they get all those kinds of practice, but teachers don't get that same kind of practice and AI allows us to create those situations.
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so i think the the lessons learned from boystown in terms of running a boot camp is number one to select those students who are already along the pathway in being successful in their programs and then they have a lot of structure around those students being successful with the mentorsAnd then number two, we work in a lot of rural communities, often communities where they're sometimes disrespected and going in as a partner, a collaborator and respecting the values of that community while talking about AI being relevant also for them, especially in places in western North Carolina, the furniture industry left. and it's like what do we do about the jobs and our students leaving here well it turns out ai can help you in your outdoor recreation businesses it can help you streamline your billing and help and so when you make those connections both to values and to the concerns of the community and you bring them along as partners instead of as like you have the right answer
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you can find alignment in your values, like people across the world. We want the same things. We want our kids to be successful. We want to be safe. And so we can address those concerns just starting from understanding one another. So is it harder to teach the kids or teach the teachers? The teachers are always behind the kids. And we just start with that assumption in mind when we build our programs. But the teachers have different concerns than students. Like kids right now, they are really afraid about their future. And I think starting with listening, there's some really great resources out of Harvard Project Zero. is the name of the initiative, and they have a really great tool called gradients.
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It allows you to have students talk about in a gradient, zero to five, like, is this ethical use of AI or is this harmful AI? It allows students to get beyond that black and white thinking to having more of a nuanced discussion. It's really great. So, you know, you use the word boot camp. I have this, I'm thinking like the physical people crawling underneath the ropes and everything. What happens in one of your boot camps? Yeah, so the students spend 20 hours, three Saturdays, building a technology that solves a problem in their community. One thing that we ask them to do is not make a PowerPoint.Like, although they might have slides to, like, explain what they've been doing, we really want them to actually make the project for real.
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students have a great capacity to understand what their needs are, whether that's grandpa who needs an alarm to remember to take medicine and have that talk out loud. That would be the AI piece to say, hey, grandpa, it's time to get your medicine in a voice that that grandpa understands. Or, you know, I had a student who built an app that allows parents and teachers to communicate. And if a student has special needs, like how to go in the night? Did your kids sleep? Did they eat breakfast? Was there a doctor's appointment that we should know about?And then the teacher can communicate in that app. Gosh, you know, there was a disruption with another student today, but lunch was really good.
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And we have a skill that we've been practicing And like a high school killed, a kid built that. And it's our job to move it from that conceptual app that exists. Like, how do we actually get it on the app store? How do we actually get it in the hands of teachers? Because kids don't always have those next steps. So we're always trying to help them move to the next step.a boot camp is 20 hours and they're moving through this progression of learning some basic ai skills and applying them to a project that they care about in a career track so we have six career tracks but they're also staying with us until they graduate from high school so we continue to provide monthly learning opportunities scholarships competitions we have leaders One of our students spoke in Washington, D.
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C. today. They're planning an AI symposium for next summer. So like these students are super active and they continue to stay with us until they graduate. So you're designing not just for the skill training, but you're also designing for belonging. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, our values are relationships, empowerment, and ethical innovation. Love that.So what made you center on those? Is that your own, you started with your own values coming from your family, and that was a guidepost? Was this something that Mark wanted? No, I mean, they're just the way that we operate. And then the team started deconstructing, like, what, what are those values? So relationships are really important to us, not just like, yes, we know our students, or we respond to every single teacher directly in all of our communities.
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It's more like that's, that's the secret sauce of what works.um relationships are how you get a kid who isn't engaged in a classroom to engage most of my staff are former educators so they know that relationships are the real key to making change in the world and that includes our partners our host companies we care about them like We do. We care about the people we work with. We care about success for our students and seeing them move on to college and career and in healthy ways. We care about our communities growing and that care is, you know, founded in relationship.And then empowerment is this idea that um youth are not like passive vessels they they can be really wonderful advocates and change agents and if we give them the opportunity so we want our teachers empowered in their community to be leaders we want our students to be empowered to make change
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um explore new opportunities and that takes time um and then obviously ethical innovation mark really cares about our young entrepreneurs being successful in their organizations or ventures um and then making sure that we do that in a way that that benefits us as citizens What about the messaging to the parents, right? Because, you know, that certainly there's a lot of influence there over what their kids do or don't do.There's a lot of parents that think this is dangerous, you know, it's cheating, it's we're teaching our kids not to think. How do you respond to that? Well, I think right now, 78% of our students have come from a parent referral, like the parents are knowing those parents know that this is a ticket for their students to be successful, or to be knowledgeable, even if it doesn't mean using it in your job.
