In Part 2 of this continued conversation, Jennie Brooks, host of the Unstoppable Together podcast chats with Executive Vice President John Larson, who leads the strategy, business development, and delivery of Booz Allen's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Tune in as they discuss AI education and how John's experience with dyslexia led him to a career in STEM. To learn more about the AI Education Project, visit: https://www.aiedu.org/
Jennie Brooks:
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together podcast. A series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton, and I'm passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with the diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable.
We continue our conversation with Booz Allen's Executive Vice President John Larson. This time we're talking about AI through the lens of education. When we get into this conversation, I think so much about my son who's 17. He is really going through a pivotal time in his life, graduating high school, going to college, right at the precipice of this massive change and disruption in how we live. And so I think a lot about his space and education. I think about the conversation we're having around diverse representation, and then I think about the generations coming up who will really never know life without AI. So as you think about those pieces, how do we ensure that AI literacy, if you will, is equitable and everyone has access to understanding it, why it works, how it works? How does everyone participate? Going back to your earlier conversation around making sure that we're pulling everyone through, not leaving them behind.
John Larson:
This is the critical question of our time. We are at a pretty pivotal crossroads as a country, as this technology emerges. And our ability to harness this power for societal good is going to be predicated on our ability to develop the talent that's going to be necessary to bring that to fruition. And what's interesting, Jennie, is right now I do have some concerns because I think a lot of the perception right now is focused on how do I mitigate my students from using ChatGPT to cheat on tests, to write essays? And I kind of look at that, and I think you almost need to flip that paradigm on its head and say, "No, we want you to harness the power of ChatGPT, and in embed its kernels of insights into what you're creating so that instead of a term paper that's 20 pages, you've built a term paper that's 50% written by GPT and 50% written by you.
How do we harness it to create greater productivity, to create more enriched outcomes and to get to a higher order of impact? And so I think the first thing is, as a country, we need to understand that it is a intrinsic good and we need to stop treating it like a communicable disease and start thinking about how we want to harness it for good.
Jennie Brooks:
Because it's not going away. It's here to stay, right?
John Larson:
It's not going away. It's here to stay and we need to embrace it we need to figure out how to really harness it for the benefit. And I think by integrating it into our training and our education, we will. The other thing is it's going to transform education. One of the most powerful components of AI right now today is something called dynamic learning. And what it's doing is it's using machine learning algorithms to understand where your challenges are, and it can repetitively teach you through those challenges to overcome those obstacles that you face. And AI is infinitely patient and it can understand those challenges and it can work with you and train you on that. And so I think it's going to be a really powerful tool to increase the ability. And they've shown these dynamic learning simulations. They use iPads with kids. You can accomplish more in three hours than you can in an entire week of a standard learning protocol.
And so I think that there's some really interesting applications here where we can look at this as a resource, not just as a tool, enable our education to become better by integrating and bringing it into our education process. But also as a tool for the actual application of learning and bringing it to help enrich that learning experience. So that's sort of that piece of the puzzle. I think we've got to start embracing it. The other piece of the puzzle that you've raised is sort of how do we do this in an equitable way? And I think that we have to be intentional about reaching into these underserved communities and driving this technology, this capability to those demographic areas. And this is why I think, Jennie, as you know we have this partnership, this really cool partnership, as an example with the AI Education Project. Who is building AI literacy and training content for middle and high school students in underrepresented and underserved communities. And bringing that content to the teachers, the educators, and training educators so they can bring it into their classes, and it's being introduced into things like arts.
So you think about the generative AI, we know a lot about ChatGPT, but what's really cool is things like ChatGPT merged with Midjourney or DALL-E. These are really cool generative algorithms around art. I'm not an artist, but I've used Midjourney and I've created incredible art in my head. I know exactly what I want to do, but I don't have the skill. I'm not an artist. I can't draw a picture to save my life, but the technology allows me to take the artistic innovation in my head and bring it to fruition. We need to be training and developing that and bringing that to these underserved communities and allowing them to engage all of the capabilities that they have and see it as a resource to unlock the art of the potential that they've got.
