Today’s high school students face an uncertain road ahead. AI is revolutionizing the job market, and the Trump Administration’s funding cuts have halted scientific research across religions. Most technologies look unlikely to look the same in 10 years, let alone 50. Even students who are interested in articles ask: How can my work be seen, and how do I get there?
The Wire spoke to five high school seniors from around the country about their interest in the trunk — and how they envision the future.
These comments have been edited for length and clarity.
This generation needs to be at the forefront of AI development
I have always been interested in computer science, but my interest in Ayi started my junior year. The part that asked me was how it worked in our everyday hands. I was able to see the rise of chatgpt and other llms, and how people were using it in my academic life. Some people used it informally in tests or assignments, but it can also be used to create practice problems. Being able to see how it unfolds so quickly in front of me was the main reason I became interested. It affects our educational life so it is important that we are at the top of how it is structured.
My school is a math and science academic center, so I have to explore independent research related to LLMS. One of the main things I worked on was where LLMs can sometimes inadvertently release private data. Say you’re asking you to guide you through something that requires an API key, which is sensitive information. Because it’s trained on a large amount of data, it can have an API key set to its data, and it will give you a code, possibly including an API key. My most accomplished research project was developing an algorithm to prune those private pieces of data during its training, allowing it to not leave these private pieces of data during execution.
AI is a new emerging field, that if we can set roots in it now, we will be able to see that effect as we grow. Understanding its safety is very important to me, especially considering that it is used almost certainly by everyone. What interests me is that I am upfront and confident that I can say how my data is used.
I’m applying to Undergrad programs now, and I’m also looking at other less regulated routes, where you go directly to industry. Right now, in computer science, sometimes a degree is just the foundation, and if you have the skills, it’s not even necessary. So I looked for other options. -Laksh patel, 17, willowbrook, illinois
Access to Health Care Begins with Communities
My family, on both sides, has a long history of women raising neurodegenerative disease, mostly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. So I spent my entire childhood playing doctor, treating the matriarchs of my family, taking care of them and seeing how their illnesses progressed. I became very interested in how these diseases work, and how I can help patients like this in my family and in my community who do not have access to medical equipment due to income.
I have really grown to love patient care, being able to help someone at a vulnerable time in their lives. When those female family members started falling down and passed, I realized that these diseases spread quickly and why they hurt so much, especially without proper medicine. When I got to high school, I started to focus on research, to get the level of understanding to bring to college to try to start working as early as possible.