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um that knowing about something rather than pretending it doesn't exist even though it's in every aspect of our society like it's important to know and our parents value that but for those parents who are afraid my first uh suggestion to you is to ask your students your kids ask about what they know about ai you might be surprised at their answers ask them how they're using it or how they're encountering it or why they feel the way they feel about it and just open up that dialogue. It doesn't mean you need to put your kid on a computer. It does mean that this should be a regular dinner conversation.We have parents themselves who are reluctant to use it or scared or maybe they're seeing people lose jobs or they themselves have lost jobs and there could be resentment.
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or anger you know then that that also can infiltrate how does that how do you do you counterbalance that with that relationship and the ethics that you're helping the student understand that whatever the technical skill is there's something bigger here that's at play yeah there there are people who have different degrees of interest or or knowledge and different ways that we want to navigate that so for example um you could if you were down on ai like learn how to adjust your social media algorithms and that includes your netflix and your your YouTube.Like, don't think you need to be on TikTok to do this. You're already using AI if YouTube is picking your next video. So see how you feel if you turn off recommendations. Turn off your history.
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Do you immediately think, oh my gosh, there's no dashboard here. What does this mean? like first understanding where it is around you right and then um experimenting with your own use and see if can you turn off that facebook feed parents um and and can you tweak your feed if you're on tick tock or whatever um those are first steps and then just umhaving conversations with people who are different than you listening to media that might be a little bit different than what you've thought about this perspective and then like yeah working toward mitigating those harms because some of the harms are real right if you're in a community that is being harmed with water and data center usage you might have some feelings about But it doesn't mean that you're not aware of how AI works and why it might be valuable.
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So, I mean, Mark is incredibly generous and it's great that he's able to put his money into something like this. How can this work at scale though, right?You know, public education is chronically dealing with all kinds of issues, funding one of them amongst others, and they're always falling behind. so do we need more billionaires do we need congress doing like what is it that we need to do on a farther scale because um you guys are doing great work but there's so many more people that we need to reach yeah um the first thing is advocate for your school to implement foundational computer science education there is ai in the new computer science standards It's in every grade.
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So if you just advocate for every student to have that opportunity, right now, only 12% of high school students take a computer science class in a given year.And that varies greatly depending on what state you're in. Some states have no graduation requirement or no requirement for computer science at all. And that means that you're not getting that foundational civics lesson and general understanding of the technology that is literally all around us. You deserve that as a youth as much as you deserve to understand the basics of biology. And that's why it's so critical that we do that in a public way. But in the meantime, sign up for a program like mine that is free and open for registration. Have your teachers participate and find other programs like mine in your region because there's tons of them.
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We have a partner in Virginia, AI Ready.rva and they run community programs or miami-dade college and they have a great community college initiative that you can just find stuff right the problem isn't knowledge being out there there's tons of free resources online the struggle is to get that foundational knowledge that is so so essential for all youth in america So I think you and I are similar ages. We've grown up through a lot of technology changes. This one is moving really, really fast. Do you think that we're losing control over this then? I think technologies are as good or as bad as the people who control them. And I think right now we have a need to balance our innovation. with our regulation. We need protections for people.
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And if we had those guardrails in place, people would be less afraid. Like if we knew there was a social safety net for a million workers being laid off, we wouldn't be as afraid of the technology. Or if we knew that environmental standards were going to be enforced in our community and our nature areas protected, we wouldn't be as afraid of data centers. Or if we had foundational understanding of when and where and how to use this technology, we wouldn't be as afraid of it for our workplaces or our students. And so I think balancing those two things is part of the solution. But today, though, really, there's nothing like that in place. I mean, we can't even get our leaders to.
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do anything about it other than you know a couple shrilled speeches here and there but there's really nothing that's early or meaningful underway so how do we actually even get the next generation to take agency over it we can't even get the current age uh generation to get agency over it oh they're coming uh i really think this generation is ready to take action, and they are gearing up for creating a better future. So I have great hope in our teens. I spend a lot of time with teenagers who want to build a better world for everyone, not just a few. And they want to make sure that this technology benefits society.So understand
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you've made them worried enough to come and create those changes i'm talking about do you think it'll be too late though charlotte nope i don't um i i would say i'm an optimist um i'm not optimistic about how specifically we'll use any particular technology but um i do think we will have technologies that that make people's lives better just like The washing machine, you know, empowered women to be able to have more education and their children to be more successful. I look forward to the day where there are technologies that help people live in their homes for longer, that we drive people around more safely and that we.Just have systems in place that make people's lives easier and hopefully we just carve out some time for us to still be, you know, human with that time and not just try to find more work.