Jennie Brooks:
And again, I think when you mentioned bringing it to the educators, we quickly get into a conversation around job replacement. We're here to say it's not going to replace the job of an educator, right?
John Larson:
I think overall, we have seen this story time and time again, Jennie. We had these same conversations when the internet came to fruition. It was the same conversations about how people can search it and they could use it in school. It was going to replace jobs. When the personal computer came out, I remember the commercial for IBM and Apple, Apple II, Apple IIE. Everyone thought this was going to replace all these white collar jobs. And that's a worldview that's basically a zero-sum game in the sense that the pie size is constant and you're basically fighting over a single size of the pie. I think what we often underestimate is that when there's innovative technology that comes to bear, the size of the pie grow, and we're going to see artistic endeavor.
We're going to see innovation in new areas that's going to create new jobs. And in the teacher example you gave, Jennie, I think what you're going to see is functions that maybe aren't best suited for a teacher. Like this dynamic learning system where a teacher may run out of patience or not have time in a classroom of 22 students to be able to spend that dedicated time with that student who's struggling with that specific area. For that teacher to be augmented, to be able to be more impactful for every student in that room and deliver greater outcome for every one of those students. But their job remains valuable and critical. It's simply enhanced by the AI algorithms.
Jennie Brooks:
I love that. I love that the pie gets bigger. We don't talk about that enough. I love the augmentation and the enhancement. So John, you and I are friends, colleagues, I've known you for a while. You've also been fairly open about your experience with dyslexia. Tell us a little bit about this technology and the enhancements it can bring to folks with various neurodivergent experiences.
John Larson:
It's really interesting, Jennie. This is something that my personal experience has led me to this sort of epiphany around where we are with the AI story. What's interesting is, so dyslexia is this sort of language-based learning disability, and it affects approximately 10% of the population. It tends to go undiagnosed disproportionately in underrepresented communities and lower income areas. And what happens is our education system is focused on reading and writing in the early years. That is the foundation of the sort of first kindergarten through fourth grade. That's the primary focus. And if you're dyslexic, you tend to struggle with language skills, reading in particular, but you may have spelling and writing. These things are very difficult for you. What's interesting is dyslexic individuals and neurodiverse individuals tend to be incredibly bright and gifted. Not saying that I am myself, but they tend to be incredibly bright and gifted and they're really good at computer science and math, electronics, physics. And so we've got an education system that needs to understand that.
And recognize that there's incredible skills that are highly relevant for this transformation we're about to undergo as an economy, towards an economy that's going to be predicated on AI. AI's going to be ubiquitous, it's going to be embedded in everything. And at the core, all those things that I just said that people who are neurodiverse tend to be really good at are critical to AI. And we can't continue this old model where we sort of throw people by the side because they struggle with reading, writing, and spelling, and some of those sort of language skills that are the foundation of our entire education system early on. We lose too many individuals who get low grades and end up selected out.
And this happened to me and I was at risk of failing out of school, sort of being held back and things like that. And so that's not an outcome that we want or should be seeking, and we need to figure out how to harness that potential in these individuals and bring them forward to this new economy that's going to truly transform this nation and our global economy, and we must find ways to access that talent.
Jennie Brooks:
Thank you for sharing. I know that there are people listening who that will resonate with. You're sharing a little piece of your story and how it will help someone else. I was just wondering, given your own journey with dyslexia. How has it been in terms of just your own journey and transition into this space? Like you just said, we have a whole untapped talent pool that might be left by the wayside with actual strength and capabilities that can lend to where we are today with this technology. What has your own journey been in entering this space?
