001[Music] so [Music] wow [Music] no no no no [Music] hello [Music] so [Music] no [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] talking about the future of artificial intelligence now we will bring all those leading minds together to share out how the future of artificial intelligence will impact k-12 k-16 and all formal education please welcome back to the stage michael matsuda neil sahoda adrian posner joseph zaki and joining us for the first time today dr michael and thomas dr thomas is a space expert specializing in program management and business operations for complex space systems she is on a mission to make rocket science affordable in efforts to create equitable access to space for new and existing satellite providers moderating today's panel is mr matt horton mr horton is the director at the milken institute's
002center for regional economics and california center mr horton's programmatic work at the institute is focused on identifying a variety of financial tools public policies and collaborative models that leaders can deploy to increase investments in education community development housing employment and other areas supporting human capital and place-based economic development please put your hands together for this world-class panel on artificial intelligence all right thanks um is is adam still in the room adam raise your hand from the panel i have an idea for you how many parents in the room so while adam was talking about the shushing model all i could think about is how i could easily apply that same to get my kids to take another bite so adam if you need another business idea an app to get your kids to take another
003bite is i think a parent tech gym so um here while i pull up my notes um with the slides on the slides there we go so i'm matt horton i'm a director at the milken institute's center for regional economics and california center and for those that aren't familiar with the milking institute we're a non-profit um nonpartisan uh think tank um which is which is a lot of fun and you know our work and and my work as the announcement said really focuses on on public policy um in in really three key areas uh the talent pipeline um housing infrastructure and kind of workforce in general as kind of a means to to look at economic development and you know we do a number of of of research that i think kind of informs this
004conversation that you can take a look at on our website one is an annual report that we put out on best performing cities um and another is a biannual report that we do on state tech and science which measures investments in higher education and things like that uh but really more um directly i think related to the concepts and themes that are throughout this conversation today and i think one of the reasons why michael asked me to be here today is right before the pandemic we put out a report around preparing california for the future of work which really took a look at identifying the prospect for enhancing access to skills and broader economic attainment as the future of work begins to unfold and and that premise around the future of work you know the
005scary aspects of automation that's going to come and take away all of our jobs was was really kind of demystified for us in terms of like jobs that can be automated will be and what our challenges associated with that dynamic unfolding is really not just upskilling but providing enhanced access throughout the talent pipeline in in terms of uncovering that equity dynamic that we've heard about here later on in the pandemic we released another report that was kind of inspired by that which was about recalibrating the workforce dynamic which again and you'll see at the end of these few slides here before we get to dr thomas uh really highlight a lot of the themes here um that that everybody's working around and and should be applauded around as a really living breathing best practice around
006the future of work so i i commend your efforts um so just to provide a few data points as we get into this conversation around equity and and the prospects for um public policy and investments in the talent pipeline that that you're all working around you know when we talk about access and and the jobs and labor market especially in california we see that you know higher attainment leads to higher higher wages and higher living standards by no surprise and those higher wages and higher living standards are really concentrated around stem and steam careers and stem and steam kind of education investments and curriculum that that we're all talking about here today so especially around computer science and agriculture architecture engineering excuse me um so what does that mean when we talk about the the
007best practices that you that that around ai and and and digital skills and digital skills access and enhancing those road maps and and frameworks around employer engagement around certification and certificate models is really the question about scale and and again it's no surprise to what everybody's working on here in this room which is which is which is the prospect for our our further dialogue on the panel and just to get a better sense of how this breaks down we see the variance between other kind of other kind of sectors and education levels based on industry and sectors and again not that this is uh revelatory to people in this room but the really three key aspects that we central on in term that we center on in terms of the future of work is you
008know how do we increase workforce participation how do we accelerate the adjustments in the workforce development programs to keep pace with these developing skills which you're all seeing here today and then how do we invest moving forward in the regional talent pipelines that you know kind of imbue those pipelines with the ability to adapt and engage and partner with industry sector leaders so you know with that we're going to turn it over to dr thomas who i know has some really insightful remarks here about the diversity equity inclusion aspects and thank you [Applause] [Music] well hi everybody i am so excited to be here and seeing friendly faces uh that i recognize and i really appreciate the warm welcome and i'm just so honored to be sitting on the stage with these incredible human beings
009so my name is mike lynn and i'm an executive leader at virgin orbit located in long beach california so i just wanted to touch just very briefly just a couple of minutes um you know about ai from my perspective and how i do believe it's truly intertwined in everything that we do across many industries including education but just to look at the photos um on this particular slide here on the left that's an actual footage from my company's most recent launch so the airplane at the top is called cosmic girl and that is our flying launch pad it's a converted 747 and we strap that rocket that you see below there called launcher one underneath the wing of that aircraft and our chief pilot had just released the this particular rocket and it was on
010its way to space and we successfully deployed um several nasa small payloads that were developed by students and so there's a lot of ai and machine learning that goes into space and on the right there that is an actual photo that was nestled on our launcher one rocket that took a picture of one of the satellites before deployment into space before it reached its orbital destination so it's just a little bit about what i do and so this i call my academic and career constellation and i won't bore you with all of the details but i have a really unique pathway to engineering or particularly stem however even when i was getting my bachelor of arts degree in political science my mba my doctor of education and most recently my master of science degree in