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I think a lot of leaders that listen in are anxious about what that future workforce looks like and, you know, how do you build a talent pipeline, particularly when. lot of entry-level jobs across industries are being replaced by AI, so how do you skill someone coming out of school into the workforce when they must have to jump, you know, jump the shark, right, and kind of get into that middle level?From where you sit, what should businesses be doing differently to help prepare for that future workforce? Well, I think they should do what they've always done best, which is look at the needs of the business and then find the best talent who that can provide that and understand like Community colleges have a lot to offer with those that those upskilling programs, with people who've received certificates, who have demonstrated work and portfolio experience, and to look for those populations
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where they may have like a great technical skill set, and maybe they need another type of business skill set, find ways to measure that, and be clear and explicit of how people can meet that bar. I certainly don't have all the answers for workforce.It depends. Like if you're an electrician, maybe you're using AI to streamline your billing, but it's not really going to. take over your bending of pipe right as you're not going to pull wire with a robot for a very long time but if you're a knowledge worker um i i would just make sure that that you're connecting with the folks who are doing workforce development in your community already and make those connections all the way back to high school so an ai boot camp is a pipeline for you to have high school workers who are knowledgeable and prepared, not just with the technical skills, but with some of those communication skills and things you need in business.
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Have that same pathway in college.Make sure you're connected in your chamber of commerce and have the network that allows you to be successful in a competitive marketplace. So there is talent everywhere, community colleges and other places, but I don't know that opportunity is necessarily as prevalent. So if AI is going to be big, as everyone says, does it actually widen that gap or does it finally close it? And which way do you think it's breaking? Yeah, the digital divide is who gets to learn the stuff and who doesn't. And so, you know, check with your local schools. Are they banning AI or are they helping students to have foundational? and pathways, AI pathways, there are advanced pathways already laid out in national curriculum.
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So it's really important to make sure your community is offering those pipelines that provide the workforce that you need in your local region. It's going to look really different in Maine than it does in Texas. And so the answers are local. They're not necessarily national. So what are you paying attention to right now that the rest of us should be? Oh, I've spent a lot of time reading long form media and making sure that my brain stays sharp in that way. So if you haven't read a full length nonfiction book in a little while, I really encourage you to pick one up. I think it's important to. take that deep dive sometimes, and we don't always make the time.
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And then just as you picked up a nonfiction book, grab a fiction book too, and think about some of the ethical issues that people are wrestling with. I really liked Playground recently, and it's got a little tech in it. I don't want to spoil it, but good. Okay, you can check that out. Maybe nobody has said read a book on this podcast before. I don't know. One or two, but not that many. Yeah. So it's always a good one. You know what my problem is? Like everyone keeps sending me books and we're telling me to go get books. And then I ended up having a stack and I read a lot, but it still gets away from me.I'm sick of stacking books up on my desk that I can never seem to get to.
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But I agree. I love to read. I've always loved to read. um there's just something really um cathartic also about holding that book in your hands and just thinking about the author and interpreting those words that's right um i mean it's terrible to say but i i do look at the headlines every day but mostly when i have a free moment i go outside and take a break uh i'm in work a lot i'm in work mode an awful lot and so Finding that balance for myself allows me to be sustainable. I love that. Wow. Charlotte Duncan, thank you for being on Unscripted. All right.Thanks for having me, Jeff. You bet. Come back soon. All right.
Welcome to Unscripted with Jeff Pedowitz. I sit down with remarkable people from very different worlds, security and science, business and medicine, technology and the arts, for honest conversations about AI and where it's taking us. No scripts, no talking points, just what they actually think. I'm Jeff Pedowitz. Let's get into it. Almost everyone I talk to on this show builds AI, they sell it, they secure it, or they study it. But my guest today teaches it to the people that are most likely to be left out. As chief learning officer at the Mark Cuban Foundation, Charlotte runs free AI programs for high school students and teachers across nearly every state.The rural kids, the first generation kids, the ones who've never even set foot in an office building before they walk into hers.
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She was a programmer first, then she went to Harvard for education, and she's written state curriculums and some national frameworks for how a generation learns about this stuff. And here's the part that caught me. Her worry isn't actually that AI is too powerful, it's whether the humans coming up with will have any real say over it at all. So that's what I wanted to get into. What does AI actually mean for the next generation, and are we getting it right? Charlotte, welcome to Unscripted. Let's get into it. Yeah, thanks for having me.Oh, there's a, I don't think, unless you're living under a rock, right? You cannot escape AI these days. It's been all over the news. A lot of doom and gloom about how it's going to destroy humanity.
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What's your take?well you know i've been teaching ai since 2018 i wrote the first course in north carolina that's a version is still being taught and uh it's important to know like the technology is embedded in the things we already use so uh this hype cycle of like very high everybody's excited and very low like the world is going to end the reality is somewhere very much in the middle where, you know, I really like that my car auto brakes when I'm getting too close to the car in front of me. I really like that my credit card tells me if someone is using it and it's outside of the pattern of what I would normally shop for.I'm really excited for the right coupons to arrive in my mailbox for the things that I typically buy.
