The Future is Bright, the Future is… Teens — my experience of mentoring at a Teens in AI hackathon

On the weekend, I had the pleasure of mentoring at the latest Teens in AI hackathon. Teens in AI — part of Acorn Aspirations — runs an Innovation Programme that inspires teens to become the next leaders in AI and to use it to help shape our world for the better. For those that don’t know, a hackathon is an event in which people representing a variety of roles involved in software development — programmers, designers, project managers, subject matter experts — come together to solve a specific problem, usually in a day or two. The time-constraint works as a benefit in getting work done incredibly quickly within a collaborative and communicative cross-functional team. The results can be pretty spectacular.

The theme for this hackathon was Brexit. Hasn’t that been done to death?, I hear you say. Well, yes, if you’re talking about the balding Brexiteers, stodgy politicians and wealthy employers who seem to clog up our newsfeed. But not if you’re talking about teenagers, the ones who in reality will be the most affected by Brexit, yet have had no say in it.

So, a fiery topic for most, even more so for teenagers. The moment I arrived at IP Soft’s offices at the Leadenhall Building — where the finalists are interviewed on BBC’s The Apprentice — I could feel an electricity and buzz in the room, a combination of nervous organisers, intrigued mentors, and excited teens. I asked one of the organisers where I was needed. It wasn’t until that afternoon that I realised I had been talking to Sammy, the 18 year old who was running the whole event.

The morning started with a series of talks and workshops from industry experts. The CEO of Tech Nation delivered an introduction to the landscape of AI in Europe, whilst Sam Hooper from Cyber-Duck gave a workshop on design thinking. The talks were riveting and for a while I forgot that I was in a room full of 11–18 year olds such was the calibre of the content covered. That was really wonderful — at no point did any of the speakers feel the need to dumb down what they were saying. Quite right too.

The teens were presented with 6 different challenges by subject-matter experts, including how we might use technology to augment the NHS workforce, and how we could use AI to help people judge if information they are served is ‘fake news’ or not. We split out into our teams to discuss which of the challenges we wanted to pursue. For my team, there was a clear winner:

How might we involve more youth in local civic and political issues?

This challenge sparked debate immediately between my team particularly around Brexit, and with my one piece of advice to them to go for something they felt truly passionate about, it was decided. The discussion made me feel mixed emotions; shame that so much of their future has been decided for them, a strange joy that they cared so much.

Huge generalisations are made about young people, including throwing them all into a Remain bucket. What I realised here was that, yes, the majority of young people that have an opinion seem to want to remain in the EU. However, what about those that haven’t formed an opinion, either through a lack of interest, lack of understanding, or the inability to find trustworthy sources? In an interview that a 13 year old boy from my team conducted, the interviewee — a 16 year old boy — explained that he wasn’t interested in politics as it was impossible for him to know who to trust, so why bother. I couldn’t think of a worthy retort.

Myself and the other mentor — an 18 year old programmer currently studying for his A-levels with a place at Cambridge to read computer science — guided them through conducting interviews with peers, redefining their problem statement and generating ideas through a quick sketching exercise. The team then discussed their ideas with one another. Having facilitated, and taken part in, many design studios and sketching workshops, I was astounded by the creativity and breadth of concepts that was put forward. One idea was to use gamification — the user would be a sniper and would be faced with various questions around political matters. If they got the question right, they could take a shot at Theresa May. Enough said.

The idea that they went with, however, was a mobile application where users would receive up to 5 political stories or snippets a day, have complex terms defined in easily digestible ways, and then be able to vote on whether they agreed/disagreed, liked/disliked the content of the story. They could then see how their peers had voted and enter into discussions with them.

Overnight, this idea turned into a reality in the form of a clickable prototype. I could see how the first day had been more of a struggle, trying to diverge to find the real problem to solve and creating lots of concepts. But there was shift in mood on the second day; with something tangible now in front of them, excitement really grew.

Of course, a clickable prototype wasn’t enough. These teens were hungry for code, and between about 12pm and 3pm the app was coded by one of the 18 year old girls in our team with a bit of help from our team’s tech mentor. It needed work, but the basis for the idea was there — complete with impressive swipe transitions that any Tinder user would be familiar with.

It was then all hands on deck with creating the 3 minute pitch for their mobile app. One aspect they had to consider was how this app would fund itself or make money. So, without a second thought, my team decided to tweet the CEO of YouGov to ask for a meeting in the hope of partnering or getting some kind of backing. And to start getting the word out there they also set up an Instagram account. All of this fed into the viability of the product, and this unabashed resourcefulness was seriously impressive.

At 4pm, the presentations started and were judged by 6 digital and technology experts. The products that the teens had come up with were remarkable. One team had coded a ‘fake news’ detector that used a huge data set to determine the likelihood that a headline was fake or not. A member of the audience gave them the headline ‘Theresa May is an ice cream’ and we waited with bated breath as they plugged it in. It came up with a 93% chance it was a fake headline. Perhaps she’s more of a doughnut, anyway.

Public speaking is something that completely terrifies some people, regardless of age, experience or job title — you’re one of the lucky ones if it comes naturally to you. It was quite staggering, therefore, to watch 9 pitches delivered by 40 11–18 year olds with such confidence and passion. Even during their Q&As, they kept their composure to respond to some difficult technical questions. I was beyond impressed, and felt extremely proud when my team, UVO (Uth Vote), got to do their pitch. And even more proud when they won the top prize.

What did I learn? Do not underestimate teenagers; they aren’t all the moody, rebellious, sleep until four in the afternoon type. I also feel slightly less scared about the future of our planet — if these teens are already tackling such important issues then there certainly is hope.

Design thinking is all about freeing yourself from constraints in the quest for innovative solutions to complex problems. Creativity is something that many loose site of as they get older, as social pressures make us doubt our ability. The teenagers I worked with had an incredible ability to think creatively without constraints. Maybe we need to take a leaf out of their book.