011space systems engineering ai and machine learning played a huge role in all of that and i worked primarily on the business side of the house within aerospace but i was still responsible to develop homegrown tools things that you wouldn't necessarily think a political scientist or an mba student or graduate would normally do but again ai machine learning is so ingrained into everything that we do and so when i was at johns hopkins university i particularly i had a few areas of study but one area of study that i did very in-depth research on was machine learning which is a subset of um artificial intelligence or ai and with that i learned um how deep it really runs i particularly looked at how social media platforms use various machine learning algorithms to accept or debunk misinformation
012or information but i quickly realized how that's uniquely intertwined and many things that we do so i wanted to kind of frame an issue that i think we have um you know we are surrounded by so much data and if we haven't already we don't have enough humans on the planet to process that data so what does that mean i would argue that it means that every single person regardless of what discipline you are in will have some role in how to process data and how to automate data and that's where the ai comes into play so i know you've been here all day and i got here not too long ago but i just wanted to kind of frame from my perspective you know what is artificial intelligence and what is machine learning and
013with ai uh it's really the transfer of human intelligence to machines and so it's really driven by humans and i want that to resonate because i think a lot of people believe that everything's going to be run by robots and that is we have to distinguish between the sci-fi and the science and so you know machine learning is the fundamental part of ai as it pertains to the process of learning from data sets over time so how does the data get better how do we get smarter and so i think this has been talked about but again because ai is driven by humans we have to ask ourselves how biased are we because that's what's going to program what it is that we need to do in order to keep pushing forward and trends of
014the future i'm not going to go too deep into this but essentially there are billions of dollars that are being invested right now in ai across many industries that is a huge opportunity for anyone especially folks in education to really take hold of this huge opportunity and i also wanted to touch on military applications you know we sometimes we always think of you know for-profit or or different things like high-tech google but the military is also looking really heavily into ai and how they use it to protect our nation and all in there um on that note but i i do think uh this panel for giving me just a few minutes to introduce myself and just to kind of give you my view of the world through ai [Applause] now that that's fantastic and
015i was talking with adrian at lunch a bit about about how this conversation intersects dr thomas with with especially sectors in in defense and in military that that require domestic workforce like where do you see the prospects for scaling this this type of ai program especially as it relates with industry leaders like yourself sure well i think it starts in the classroom it starts at a very young age it starts with you know teaching kids that i mean i'd have two-year-olds that can navigate my iphone and it's really how do you operationalize that and how do you build that into your curriculum so that kids can understand that this is something that they can do for a living and it doesn't have to look so traditional yeah do you see best practices around this dynamic
016uh working in other parts of the country um that that you can point to or and that question i think to the rest to other folks um i'm happy to answer unless if somebody wants to jump in here i don't want to dominate the time no they've all spoke okay um yes so you know one thing about technology was really cool it creates a borderless society so i do think that this is something to where it does open up the world of possibilities um to do more international business uh international business which really helps all of us but also too it opens up the doors through an educational perspective because now we have more opportunities to learn how to learn and and how to educate yeah joseph when we had the the call a little
017bit earlier this week just to talk about some of the themes here um you kind of came at this from a different angle around um maybe how we engineer different types of incentives to bring in industry leaders like yourself do you want you want to talk a little bit about that insight yeah absolutely um so we're talking about creating an ai workforce and you know for us at loco we also uh hire vets you know i think that there's a a huge pool of talent especially in the military of people coming out and that have incredibly valuable skills soft skills and technical skills that can be directly applied here too so not to forget about those guys because um as you know we're looking to shore up our defense strategy as a nation you have
018to really think about where you're you know who's the front line here who's who's really uh seeing the full picture or has the missing pieces uh to fill in the gaps so i think it starts in your local community but i also think that there's a huge pool of talent you know in our veteran community um and it definitely comes it comes down to opportunities and really um you know i think when it when we look at our internship program working with students who are coming from um you know maybe lower income or are not as connected um you know you know lives and and and coming in first generation second generation maybe they're not as connected as the ivy league parents and kids and so they need that network too so you have to
019start thinking strategically how to build these pathways and a lot of dimensions well yeah and even even maybe some some more carrot and stick kind of dynamics that that scale the type of of coding programs and and career pathways programs that you've been able to to work here in uh locally too that that that came up in specific didn't it the id the idea of an incentive program around coding and i just i thought it was a great idea so thanks but um adrian the uh the announcement earlier today around the the google certification kind of collaborative um but i mean that was i was hoping you could talk us through a little bit more of that in terms of how that came about and and just the opportunities for for the further integration with
020the with the k-12 and beyond kind of curriculum sure um how it came about i guess is very complicated and i won't bore you with all of the details but i think that um at google i've been i've been there almost seven years and the entire time that i've been there i've been working on educational programs of different kinds um and and trying a bunch of different things that some worked some didn't and i think the career certificates are sort of like the culmination of a bunch of different ideas from different teams and the basis of the idea really is give young people hands-on experience which sounds like kind of a duh but in in a lot of ways it's something that industry hasn't you know having that sort of industry informed perspective at a
021younger age and having especially for those going into more technical roles hands-on experience doing the work for which they're trying to be hired later is the number one resume builder and the number one set of skills that recruiters are looking for in the high tech industry so when our recruiters go and look at resumes you know you see two students with you know two different resumes one went to csu fullerton one went to san diego state let's say and they both got 4.0 and they both have a cs degree and they're both applying how do you differentiate these those two students are functionally the same they've both taken the same sort of set of classes etc and the number one thing that recruiters are looking at are have they done um project-based learning have they