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And so Those are all instances of AI that we just accept. The things that people push back on, like we need to take those concerns seriously because people are concerned about their communities and they are worried about what's happening with kids. And I think the way that we ensure that brighter future is to educate our youth and our young people and our people in community colleges to make the positive change that they need to see in their communities. But it's not like banning it or pretending that it doesn't exist because we do want those things that are already in our society.You know, I have so many friends that are in marketing and tech, and of course, we use AI all the time, but we all have kids around the same age, and my youngest is 22.
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And we're all talking about it. They're all so diametrically opposed to AI. They don't want to hear anything about anything. I hear you. I want to teach them, want to educate them, but they're also like hands up, you know, that, you know, there's nothing that you can tell me that's going to like get through to me. So how do you teach someone that doesn't want to be taught? Well, the first thing is that we need to embed foundational understanding of computer science concepts in our K-12 curricula.So step one is if you have an elementary school where you have some influence, either as a parent or a school board member, it's making sure that those foundational concepts of computer science that include AI are part of the curriculum.
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And this is not like finding extra minutes in the day. It's just taking that lesson where you're already teaching patterns in math and talking about it requires investing in education for our teachers to be able to make those extensions for the lessons that already exist. And then the same thing for our middle schoolers who may have like a special or a quarter where they can have an opportunity to go a little deeper, providing both those ethical lessons and structure.structured tools and experiences for youth to have more agency to decide what to build. Because right now, it feels like if you're a student, you're competing against folks who are just cheating. They're like downloading a paper. And if you want to be that student that learns for yourself, yeah, you have a really negative perception of AI, but you also don't understand AI.
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and that you're not empowered to use the technology for your benefit or to even write maybe new rules if you're on your student government you should be able to have enough knowledge of the systems by having foundational education to be able to make some good decisions.Right now, I think we are all experiencing a lot of experts who don't have enough information about AI. Well, I think what you're talking about is something systemic, you know, that could be built over time, especially for the younger students. What do we do about this group that's about to graduate or has recently graduated? Are they perpetually lost? Or, you know, how do we actually help them get over this hump?
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yeah so my kids are 15 17 21 23 i think that runs the gamut my oldest one is a software engineer so she's definitely seen the market shift but those skills that are essential for the business world haven't changed and that's adaptability being able to learn new technologies embracing change.Doing what your boss needs you to do faster and better is always a good strategy. And also understanding that when you combine two of your interests, you're stronger as an employee. Becoming a specialist is when you combine that interest in law and that interest in board games to become an expert in that topic. And so if you can combine a and whatever field it is that you do, you'll be stronger.
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If you're going into finance, just take a course in AI and finance and you'll be better prepared to compete with students who aren't doing that. So Mark always says, you know, a student who has the AI skills is going to be more competitive than one that doesn't.So the kids who are opting out, unfortunately, they may not be as interesting to employers as those who try a course. So you brought up Mark. It's awesome what he's doing to build this. How did you come to meet him and get involved with the foundation? So I have a long track record with AI, as I mentioned, since 2018. I worked on the AI for K-12 guidelines, which were the first national K-12 ideas about AI. They had the five big ideas.
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And then I worked on the national guidelines, and I was an MIT teaching systems fellow. And I had done all this work about educating teachers from K to 12 during that time.And so Mark, in 2024, asked me to come work for him. So I've been running the foundation ever since. How did he find you? I had a small contract with them. They were writing some curriculum and I contributed to that project. And that's kind of how they knew me. I had written some things that were in the 2023 book. So, I mean, I think a lot of, I mean, we see Mark on television, right? We know him as an entrepreneur and we see him on Shark Tank. I don't know how many people know about his philanthropy side or some of these things that he's doing.
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So tell us the side about Mark that we don't know.Well, one funny thing is if I need to ask for something, it is like being on Shark Tank. I better come prepared. I better pitch, right? um no he's a really genuine man who wants to do good in the world wants to help young entrepreneurs if you're a young person and you're thinking about how do i get started you know ai is a really great way to learn the industry that you're interested in start that business and he really does have a heart for for young people and helping them But he also asked me this year to develop a program for community colleges.And in particular, we have a pilot for 50 plus and making sure that workers who are, you know, never had the opportunity to learn AI, they're prepared either for the work that they're doing or for that second career.
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And I think people would be surprised at the. amount of empathy he has for the changing marketplace and how hard it is when you're an older worker to adapt. So besides doing work with the high schools and work with the community colleges, tell us a little bit more about the foundation, the charter, some of the types of things that you guys are trying to do both currently and then in the next year or two ahead.yeah so um our student programs our boot camps are a flagship program we also work with non-profits including reaching students who are deaf and hard of hearing We make sure that we're reaching all 50 states. We're working with 4-H to be in rural communities.
