Learning to code in an AI age

“Working with education partners across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, we will help young people develop a foundational understanding of AI technologies, their social and ethical implications, and the role that AI can play in their lives,” says Anna Burton, Director of Global Partnership at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Experience AI

Experience AI, developed in partnership with Google DeepMind, is a free educational programme that helps teachers and students learn about artificial intelligence (AI). It introduces young people to how AI systems work and how they are used in everyday contexts through lessons, classroom resources, and hands-on activities. The resources give young people opportunities to think critically about the role of AI in society.

“Experience AI is designed not only to build technical understanding, but also to help young people think critically about AI and its impacts,” says Burton.

No matter where you live on the globe, a good understanding of programming concepts and coding literacy is going to help you thrive in a world driven by AI.

Philip Colligan, CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has written an excellent white paper outlining why it is vitally important that kids learn to code in the AI age.

Colligan outlines his five reasons in a Raspberry Pi Foundation blog post, Why kids still need to learn to code in the age of AI:

• We need humans who are skilled programmers 
• Learning to code is an essential part of learning to program
• Learning to code will open up even more opportunities in the age of AI 
• Coding is a literacy that helps young people have agency in a digital world
• The kids who learn to code will shape the future

Colligan draws a distinction between programming and coding. “Programming is perhaps best understood as the process of formulating a problem in a way that it can be solved by a computer,” he explains. Whereas coding is “the way that humans give instructions to computers.”

Kids need skills

The paper posits that even with AI code generation, we will “need skilled human programmers who can think critically, solve problems, and make ethical decisions.”

Learning to code is the most effective way for young people to “develop the mental models and fluency to become skilled human programmers.”

It also makes a compelling case that learning to code will open up “more economic opportunities” for young people alongside the advances in technology. It suggests that those young people who learn to code will be “the ones who ultimately shape the future that we all live in.”