022built things before are they contributing to the open source community and right now i'm only talking about technical roles not non-technical roles are sort of similar thing but really the google career certificates idea comes from knowing that in order to give students greater opportunities we have to give them access to the tools and the technologies early on so that they can actually use these things so that they can supplement their own sort of experience in education which is not to say that this is a way around formal education because it's not it's designed to be embedded like no one's trying to make a teacher obsolete here like you all know teachers are absolutely integral to this program the functioning of this program and the reason for that is because it's not just the technical skills
023it's the soft skills too it's the it's the project management it's the creative problem solving it's the persistence i was talking about earlier so in a lot of ways and there's this very long-winded answer at this point but in a lot of ways the google career certificates is an attempt to take project-based learning put it embedded inside of a formal education model and then you know in order to give students access to things that they you know industry informed ways of problem solving and industry informed ways of working so that they have that sort of practical experience that gives them a leg up so that by the time they do get to the point where they're ready to apply to a job or take those set of life skills somewhere else in a completely different
024direction they have that hands-on experience that otherwise is really very hard to get unless you're somehow very well connected you know for those of us out there who who's who don't have a strong network of you know ivy league folks around them or who don't have access to a computer at home or for those of us who don't even know what a software engineer does right having that having those people in front of you is so important because you know we can't be what we can't see that's the expression i think it's absolutely true so the career certificate is attempting to do all of that which is quite a tall order um michael and then maybe neil too um you know maybe talk to us a bit about the the urgency that you saw and
025met in terms of meeting the and to fill the opportunity gap with kind of the skills enhancement and skill based learning employer partnerships like how did that system of investments and partnerships you know come about it's not easy but i think uh the key takeaway hopefully for our audience which uh you know what not only it's internal we're speaking to a lot of our own people our parents our teachers but external as well i know there are other people from outside watching this because people now because of the google partnership um are asking auhsd like you know how did you guys do that and i think that the number one piece is it needs to and this answers the urgency if we're truly serious about the urgency we need to make this a priority and
026integrate it during the school day and um and we can't we being that k-12 system cannot do that alone without the partnerships that you see up here without the community college and to build those systems internally based on relationships based on trust and and it does take courage for because i think one of the problems and challenges not only in the state of california but across this country we have spent 20 years with with the wrong drivers too much emphasis on teaching to the test on a test score distilling all of the talent that we saw demonstrated with students from kennedy and cyprus who presented into a multiple choice test score uh you you're not going to get a kid that we saw without all the work all the integrated work uh beginning with the
027teachers having the freedom to allow the adam noms to create a such shooter in seventh and eighth grade rather than teaching to the test so i think that is really foundational in terms of the message uh to scale up and uh that's why we're so proud of the partnerships with the folks that you see up here in the institutions across the district and i think it's it's a lot of this is called infrastructure problems a lot of things you hear superintendent matsuda talking about the other panelists talking about are all very relevant and if you look at from the flip side there are companies and other organizations that want to partner and provide you know after school or supplementary whatever they can do to try and help upskill the students the challenge is many of
028those you know people don't know how academia works some of the challenges so even like the stuff that we've done together like with the saturday workshop program it's prevention you know he worked really hard to you know cultivate get by with his team across the board and i think without that level of buy-in we wouldn't have seen the success that we actually had so we need the bilateral partnership we need the buy-in from both sides we need the infrastructure which is more than just access to equipment and apis and technology that's important we also need the ability to do the follow-up or the you know the way to let the students be able to move forward because too often i see you come in like during engineering week they do a cool project some of
029the kids are really excited and then they have no outlet to take it forward right especially underserved communities they may not have access to a computer or a teacher that's free time to engage on some of these things and i think that was actually one of the things again that we did that was so powerful because yeah we do the saturday workshop and then you have a few of the teachers reserve time in the monday class to have a discussion about some of the things that were discussed and some of the things the students thought about over the weekend so i think to be successful ultimately yeah and to attract you know industry leaders you're talking about matt and vice versa it's a bilateral partnership you know not focused on curriculum focused on infrastructure but
030at the end they everyone has committed the goal of improving outcomes for students yeah um joseph and adrian and dr thomas i think you kind of talked about kind of the untraditional pathway a bit and and how this model is has really helped kind of uh provide enhanced opportunities to folks but you know is it just from the bottoms up that we build these kind of pathways you know through the k-12 system for students without traditional technical backgrounds like how do you bridge some of that gap in terms of you know bottom-up efforts with kind of some top-down supports [Music] anybody well i have a a perspective on this but i'm sure there are many perspectives on this so i will offer one i think what what you're describing is a systemic problem so systemic
031problems if they're going to be solved require systemic solutions so i think that that is to say bottoms up is great like we definitely need um we definitely need you know investment in k-12 we definitely need investment in education we definitely need um you know infusion of um of money and and up to create these opportunities but we also have to speaking as myself and not the google part right now we also need companies to change we need them to recognize that the way that they for example of source talent in the past doesn't work we need them to change their hiring process we need them to open their minds to the places where there's sort of hidden talent hidden to them not to us and not not to us in this room in this
