est Allegheny WEST ALLEGHENY SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS
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West Allegheny School District was honored to be a recipient of this year’ s Moonshot Grant, powered by Remake Learning, and funded by the Grable Foundation. The grant project titled Human-Centered AI( HCAI) as a Pathway to Reenvisioning K-12 Education is a unique learning opportunity for high school students. Throughout this school year, twenty seniors from four local school districts are engaging with faculty from Carnegie Mellon University’ s College of Engineering to explore human-centered design and artificial intelligence to drive change for school communities. This initiative challenges the boundaries between school and real life while fostering a learning culture that values experimentation and even failure as an integral part of growth and design. School districts joining West Allegheny in this venture are Cornell, Peters Township, and South Fayette, with each school invited to send five seniors and a faculty advisor. West Allegheny named Lexie Adams, Audrey Carlisle, Diego Jofre Leiva, Logan McFall, and Jake Stelmack as their student representatives with Matt McBurney serving as the faculty advisory.
To learn more about this innovative project, West Allegheny marketing and communications student interns Adelyn McClelland and Nathalia Canelhas
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interviewed CMU’ s Dr. Chris McComb and his two graduate assistants, Aslan Noorghasemi and Jessica Ezemba.
Q: Why was the partnership between West Allegheny and CMU started, and how did it develop? A: Dr. McComb:“ I need to give credit to West A and to Dr. Lippert, Dr. Roche, and Dr. Nelson for reaching out to CMU and getting this started. Sharing our expertise in AI engineering design with local schools is one way that my lab can be a better Pittsburgh community member. Knowing that, it became a question of how do we take the first step? So we started putting together some ideas … ideas that bring together people who have never worked together to try to do something special.”
Q: What do you hope students will get out of this project? A: Ezemba: We know it( AI) is a very powerful technology, and the way it’ s being developed right now will probably influence the way it’ s going to be applied in everyday life in the future. There’ s a very important part of this, which is the human-centered part, which is how do we use AI in the design process. This partnership hopefully should be able to get them( students) thinking about the human-centered part as they continue to use different tools and services where AI is being applied.”
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Q: What is your end goal for the students participating in this project? A: Noorghasemi:“ CMU’ s Head of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Jonathan Cagan, wrote a book called“ Managing the Unmanageable,” in which he argues the ultimate goal is to make change makers. I think what we are doing right now aligns well with this philosophy. We are trying to help students become real change makers who are capable of solving real world problems which are fairly complex and make a better world to live in for us all.”
Q: Why is HCAI an important and timely area for our students to explore? A: Dr. McComb:“ I think that a lot of people are making the implicit assumption that humanity needs to drastically change in the face of AI. We need to change a little, but I think it’ s otherwise overblown. We are making this technology to serve people, and if we are saying that people will have to change to make technology useful, we don’ t fully understand the technology and how it can serve us. We need to recognize that we have control over AI, and we don’ t need to design things that are going to get rid of jobs. We can design things that make life experiences more joyful and valuable.”
McClelland and Canelhas also interviewed West Allegheny’ s student representatives, all of whom plan to
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