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We're working with Boys and Girls Clubs to be in various communities where students may not otherwise have the opportunity to learn AI. Those partnerships are really vital to what we do to make sure more students have the opportunity to learn. And then our community college program is in pilot in eight states. And we have extensive teacher programs. So this year we're serving just over a thousand teachers. None of our programs are short.There's nothing where you can just go watch a video on. online, these are 20 hours or more of instruction for all of the programs that I'm talking about. Our teachers participate throughout the entire school year, and they actually create deliverables that are used in their classrooms and communities according to their own needs. So over half of our teachers are not computer science educators. they're adapting to whatever rules are in place in their district and school, and they're really being very mindful of the students who are in their classrooms. So mostly those are the populations we work with, but we do have curriculum available
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And we're working on building a museum exhibit right now. So in 2027, it'll start touring the U.S.And our youngest learners will have the opportunity to come and experience AI and understand it in a playful setting. Are you still running into resistance from educators and administrators on the role that AI should or shouldn't play? Well, one thing we do that is helpful in in our space is we don't have the structure, we don't have to worry about the structures of school. So if you're a standards writer, you typically revise your standards every seven years. And if you are a national writer, and then you have that change at the state level, it can take three or four more years in the cycle. So it can be 10 years before your standards are updated.
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Even if you're a curriculum writer, if you write the AP exam, it takes a year to make the changes and then a year to train the teachers. So the fastest you can update curriculum is two years. And if you think about the AI cycle, that is an enormous- That's an eternity. It's an eternity. So all of our programs are updated every year. And that's why we don't typically work directly in schools. Our teacher programs, our student programs are after school or on the weekends. We are trying to reach folks who can adapt to that pace of change. And so the teachers that we tend to attract are those who are those first adopters.or they're just responding to this moment for their students and teachers. And that allows us to be more current.
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They say education is a calling, you know, for those that go into it. So what called you? Because you said you started off as a programmer.- Yeah, I do think it's true. It's a calling. I was a programmer first and then went into education. I went back and got a degree to teach English and history, actually. I had a certification to teach high school history. I never used it. And the reason is because once they learned, once they knew I knew computer science, they wanted me to teach computer science.um and and that that was fine i also did a lot of um out of school learning so that's a good fit for me i worked in museum education i started and ran a summer camp called tinkering camp it still exists today um and i i just played around the edges of what it meant to educate a student
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in and out of different types of educational systems and you know there's a lot of strengths to the public education system that we're not just churning out workers but we're returning out educated citizens who are empowered to you know drive their own lives and that's that's a wonderful thing but sometimes we want to create additional learning opportunities it's It's a completely different thing togo into a museum with a child, right? And to tinker at that bench or to imagine a different world. And I think it's both. We need both. And so I've always played around those edges of what it means to fully educate a person, whether that's a four-year-old or a 40-year-old.
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So, I mean, there's been a lot of arguments on the yin and yang of this, I'd love your take, but where does AI hurt the learning educational process and where can it make it much better or help it excel?yeah um it definitely hurts if a kid takes your homework assignment and copies it and puts it and submits that right that's that's a negative use and the students who are most tempted to do that are those who can least afford to do it but the reality is every student has access to that Every single kid can grab their phone, grab their school computer, hack their way beyond the guardrails of that computer and get that answer. And so it's our responsibility to help students move beyond that paradigm, give them assignments that are more engaging, that have different delivery modes.
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or you know those ethical conversations over and over about AI use so that they can become empowered ethical citizens.Is ethics something that you're born with, something that you learned, loaded both? Well certainly values are essential for who we are, like it really matters what you value. One of my children said, you know, he values fun. And, you know, that's a lovely thing, right? That's a really lovely thing to know that that's what you value, and then to structure some of your time around that. But I'll give you an example. In my family, we have five values. They're kind, creative, persistent, joyful, and healthy. And when you know your values, you can then make decisions and have conversations as a family about that. So should we sign up for that AI bootcamp?