032room where that's why we're here right but i think that you know traditionally going back to my example of that recruiter looking at these two resumes those are the folks that need to understand what this the work on these resumes represent and i think we've aired too much on the side of the easy solution you know it's it's easy to go to an ivy league school and pick someone who's smart that's easy but it's it's requires some significant thought some some significant problem solving some significant systemic intervention from the top down as well so i often feel like as educators and i felt this when i was an educator the burden was like all on me like i've got to solve this problem i got to get these kids to college i got to get
033them through their degree i got to make sure they can write this essay they got to pass the test or whatever and that's true but it would be really nice if there were some folks on the top that were working just as hard as you all are so that's that's the message i evangelize and hopefully some people will listen but i think ultimately it has to be both because this is not a problem that one group of people can solve that up from uh adrian so i i completely agree that um bottoms up approach but then top down can't be ignored and i think for a firm like loco where we're doing pioneering work i mean there's no blueprint to how how to build these things that we're doing um and so our criteria when
034we hire is very different than a normal kind of traditional fortune 500 or tech company so we're looking for uniqueness and and really hands-on experience um is where it's at and so i think that when we look at our community and how we can give back to foster these pathways it is absolutely um working with you know high schools and and superintendent matsuda and and the visionary um you know pathways that they've created here but also it has to lead to something substantial um so i do appreciate the the google search certificate programs that um are starting to become uh you know into the program as well i think that at the community level community uh college level as well that there's some work that could be done there um they move very quickly and
035can adapt to these new kind of programs um not to say that the four-year universities are antiquated but working within that system can be very challenging for not only students but also for startups like us where we are looking to recruit faster i can't wait four years for you to get a degree and then be in debt and then be desperate to take a job like we want them fresh we want to identify them young so they can move faster and and you know the education can come if you want to fill in the university that's cool but i think there needs to be different pathways that are created at a much more grassroots level in your community and working you know directly with the organizations and the startups and um the people who want
036to get started sooner so that's where i think that we we align quite a bit is just breaking down the kind of structure that's been there and finding these unique pathways that that are kind of naturally forming due to the the absolute need that's coming from industry but also for the future for these kids um i 100 agree um i've been also preaching that you know there has to be a partnership between industry and academia and me going through the educational system it was always portrayed to me as it's binary i have to do academia or i have to do industry and that's unfair to today's student i think today's student is so different than yesterday's student or the student before that generation especially at the higher ed level students are not not all students
037i should say i don't want to be absolute but most students at least that i know are working and we have to be mindful of that and we also need to adapt to that and understand what learning needs are necessary and that's probably more on the higher ed perspective but i'm sure there's there's a lot of that um you know the high school level as well and you know i think um you know while education needs to be mindful of that but also industry is already noted we have to make sure that when we're looking at resumes one thing that i think is really important it's okay if they don't check all of the boxes because they will grow into that role but also in the education realm we also have to be able to
038train students how to fill out or how to complete their resumes what are some interviewing tips and tricks you know a lot of my saturdays and sundays are spent helping students with these things that they have no idea how to go about this and that's not a ding on this on the educational system it's just we need to be more mindful of that but then also on my side on the industry side we also may need to help them connect dots as well because there's so many skills that are transferable but we also have to be mindful of the inequities um that are included in all across the board um but yes i i think there's very like-minded people up here and i think you know that's why we're all here because we want to
039see this grow we want to see this expand especially you know today's student is inundated with data and we have to know how to process that and how to manage that you mentioned like interviewing skills some of those you know more traditional like soft skills that we talk about i know i mean are we thinking about and integrating soft skills or have we drawn up too many walls around kind of these interconnection points around curriculum are we integrating soft skills in as much as we should yeah i mean one distinction that i'll make and this is just my personal view i personally don't like the term soft skills because i think it gives us the opportunity to put it over here i think they're essential skills and i think that they need to be taught
040i do think that a lot of the essential skills are being included and they are being looked at um but i would say that there needs to be a more access to those skills um when it comes to project management based items or you know instead of um looking at okay we have to check all of these boxes now this is how you're going to how you're going to ace an interview or this is how you're going to write the best resume um to get noticed or to distinguish yourself and even in the workplace and industry i will tell you that a lot of times soft skills um translates into gender and that's a big problem and so i think that and i'm not speaking about any particular company i'm just saying in general i've
041seen that and i've seen that those types of skills they're dismissed and then therefore there's a focus on other hard skills or technical skills and those are the folks that get rewarded but actually we need to be teaching the essential skills because those are just as important if not more important in some cases [Applause] [Music] any other best practices or comments on soft skills um michael um we spoke a bit on the call earlier too about and also the the complimentary focus that we need to have on teacher talent and resources to scale these types of program like the technical skills the the kind of coding and ai background um do we do you want to address some of that dynamic in terms of the needed resources and investments that that help support this program
042yes and but i want to go back to what uh the police about soft skills that we call the five c's i think that we have spent the last this district has spent the last six years integrating those skills into the classroom into instruction and like to really commend many of the teachers here and in doing just that in fact we've been working with uh with mr tim nguyen and matt coleman on creating a system of integration which i think is going to and we'd love to share that with our friends from google too because i think it's really we feel we're a cutting edge district nationally in terms of building these types of partnerships but we are working on the integrating those soft skills into the classroom into the grade book with evidence and
