Nov 19th: This weekend we hosted our inaugural TU20 Policy in Technology competition. 30 students from 5 different high schools competed in a 3 hour case competition focused on trying to find problems and solutions with AI. Our theme focused on the “Future of Work” meaning how AI will change jobs and employment in the future.
Students found out the theme the morning of the event and worked in teams of 2-3 to brainstorm 10 problems & solutions that AI would cause. Afterwords, they picked one problem and solution and wrote out a 500 word policy to try to mitigate the harms of this problem and implement the solution. All the teams did an excellent job and we want to particularly extend congratulations to our top 3 teams.
2018 Policy in Technology Winners focus on Social Inequality
The winners of the 2018 TU20 Policy competition were Arushi Wadhwa, Alice Chen,Diya Ahmad . They focused their policy on how we shift the ownership of technology to developers from tech companies, which continue to grow larger in size.
“In 2018, one of the most significant problems that the development of AI has on the future of work is an asymmetrical distribution of wealth, particularly due to the ownership of technology. “
“Our proposed solution is a shift from companies owning the inventions of their developers, towards developers having significant ownership of their work. Right now, developers at technology firms sign away the rights to their programs and contributions to advancing exponential technologies.”
As the winning team, they received a $1500 grand prize for their hard work and interesting ideas.
The second place team of Borna Sadeghi & Even Huang discussed on how AI research and inventions should be focused on creating new jobs and working on helping workers rather than replacing them.
“Another concept to realize is technology does not necessarily take away our jobs, but can help us do them. It can be used as a helpful tool instead that helps us at work without replacing us completely, and most AI programs are used to do things humans weren’t capable of doing to begin with”
The 3rd place team of Vinuthna Vemireddy Briana Tang & April Sui focused on up-skilling the workforce and making sure companies train and keep a number of human employees.
“ The proposed solution is a policy that requires for all minimum wage positions to be 50% human filled, should a company decide to replace workers with AI. The company would have to provide training to this 50% in regards to AI. This would help develop their knowledge and understanding of the technology, which could make them look more impressive to potential employers, and would also ensure that business output is still maximized.”
Judges leave impressed
“The students knew the topic ahead of time?”
“No they found out about the topic this morning”
“Wow… this is really impressive work”
The judges at Policy in Technology were amazed at the ideas generated by the students, many of which have not taken too much interested in AI. The experience really showcased the capabilities of young people today and how in the right environment amazing things can happen. Big thank you to our judges Leyden Martinez Fonte, Guy Pearce &Cathy Cobey for volunteering their time and expertise to part of the event.
The Murky Legality of AI
While the judges were deliberating, we hadMax Rothschild from Bereskin & Parr LLP join us to give a talk about Copyright, Law and AI. It was a fascinating topic as ownership of data, algorithms and technology solutions start to get murky when computers play such a large role in our lives.
Big Thank You
We also wanted to give a big thank you to our sponsors Burlington Economic Development Corporation & MTechHub for supporting local youth innovation! We’ll be sharing a bit more about what they are up to in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned
Last, but not least, thank you to Viktor Korolyuk for all his work in organizing the event. Viktor was key in organizing the event in terms of logistics and technology side of things and event could not happen without him.
Next Steps
At TU20 one of our core values is to keep things moving after every event or initiatives we do. As part of Policy in Technology, we are working with the top teams to release a paper with recommendations to local companies and governments. We hope that the work done at the event will continue to make a positive change in the future.
TU20 is part of the Silicon Halton Community and is focused on creating a strong student tech, business and entrepreneurship community in Halton region.