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Does it fit in those values? Kind, creative, persistent, joyful, healthy.Well, I think going on a Saturday for 20 hours is very persistent. I really like this topic. That will bring me joy. This will help me to be a kind citizen by understanding and building technologies that help others. And so you can have that same conversation once you know your values and you can embed those ethics into like, what kinds of systems do we want to build? Our curriculum has an ethics lesson in every single half hour.so you can't get away from it and we don't necessarily give those answers we're wanting to have those conversations which is why we have mentors and uh you know in a very low ratio so that students are having those conversations with adults i love that so how did the two of you figure that out was this something that you decided when you were dating after you had your
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Like around the dinner table, over about 10 months, we talked about all kinds of different values that people have. There's a tool called a value sort. I did some research at Harvard about values that teachers bring into the classroom and we asked teachers who teach computer science to discover their values through this value sort.There's like little cards and then once you understand the values that you bring into the classroom like creativity or you know agency, those are very different values than like achievement. and there's some great research by richard weisbord he wrote a book called the parents we mean to be and he talks about how parents often um just sort of like hand a student a value like faith or uh you know love or something but what students actually hear is achievement And so it's really important that we are explicit about our values conversation with students and also that our actions match our stated values.
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I think it's, you know, I know this being a parent, it's a full-time job, but being consistent constantly and being on and then having to shape it for each kid. it's an exhausting process and inevitably we are people more fallible right so we're gonna make mistakes we're not always consistent we have bad days you know but i think it's great that you have that framework to be able to fall back on do you think that having that framework also helps the people coming from underserved areas because i would imagine maybe they didn't grow up with some of the same structural family concepts that the rest of us maybe would take for granted? Yeah, I think it depends on the community.You have to be really thoughtful of the communities that you work with.
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We do work with Boys Town, which is a facility in Omaha, Nebraska, and they have other satellites around the country where they work with youth with significant trauma. And some of those students come to our boot camps and they are actually using AI with a technology called Reality Coach, where they help teachers around the country to practice working with youth with trauma and and like. How do you have positive interactions? How do you praise that student for correct behaviors? How do you deescalate situations? And the AI allows them to practice those in low stakes environments.So social workers, doctors, they get all those kinds of practice, but teachers don't get that same kind of practice and AI allows us to create those situations.
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so i think the the lessons learned from boystown in terms of running a boot camp is number one to select those students who are already along the pathway in being successful in their programs and then they have a lot of structure around those students being successful with the mentorsAnd then number two, we work in a lot of rural communities, often communities where they're sometimes disrespected and going in as a partner, a collaborator and respecting the values of that community while talking about AI being relevant also for them, especially in places in western North Carolina, the furniture industry left. and it's like what do we do about the jobs and our students leaving here well it turns out ai can help you in your outdoor recreation businesses it can help you streamline your billing and help and so when you make those connections both to values and to the concerns of the community and you bring them along as partners instead of as like you have the right answer
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you can find alignment in your values, like people across the world. We want the same things. We want our kids to be successful. We want to be safe. And so we can address those concerns just starting from understanding one another. So is it harder to teach the kids or teach the teachers? The teachers are always behind the kids. And we just start with that assumption in mind when we build our programs. But the teachers have different concerns than students. Like kids right now, they are really afraid about their future. And I think starting with listening, there's some really great resources out of Harvard Project Zero. is the name of the initiative, and they have a really great tool called gradients.
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It allows you to have students talk about in a gradient, zero to five, like, is this ethical use of AI or is this harmful AI? It allows students to get beyond that black and white thinking to having more of a nuanced discussion. It's really great. So, you know, you use the word boot camp. I have this, I'm thinking like the physical people crawling underneath the ropes and everything. What happens in one of your boot camps? Yeah, so the students spend 20 hours, three Saturdays, building a technology that solves a problem in their community. One thing that we ask them to do is not make a PowerPoint.Like, although they might have slides to, like, explain what they've been doing, we really want them to actually make the project for real.
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students have a great capacity to understand what their needs are, whether that's grandpa who needs an alarm to remember to take medicine and have that talk out loud. That would be the AI piece to say, hey, grandpa, it's time to get your medicine in a voice that that grandpa understands. Or, you know, I had a student who built an app that allows parents and teachers to communicate. And if a student has special needs, like how to go in the night? Did your kids sleep? Did they eat breakfast? Was there a doctor's appointment that we should know about?And then the teacher can communicate in that app. Gosh, you know, there was a disruption with another student today, but lunch was really good.
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And we have a skill that we've been practicing And like a high school killed, a kid built that. And it's our job to move it from that conceptual app that exists. Like, how do we actually get it on the app store? How do we actually get it in the hands of teachers? Because kids don't always have those next steps. So we're always trying to help them move to the next step.a boot camp is 20 hours and they're moving through this progression of learning some basic ai skills and applying them to a project that they care about in a career track so we have six career tracks but they're also staying with us until they graduate from high school so we continue to provide monthly learning opportunities scholarships competitions we have leaders One of our students spoke in Washington, D.