043um there are a number of districts across the state across the country that are interested in doing the same thing and there's no reason why we each should have to reinvent the wheel we're inventing it here we know we're ahead and you know we want to really work with our partners to because we've identified i think what the problem is right we have the the entire k-12 system has really the wrong drivers they're not aligned to the world of work in the world of life and um and that's what we're attempting to do um any other insights on the talent the resources the investments the i guess i would add too that i you know for those of you that that remember back um before lunch which seems like a long time ago um when
044i was speaking i was saying that you know at google there's a sort of joke but it's also a bit of a truism that you write like one line of code a day and you spend the rest of the time sort of discussing that imagine how hard to do that would be if you hadn't spent any time in your formal education or elsewhere developing the soft the soft skills i also not i'm not a fan of the term because it it does feel gendered and i've i could talk about that for many many hours um so but i won um luckily for you but i think i think that this is a sort of crucial thing that some some folks kind of visit is a misperception about business and maybe even particularly the tech industries
045is there's a sort of myth of like like i said like the mountain dew slamming hoodie wearing tech bro who's just in the dungeon like typing away code when the reality is the the candidate that we're looking for is much more socially engaged like coding is a team sport and it requires a lot of like i know this might scare some some students who might be listening but you have to know how to write too writing a critical thinking reading reading comprehension you may you know you have your english teacher telling you like you gotta read this mid-summer night stream because trust me you'll thank me later and you're like come on like but they're right they're right those those are fundamental skills that are just as important as the other like the project-based learning
046and the hands-on coding that's all wonderful and it's more of it is needed but a truly like industry informed perspective would be holistic because when you're at work you have to do all of those things you have to get along you have to work as a team you have to know how to give and receive feedback these are all skills they don't come naturally and i think sometimes when we act like they do come naturally we are discriminating actually against people who don't have the opportunity for that same kind of education that's another point that i will leave to decide because that's a long story too but i think that you know this is this is very important to think about like holistically you know from an investments uh standpoint this came up a bit
047earlier and and neil i mean being at the uc system what what do you see there and i guess on down the the education pipeline in terms of the need and investments that support you know more this curriculum like you know really tangible r d investments do we need more maker spaces do we need more personnel and teachers like what what's the higher education investment quandary well we we need all of that and more i mean one of the biggest challenges actually is that you know as designed today the uc system most universities even to some level the k-12 are not designed to move fast right we're used to change happens and there's time to react and so forth but like in the uc system if you want to create a new class it's a
048two-year process so by the time your class is approved it's already outdated and so again you know you know i keep talking about infrastructure some of these things is that we have to adapt our own systems to actually meet this makerspaces incubators or labs more you know teachers professors they're all helpful but if we don't like direct it you know and put all the stuff there it's not going to be very effective it's it's like you own a ferrari right you have no destination in mind and there are no roads to drive on and there are no gas stations so unless we put all the pieces together we're not going to actually get very far with any of this and that's i think one of our biggest challenges i think looking out you know i
049know a lot of people look at oh my god he's got he's just telling us this is so hard we have no no magic bullet solution it's true there is no magical solution for us we all i know we're all heads down with our work and i know that we've got plenty on our plates just trying to keep the lights on but i think this is the real struggle just throwing more people this is going to solve the problem throwing more money isn't just going to solve a problem this is an ecosystem type of solution we need everyone to come together and partner together to make this work right and if you're all hoping that someone will figure it out and we can kind of play follow the leader by the time someone figures it
050out and you start to play catch up that solution's probably already outdated so it's really on all of us everybody in this room to come together and figure out the best way to move forward and continually move forward and i think the fact that all you people here today are in this room tells me that you don't want to make this happen you realize that we need to make this happen so kudos to you i wanted to add to that one of the things that i've always envisioned in orange county in general was to create a non-profit artificial intelligence institute so it's something that's always been on my mind as far back as when we founded loco so if anyone wants to talk about that or has interest you mean i i think this is
051a worthy discussion that flows right into what neil was saying i think there's a there's a big need to create new opportunities and to create new kind of you know organizations that are tied into the community and um are not out for a profit but really the profit of giving the knowledge to students and to creating new ways of getting them into you know careers and new ways into the field yeah i think um san diego at the san diego foundation just launched a very similar initiative around um some sector-based economic development i forget what it was around them um michael did you have some thoughts on that too i thought you had your hand i'm sorry um you know in that sense like you know where where is where is this industry where is
052this conversation heading you know we hear a lot of conversation about the metaverse and and the expansion of jobs and jobs that we don't know like what what where where is this going in terms of jobs that we haven't even begun to think about yet i'll i'll jump in i mean i think that's exactly why i was talking about hybrid intelligence it's not so much worrying about what exactly the precise jobs are going to be we know what they're going to entail and that's essentially augmenting the work that we're able to do with these machine capabilities so just generally speaking we know that we're going to have to get better at critical thinking we have to get better at the essential skills we're going to have to be better and be creative right everyone i
053know that everyone wants to be a programmer our bosses are like that but everyone has to have a basic understanding of the the toolbox the technical capabilities because there's no way to wield that otherwise right we all need to know an industry some domain expertise when it comes to the future of work it's it's different it's not just you learn math you learn english you learn spanish right it's about now interweaving all the subjects together moving these skills together so that we can actually be able to do something yeah i'd like to tag on to that i think you know empowerment is really important and you know allowing students to be gap fillers you know one thing that i i did publish earlier this year it was entitled you don't have to be a rocket