John Larson:
It's really interesting, Jennie, because I sort of feel like I was actually very fortunate. My story is the dream outcome, and it's something that I know that I'm one of the few, and we need to figure out how to solve this for the many. And so my story was I was in an incredible school district. I grew up in Arlington, and that school district had the resources, it had the teachers. I had one-on-one teaching for the first 4 years of my education. And not everyone's given that level of opportunity. I was blessed. I had parents who understood this and perceived this. I had teachers who understood it and perceived it. And so I was given the resources to do this. I think what's happened today in the education system is that we're more aware of these neurodiversities, and so there's more of it, but there's not the same commiserate resources.
And so when I was young, I don't think we were as aware of it, but there was sort of maybe an equitable amount of resources back then, but I got a disproportionate share because there were just fewer people identified. So I think the first thing is we got to figure out how to identify these individuals early. We've got to create the resources to allow you to lean in and pull them through. My story is one that I like to say just in incredibly blessed because that is how I was able to navigate through this. I would characterize it as the valley of death, those first four years. If you can find someone to come alongside you and see the value in you and harness your strength, my strength was the math, the science. And they harnessed that strength when I was young, while trying to help me get proficient enough with language, reading and writing to get me over the hump.
And so they knew that if they could do that, they could get me to a point where my other skill sets would start to predominate and I would be successful. And that's what happened. I went on to university and majored in applied econometrics doing mathematics, and I was able to excel because of that. And it just was sort of that real challenge of those early years. And how do we make sure that somebody, because they're struggling with those languages, doesn't get, "Well, I'm sorry, you're learning disabled or you don't have the skills to be able to excel," and they end up discarded. We've got to stop doing that as a society, I think.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks, John. And we'll also post on the episode the details of our partnership, the AI project.
John Larson:
I think that would be amazing. We're going to do something out in San Diego with you. We're working with the Booz Allen Foundation on that AI EDU Project. So I think that's the key thing. If we can give resources to educators to allow us to really reach those individuals... The one thing I think about often is we don't understand how ubiquitous AI is today already. And it's as simple as Netflix. Your preferences on movies you watch dictates what's served to you, right? Like an Amazon shopping cart. That's AI. It's telling you based on your buying patterns, "This is what I think you'd be interested in buying." And I think if we can help people understand how impactful it is in every aspect of their life today, they would see the art of the possible. And I think that's why I'm really bullish on this.
I actually think ChatGPT did something for AI, that despite all of my hot air and many others, we've never been able to do. And that was to really open the art of the aperture in a way that has not been done with this technology to date. What ChatGPT did was it took this technology and exposed it in a way that individuals who don't have formal training in coding or the science, could use it. And I think we should be encouraging every child to try it, because what it's doing is it's showing you how impressive this technology is, the things it can do. And you don't have to know how to code in Python or PySpark, you don't have to understand all aspects of it. The prompt engineering is very native language. You can just speak to it almost.
And that Google-esque entry point has opened the art of the aperture. And I'm hoping that what it's going to do is it's going to inspire others to see the power of what they can do with this technology. And it's going to create thousands of entrepreneurs who are going to find new ways to use this technology to impact our country and really create a vibrant economy around it. And that's sort of the art of the possible. And I think it's done something for us that no amount of white papers or other proselytizing could have done. It is ubiquitously democratized AI in a way that anybody can go in and use it and see the powers and applications of this technology.
Jennie Brooks:
So we're leaning in, we're bullish. We're embracing it. Thank you.
John Larson:
I'm so excited, Jennie. And as you can tell, this is a passion area for me. I feel very strongly that this is something that's going to be transformative for our country, for our society, for the world. I think it's going to help us solve the most challenging problems we face, but we can only do that if we ensure that everyone has a right and opportunity to be part of that. And so we have to be very, very focused on making sure that we've created that opportunity for everyone here.
Jennie Brooks:
Awesome final thoughts to leave us with. Thanks, John.
John Larson:
Thank you so much, Jennie. Appreciate it.
Jennie Brooks:
Thanks for listening. Visit careers.boozallen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future. Work with us. The world can't wait.