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C. today. They're planning an AI symposium for next summer. So like these students are super active and they continue to stay with us until they graduate. So you're designing not just for the skill training, but you're also designing for belonging. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, our values are relationships, empowerment, and ethical innovation. Love that.So what made you center on those? Is that your own, you started with your own values coming from your family, and that was a guidepost? Was this something that Mark wanted? No, I mean, they're just the way that we operate. And then the team started deconstructing, like, what, what are those values? So relationships are really important to us, not just like, yes, we know our students, or we respond to every single teacher directly in all of our communities.
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It's more like that's, that's the secret sauce of what works.um relationships are how you get a kid who isn't engaged in a classroom to engage most of my staff are former educators so they know that relationships are the real key to making change in the world and that includes our partners our host companies we care about them like We do. We care about the people we work with. We care about success for our students and seeing them move on to college and career and in healthy ways. We care about our communities growing and that care is, you know, founded in relationship.And then empowerment is this idea that um youth are not like passive vessels they they can be really wonderful advocates and change agents and if we give them the opportunity so we want our teachers empowered in their community to be leaders we want our students to be empowered to make change
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um explore new opportunities and that takes time um and then obviously ethical innovation mark really cares about our young entrepreneurs being successful in their organizations or ventures um and then making sure that we do that in a way that that benefits us as citizens What about the messaging to the parents, right? Because, you know, that certainly there's a lot of influence there over what their kids do or don't do.There's a lot of parents that think this is dangerous, you know, it's cheating, it's we're teaching our kids not to think. How do you respond to that? Well, I think right now, 78% of our students have come from a parent referral, like the parents are knowing those parents know that this is a ticket for their students to be successful, or to be knowledgeable, even if it doesn't mean using it in your job.
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um that knowing about something rather than pretending it doesn't exist even though it's in every aspect of our society like it's important to know and our parents value that but for those parents who are afraid my first uh suggestion to you is to ask your students your kids ask about what they know about ai you might be surprised at their answers ask them how they're using it or how they're encountering it or why they feel the way they feel about it and just open up that dialogue. It doesn't mean you need to put your kid on a computer. It does mean that this should be a regular dinner conversation.We have parents themselves who are reluctant to use it or scared or maybe they're seeing people lose jobs or they themselves have lost jobs and there could be resentment.
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or anger you know then that that also can infiltrate how does that how do you do you counterbalance that with that relationship and the ethics that you're helping the student understand that whatever the technical skill is there's something bigger here that's at play yeah there there are people who have different degrees of interest or or knowledge and different ways that we want to navigate that so for example um you could if you were down on ai like learn how to adjust your social media algorithms and that includes your netflix and your your YouTube.Like, don't think you need to be on TikTok to do this. You're already using AI if YouTube is picking your next video. So see how you feel if you turn off recommendations. Turn off your history.
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Do you immediately think, oh my gosh, there's no dashboard here. What does this mean? like first understanding where it is around you right and then um experimenting with your own use and see if can you turn off that facebook feed parents um and and can you tweak your feed if you're on tick tock or whatever um those are first steps and then just umhaving conversations with people who are different than you listening to media that might be a little bit different than what you've thought about this perspective and then like yeah working toward mitigating those harms because some of the harms are real right if you're in a community that is being harmed with water and data center usage you might have some feelings about But it doesn't mean that you're not aware of how AI works and why it might be valuable.
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So, I mean, Mark is incredibly generous and it's great that he's able to put his money into something like this. How can this work at scale though, right?You know, public education is chronically dealing with all kinds of issues, funding one of them amongst others, and they're always falling behind. so do we need more billionaires do we need congress doing like what is it that we need to do on a farther scale because um you guys are doing great work but there's so many more people that we need to reach yeah um the first thing is advocate for your school to implement foundational computer science education there is ai in the new computer science standards It's in every grade.
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So if you just advocate for every student to have that opportunity, right now, only 12% of high school students take a computer science class in a given year.And that varies greatly depending on what state you're in. Some states have no graduation requirement or no requirement for computer science at all. And that means that you're not getting that foundational civics lesson and general understanding of the technology that is literally all around us. You deserve that as a youth as much as you deserve to understand the basics of biology. And that's why it's so critical that we do that in a public way. But in the meantime, sign up for a program like mine that is free and open for registration. Have your teachers participate and find other programs like mine in your region because there's tons of them.
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We have a partner in Virginia, AI Ready.rva and they run community programs or miami-dade college and they have a great community college initiative that you can just find stuff right the problem isn't knowledge being out there there's tons of free resources online the struggle is to get that foundational knowledge that is so so essential for all youth in america So I think you and I are similar ages. We've grown up through a lot of technology changes. This one is moving really, really fast. Do you think that we're losing control over this then? I think technologies are as good or as bad as the people who control them. And I think right now we have a need to balance our innovation. with our regulation. We need protections for people.