054scientist to work on rockets and i think that it's really important to understand just from the 100 000 foot level you know what is the what is in the art of the possible so we actually have doctors of education working on rockets we have people who studied teaching their entire lives and that are credentialed and they are working on rockets we have in-house fashion designers and internal or interior designers and that really help a positive workspace and you know they create our swag you know our t-shirts um that get us all together and rallying together um i can't say that was the you know where rocketry was going in the 50s and 60s but that's where we are today and so i think allowing students to come up with great ideas and empowering them to
055experiment and i say the word fail very lightly because failure is just another opportunity to learn and grow but to let them experiment with that then the students are teaching us on how we can equip them to help them to grow i would add to that if that's okay please don't quickly thanks um and this is just sort of a different way of saying what i think you two are already saying but i think what is sort of unique about this historical juncture is that we don't know the answer to this to your question yet we don't actually know yet exactly i mean we have some ideas but we don't know exactly it's not like um you know like my grandfather was a cop and his dad was a cop and being a cop felt
056very like easy to do in the sense it's just like a job and you go and do it and it has a sort of like prescribed norms more or less um and this is back in the day before and anyway i don't want to go down that road anyway um again i keep bringing up these different conversations sorry about that but or like a bank teller like a bank teller before you sit in a bank you cash the checks you give out the money it's fairly straightforward what's unique about right now is that we don't know what these roles are going to be we don't know what they're going to look like and part of what's exciting for students right now is that you're going to tell us what these roles are you're going to
057tell us what you're going to do it's not the other way around maybe for the first time in history you're going to tell us what the job is and so these skills the the ones the very ones that you all are bringing up are so important as a basis and these experiences are so important as a basis because it's that skill set and those sets of experiences that are going to uniquely come together in each of you and then you're going to say like oh i'm going to go work on rockets and i'm going to do this very specific thing that probably doesn't exist right now so that's to me a really really exciting moment to be in michael i did see your hand yeah so i i look at it both from an organizational
058standpoint as well as the individual students right so the organizational standpoint you're dealing with the k-12 bureaucracy right most that's the way most public schools are opera operate they operate and they're very comfortable in the status quo whereas we need to have a mindset of a startup we need to be nimble and we need to be able to pivot as the economy pivots and as this and operating in this uncertain world and so we call you know that's there's a lot that we've learned from the business side you know in terms of classic peter sengay learning organizations that's what we're attempting to do internally with our district and it takes a lot of systemness it takes a lot of healthy transparency internally right at an organizational level to be like a startup that's a huge
059mental model shift but then what we want for the kid is what we saw exhibited today which is an example of the soft skills the 21st century transferable skills we call it the five c's and that's why it's so vital that our teachers are integrating those soft skills during the school day again this is not extra credit or after school this is happening during the school day and um i'm really proud of the work we've done in the last six years to get there there's enough of our admins there's enough of our teachers enough for our parents enough of our students who are exhibiting that and um that's i you know i think hopefully that's the takeaway and that's a takeaway for our partners here to see a district in an urban setting that's unionized
060that's um but that is beginning to act like a startup and um and i'm really proud of that joseph i think that's a great question to you i mean you started a tech company in the middle of a pandemic i mean what's your mindset on that soft skills um question there around the the leadership dynamics that it takes to thrive kind of in this rapidly changing space a lot of tenacity uh i think you have to be very nimble and fast on your feet we're able to do things at loco because of our small size and just the mindset of our employees that larger tech firms can cannot absolutely do so we can outpace people because of the nimbleness but we take great care to hire the right people so it always comes down fundamentally
061to a cultural fit you might have the technical skills you might have great education great resume but ultimately we have a unique culture at loco that allows us to move quick and attack for with ferocity and and so that's why we're so successful and i think pandemic accelerated that not only did it accelerate the need for our technology but it accelerated our culture and the way that we look at the world and how we have to be nimble as well when we hire so now we have two remote employees and before i would have told you absolutely not they have to be in the office but you can't take that attitude anymore and and for us we know when we come across someone that has those unique qualities that really fit into our culture the
062locos kind of have their own they definitely have their own say and then who enters you know our very small startup so i take everyone's input when we make these decisions because it's all valuable we work as a flat organization you know it's really i might be the ceo and i make some of the bigger decisions but when it comes down to the personal stuff and and who you want to be working with on these really hard problems you know 24 7 of course they have a huge say i don't want anyone to to disrupt that dynamic so i think we we've found ourselves to be very flexible and adaptive um to the changing you know needs of of you know how the industry is moving how the country is in the state and the
063place that it is and if you're not then you're really behind the curve because you have to kind of be ahead of this stuff and kind of anticipate what are the things that people are going to expect of you as a company and and the kind of benefits and the kind of flexibility you're going to have to their unique challenges so we try our best i mean i'm not to say that we do it perfectly but i think it's an ongoing learning process and our culture really comes down to our culture like we take great care to hire and find the people that really add to the culture and don't disrupt it in any way yeah yeah please build upon what he's what joseph's saying we all actually have this ability to be adaptable and
064flexible right in 2015 the first time i addressed the united nations i was warned that they think it's terminator time machine's going to rise up how could a world where i keep humanity it gave a little more optimistic speech but i was really talking about how ai can be used for public services it already is and agrees with stable development calls my 30-minute speech that night you know i was approached by the the leadership the secretary of general's like yeah we never thought about using the technology i think there's something here i want to figure this out i'm thinking yeah right okay u.n big bureaucratic slow moving government agency i kid you not four months after that talk we had the mvp for the af good initiative we actually had stuff in market and we've
