Students from local high schools kicked off the start of October by partaking in a day-long event of programming and racing autonomous vehicles at the Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania in Carnegie.
The event, put on with Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud-based 3D racing simulator called DeepRacer, had students start the morning by learning how to code using the Python programming language. Then, students took what they learned and programmed shoebox-sized self-driving vehicles from Amazon Web Services Inc. for a series of competitive races and timed laps.
And while these small vehicles weren't equipped with tech from Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle companies Argo AI or Aurora Innovation Inc., the task of learning about the programming behind such technologies could inspire students to pursue careers with AV companies, or the even larger tech industry more broadly, someday.
That's at least the hope of the AI Pathways Program at the nonprofit Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, which partnered with Amazon for the event.
"It's important to allow all of our students access to this type of technology so that as these industries build, we get diverse perspectives and inclusive perspectives in how we implement and develop this technology," Christine Nguyen, STEM director of the Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, said. "For some kids, they may go on to be part of this industry. Some kids, they may just be conscious consumers or voters on all of these different things, and the more times that we're exposed to it, we understand how it works, we can make better decisions and not just about AI, but about technology in general."
Nguyen said only about two or three of the more than 30 students raised their hands when asked in the morning who all had experience programming in Python. According to Justin Marks, an AWS technical account manager, that proved itself as an entryway for many students to get interested in the programming side of technology.
"We thought, how do we make this cool and hands-on and then give you something tangible that you can have fun with and then accidentally learn about machine learning in the process," he said "It's been super fun."