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And if we had those guardrails in place, people would be less afraid. Like if we knew there was a social safety net for a million workers being laid off, we wouldn't be as afraid of the technology. Or if we knew that environmental standards were going to be enforced in our community and our nature areas protected, we wouldn't be as afraid of data centers. Or if we had foundational understanding of when and where and how to use this technology, we wouldn't be as afraid of it for our workplaces or our students. And so I think balancing those two things is part of the solution. But today, though, really, there's nothing like that in place. I mean, we can't even get our leaders to.
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do anything about it other than you know a couple shrilled speeches here and there but there's really nothing that's early or meaningful underway so how do we actually even get the next generation to take agency over it we can't even get the current age uh generation to get agency over it oh they're coming uh i really think this generation is ready to take action, and they are gearing up for creating a better future. So I have great hope in our teens. I spend a lot of time with teenagers who want to build a better world for everyone, not just a few. And they want to make sure that this technology benefits society.So understand
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you've made them worried enough to come and create those changes i'm talking about do you think it'll be too late though charlotte nope i don't um i i would say i'm an optimist um i'm not optimistic about how specifically we'll use any particular technology but um i do think we will have technologies that that make people's lives better just like The washing machine, you know, empowered women to be able to have more education and their children to be more successful. I look forward to the day where there are technologies that help people live in their homes for longer, that we drive people around more safely and that we.Just have systems in place that make people's lives easier and hopefully we just carve out some time for us to still be, you know, human with that time and not just try to find more work.
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I think a lot of leaders that listen in are anxious about what that future workforce looks like and, you know, how do you build a talent pipeline, particularly when. lot of entry-level jobs across industries are being replaced by AI, so how do you skill someone coming out of school into the workforce when they must have to jump, you know, jump the shark, right, and kind of get into that middle level?From where you sit, what should businesses be doing differently to help prepare for that future workforce? Well, I think they should do what they've always done best, which is look at the needs of the business and then find the best talent who that can provide that and understand like Community colleges have a lot to offer with those that those upskilling programs, with people who've received certificates, who have demonstrated work and portfolio experience, and to look for those populations
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where they may have like a great technical skill set, and maybe they need another type of business skill set, find ways to measure that, and be clear and explicit of how people can meet that bar. I certainly don't have all the answers for workforce.It depends. Like if you're an electrician, maybe you're using AI to streamline your billing, but it's not really going to. take over your bending of pipe right as you're not going to pull wire with a robot for a very long time but if you're a knowledge worker um i i would just make sure that that you're connecting with the folks who are doing workforce development in your community already and make those connections all the way back to high school so an ai boot camp is a pipeline for you to have high school workers who are knowledgeable and prepared, not just with the technical skills, but with some of those communication skills and things you need in business.
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Have that same pathway in college.Make sure you're connected in your chamber of commerce and have the network that allows you to be successful in a competitive marketplace. So there is talent everywhere, community colleges and other places, but I don't know that opportunity is necessarily as prevalent. So if AI is going to be big, as everyone says, does it actually widen that gap or does it finally close it? And which way do you think it's breaking? Yeah, the digital divide is who gets to learn the stuff and who doesn't. And so, you know, check with your local schools. Are they banning AI or are they helping students to have foundational? and pathways, AI pathways, there are advanced pathways already laid out in national curriculum.
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So it's really important to make sure your community is offering those pipelines that provide the workforce that you need in your local region. It's going to look really different in Maine than it does in Texas. And so the answers are local. They're not necessarily national. So what are you paying attention to right now that the rest of us should be? Oh, I've spent a lot of time reading long form media and making sure that my brain stays sharp in that way. So if you haven't read a full length nonfiction book in a little while, I really encourage you to pick one up. I think it's important to. take that deep dive sometimes, and we don't always make the time.
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And then just as you picked up a nonfiction book, grab a fiction book too, and think about some of the ethical issues that people are wrestling with. I really liked Playground recently, and it's got a little tech in it. I don't want to spoil it, but good. Okay, you can check that out. Maybe nobody has said read a book on this podcast before. I don't know. One or two, but not that many. Yeah. So it's always a good one. You know what my problem is? Like everyone keeps sending me books and we're telling me to go get books. And then I ended up having a stack and I read a lot, but it still gets away from me.I'm sick of stacking books up on my desk that I can never seem to get to.
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But I agree. I love to read. I've always loved to read. um there's just something really um cathartic also about holding that book in your hands and just thinking about the author and interpreting those words that's right um i mean it's terrible to say but i i do look at the headlines every day but mostly when i have a free moment i go outside and take a break uh i'm in work a lot i'm in work mode an awful lot and so Finding that balance for myself allows me to be sustainable. I love that. Wow. Charlotte Duncan, thank you for being on Unscripted. All right.Thanks for having me, Jeff. You bet. Come back soon. All right.