065since obviously learned grown and scaled upon that that we had like 116 active projects going on today with an army of worldwide volunteers but it shows that even an organization like the united nations when they believe something is important enough you know helping people in the planet they're willing to set aside the red tape and figure out a way to actually make it happen to be nimble to be agile because the goals the outcome is just too important they know we have a short window like we have a short window to change turn things around let's just make it happen um you know we talked a lot today about you know that the dynamic of k-12 and even up into the community colleges and and a bit even into higher ed but you know covet
066has really accelerated a lot of the the inequities in our society um especially in black and brown communities um what uh and has displaced a tremendous amount of workers um and we say at the that that covet has accelerated you know fill in the blank especially the future of work you know what what is the space here in terms of opportunities for displaced workers and and reskilling even even you know for the the older generation of folks that you know find themselves looking for a new career i'll uh i'll jump in then i'll uh obviously there's a lot of training education out there through like google and microsoft and coursera and all these things i think the challenge that a lot of people are trying to either upskill or reskill is they don't know what
067direction to take it or they're not sure they can actually do this there's so much things that become tech oriented a lot of people think they have to be a technologist to be able to do these things yeah and that's not really the case i think that's one of the messages we actually have to impress upon people to realize that and i know that you look at the adult education continue education that's being offered again it's very narrowly focused right we'll teach you machine learning or we'll teach you security architecture you know we'll teach you to be a person that collects requirements and it's like i think without that holistic picture where people can understand what is really going on the pieces that go and make that happen they don't know where they fit into
068the puzzle so to speak and i think that's one area that we're actually constantly failing at as just an academic overall ecosystem is historically never good to explain to students or prospective students why some of the things we want to teach you are actually important how they actually get used in your career in your life and i think we need to solve that problem to help people that were displaced by kovid we need to solve that problem for our students today because what i'm my own experience is teaching is if they know how this stuff actually gets used they get more engaged because they know that there's a destination they're going to get to and this is why this is important learning rather than okay i took this class and then two years later oh
069shoot i have to know this for my job um i don't really remember what i learned yeah um that's a that's a really tough question i think to answer and just from my own observation and experience i've used this word already but it goes to empowerment and creativity and i think that goes to show how much we can and what we have learned in the classroom as an example so at the beginning of the pandemic we actually had a small group of rocket engineers and rocket scientists build ventilators for hospitals in california and we also deployed many out to africa and that took creativity that's a completely different industry and it was able to get fda approved to support and to help and be a part of the solution now yes there's resources and i
070understand that it's not as simple for other folks however i do believe in the power of creativity and collaboration and the more that we can experience that at a young age the more we can pull together in times of crises a lot of leaders have said this but we are truly stronger together so if we see displaced folks or if we see something that's spiraling out of control there's probably a wealth of skill sets that we can really leverage and pull on i mean even with our company you know we were just started in 2017 and we launched successfully twice in the middle of a pandemic with folks being remote now we had some folks on site but we had to completely change our overall operating structure to keep our teammates safe and healthy so
071that took a lot of creativity and you know that was hard because there's different generations that are coming together and we have to find common ground and to me that's rooted in what we've learned and how we were brought up as students as well so really leveraging that creativity i think is a start that probably only scratches the surface of your question but again just that overall empowerment yeah and i think it speaks to kind of the systemic solution that we've all been kind of addressing throughout here you know we're getting kind of close to the end of this session so i want to get um some final thoughts and maybe a bit of a call to action out of this and we've heard from some amazing kids um today uh who are working in
072in different aspects of this program like what michael will start at the at the back what would you say to the kids and from your perspective um like is there a call to action is there is there a need for support in terms of scalability i think uh the message to our young people is to uh develop a mindset really for lifelong learning you heard that it's a very uncertain world out there fortunately we have companies like google that are trying to fill the gap of uh you know continuous learning and i think that's in a love of learning and a curiosity about problem solving so i i think that we are on the right track and as the panelist here said there's we don't know what the answers are yet but we are trying
073to prepare you for this very uncertain world so you have the skills to continue to move forward joseph any any kind of final thoughts or next steps yeah well we we talked about this michael a little bit of teachers also getting uh accreditations and to continue their knowledge um in order to scale this internship that we've we started with kennedy you would really need technical people to run it and not you know we're a very small unique firm but how do you scale something nationwide for instance with this internship it'd be very challenging right now so we're still figuring it out but kind of one of the fundamental things would be to provide teachers really are the talent scouts here they know their students they know who who's uh you know attracted to this space
074and has you know interest and i think it starts with them too is that if they're the talent scouts they should also want to step up and continue their education and get certifications and maybe a unique certificate around something like this an ai or machine learning to be able to carry the torch forward and to run internships by themselves at the school so um i think i think it comes down to lifeline lifelong learning excuse me with students and teachers alike i don't think it ever stops uh we're in the age this revolution that's happening around us um you can't get complacent you really have to keep pushing forward and be determined to absorb knowledge and transmit knowledge yeah adrian any uh insight final thoughts around especially that bridging that untraditional pathway your insight that
075was really powerful yeah um hurting thoughts no no pressure or anything right better be good fix everything i think you know i think i i mentioned before that i think we're sort of at this historical like on the histo on the cusp of like a significant historical moment where the nature of work is changing and this is something people have said over and over again today and i i mentioned that you know the students of today are going to really shape in ways that i don't even think any of us in this room are able to predict like what all that is going to look like um but i think you know the the best advice i would give to a student is don't discount the significance of this change i know it's hard when
