Silicon Valley’s AI obsession has reached new heights, with parents sending children as young as 5 to summer camps focused on artificial intelligence and robotics.
of San Francisco Standard Reports Parents in Silicon Valley are enrolling their young children in summer camps that teach advanced subjects like designing AI robots and coding for augmented reality. While it’s common for kids to attend space, science, or soccer camps over the summer, the growing effort to introduce complex AI concepts to kindergarteners is a testament to the hype around the technology.
Ann Sasi, a computer science researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz and tech camp instructor at InteGem, notes that parents love hearing about AI, even though young children struggle to grasp the concept. “A lot of kids this age are bad at reading, so they have a really hard time typing,” Sasi says. But even if they struggle with the technical aspects, she thinks kids can still grasp the basic idea of how a computer brain learns. Sasi introduces coding to young children as if it were any other language, explaining, “Computers only speak computer language.”
Eliza Du, CEO of InteGem, a company that provides holographic augmented reality technology and runs dozens of tech-focused camps for kids, has noticed growing interest among parents in AI-focused programming. “The tech industry understands the value of AI,” she says. “Every year, interest is growing.” Some parents are so eager to get their kids started with AI that they try to enroll their toddlers in advanced courses. Du stresses the importance of setting realistic expectations, since there’s only so much a toddler can learn in a one- or two-week camp.
Integem studied the Common Core educational standards to ensure its programs were appropriate for kids as young as 5. But meeting parental expectations can be hard: Du recounted a perplexing comment from a parent who, just a week after attending the camp, complained that their 5-year-old wasn’t ready for an internship at Google.
At the Integem Summer Camp in Cupertino, children as young as five were introduced to robotics and AI. Some built robots out of Lego bricks and connected plastic gears to motors, while others learned how to train AI models to identify objects using computer vision. “It’s fun to play games myself,” said 8-year-old Mikaela, expressing her love of designing games as she created questions and answers for players to answer.
Other parents, like Timothy Lu, an engineer at Marvel Technology, see camp as an opportunity for their kids to explore and learn. “It’s good for my daughter in the future,” Lu said of his daughter’s participation in camp. “It’s part of learning and exploring.”
Winfred Lin, 17, an assistant at the camp and a former camper, believes being exposed to computer science at a young age is beneficial. “In the future, computer science won’t just be for software engineers. It’s for everyone,” Lin said, likening it to learning a new language. “If you start at a young age, it becomes more natural.”
Integem’s camp division began as a partnership with children’s clothing company Gymboree and now serves about 30,000 kids a year. The camps, which start at about $600 a week, aim to provide a one-stop shop for parents with kids of different ages. Du, who has a doctorate in AI engineering and taught at Purdue University before moving to Silicon Valley, founded Integem in 2015.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