076i was 16 or 17 i didn't care i mean you couldn't have paid me to sit all day in this room there's i would have been off doing something i would have been surfing or something so it's it's for those of you who are still here congratulations you're all ready you're already doing great but you know i think for parents too like there's when i was a kid my grandma's always like you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer and and those that that was seen in my family is like we're a teacher of course like that was how you were going to go make money like those that was the economic opportunity and i didn't do any of those things really so whoops um but what i what i would say to kids
077today is like we are at this place where ai is the new that if that makes sense like if you want to make a good living and you want to change your life and you're a first generation college student in particular or you're you know you want to pull your family up or you want to create something for yourself there's a lot of opportunity here and it doesn't mean that you have to be just good at math or something like there's a lot of space here to do something that feels meaningful and also for for kids today there's a lot of space to create something new like i was saying before like jobs are kind of opening up um the way that we interact with work is changing we work from home now we do
078all we have all these sort of different ways of working and within that there's a lot of opportunity to try something new to do new things to define new jobs to have new roles in companies that don't even exist yet to do things not for profit too because not everything has to be not everything ought to be for profit please um and so i just i think that my advice here is don't don't automatically discount ai because it sounds mathy or it sounds technical um if that's not your thing that's totally fine but there's still nevertheless a lot of opportunity here if you're someone who's creative or you like to solve problems or you really um care about social justice because that's really where this there's an intersection here that i think is really really
079important um so i don't know if that's a final thought but i will stop there it's a great one neil what about uh [Applause] [Music] what advice do you have for the next master innovator i will say for all those students you guys have an incredible superpower it's a it's much stronger than anyone up here on this panel no offense guys and most of the people in the room you guys have a fresh set of eyes right we've we've learned things we've done things but we're also used to some things being the way they are you guys can actually find that different way of doing things you guys can be amazing disruptive thinkers and drive real innovation you can probably leverage ai and other technologies in ways we haven't fathomed yet and that's where i
080think the real change the real innovation is going to drive from so use it use that superpower and you know to talk about a call to action i have a challenge for every person in the room and watching the stream i know you've been hit with a lot of information today i challenge you to think about what's one small thing you can do to make this happen right to to bring you know this ai capability and get people ready for future work there's one small thing each of us can do what's the one small thing you'll do and mike will check that homework assignment on monday dr thomas um especially around this the prospect for increased representation and and and programs that support that you know what do you say to the the kids that
081are looking for those opportunities and how they can best you know access some of those or or work to increase those opportunities yeah um be authentically and unapologetic unapologetically who you are do not conform truly um and i say that speaking in experience um as a kid i was told that i was terrible at math and that i should find something else the last 15 years that's how i've made my living so it took me a minute to get that realization and it took me a while to get formally into engineering but i did not change i kept at it because i was passionate about it and i really cared about it and i will tell you that passion will take you a long way regardless of whatever barriers you face no matter what because
082i've lived it and i've done it and i started at a very low level and worked my way all the way up because of my passion similarly to that i would say celebrate your peers be collaborative do not be cutthroat and only compete with yourself and that will take you further than what you can even imagine and it's really about dreaming wildly but planning ferociously and just making it happen for yourself while asking a ton of questions along the way i still ask questions every single day over and over to make sure that i understand and that i have retained that information because that's how i grow and that's how i learn and if you're not sure how to do that find a mentor and if you don't know how to find a mentor my
083name is on the screen you can find me on any social media platform and i will direct you in the right place [Applause] what a what a great way to end this and i i think the student ambassadors have a small token that they'd like to present yes so we'll stay up here for that [Applause] [Music] [Applause] should we come down for a picture how do you want to do it oh yeah please please do it absolutely i've been up here too well sorry sorry good afternoon everyone my name is abdullah fattahi and i'm serving as the student representative to the board of trustees for the 21-22 school year thank you so much for having me here today i'm here now to thank you so much on behalf of the 29 000 students of our
084district to everyone here for participating in a historical moment for our own district it is becoming more clear than ever that artificial intelligence is the future and the anaheim union district is making massive strides in giving us students those opportunities thank you to everyone that made today possible and all the partners that are supporting the future of our community and finally i'd like to take take this moment to thank and honor the distinguished guests here with me today please join me in giving a round of applause to our amazing panelists superintendent michael matsuda [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we got a few plans mr joseph zucky [Music] [Applause] ms adrian posner [Music] mr neal sahara sohoda sorry [Music] [Applause] dr mckaylan thomas [Music] and finally mr matt horton [Music] thank you all so much for having me
085here today [Music] [Applause] this is cool thank you um michael i know um you were gonna come up and do final thoughts and thanks again for uh including me here was a really great honor to be here and uh thanks to our panel [Music] i think we also have something for amy amy could you come up here where is she andy corn [Applause] yay amy [Applause] [Music] you know um i started off by sharing the myth of you know the greek myth this morning prometheus and it was all about the gift of fire and again because of this distinguished panel of speakers we all have the awareness of that fire called artificial intelligence and i think the big takeaway for all of us is to it's now up to us to use it wisely on
086behalf of the anaheim union high school district our board of trustees and our 29 000 students and 3 000 employees want to thank our guests today for really really giving us that fire so that we can light the way forward thank you so much [Applause] so uh make sure you have your parking stamped right and we want to