The AI obsession in Silicon Valley has reached new heights, with parents sending children as young as five to summer camps focused on artificial intelligence and robotics.
The San Francisco Standard reports that Silicon Valley parents are enrolling their young children in summer camps that teach advanced topics like AI robot design and augmented reality coding. While it’s common for kids to attend space, science, or soccer camps during their summer break, the growing effort to introduce Kindergartners to complex AI concepts is a testament to the technology’s hype.
Ann Sasi, a tech camp teacher at Integem who studies computer science at UC Santa Cruz, notes that parents love hearing about AI, despite the challenges young children face in grasping the concepts. “A lot of kids this young have a hard time reading, so they have a very hard time typing,” Sasi said. However, she believes that children can understand the basic idea that a computer’s brain is learning, even if they struggle with the technical aspects. Sasi introduces coding to small children just as she would any other language, explaining, “The computer will only speak its computer languages.”
Eliza Du, CEO of Integem, a company that offers holographic augmented reality technology and manages dozens of tech-focused kids’ camps, has observed an increasing interest in AI-specific programming among parents. “The tech industry understands the value of AI,” she said. “Every year it’s increasing.” Some parents are so eager to get their kids started with AI that they attempt to enroll toddlers in advanced courses. Du emphasizes the importance of setting realistic expectations, as there’s only so much young children can learn in a week or two of camp.
Integem studied Common Core education standards to ensure its programming was suitable for those as young as five. However, managing parent expectations can be challenging. Du recounts a confounding comment from a parent who complained that their 5-year-old was not ready to be an intern at Google after just one week of camp.
At an Integem summer camp in Cupertino, children as young as 5 were introduced to robotics and AI. Some used Lego blocks to build robots, connecting plastic gears to a motor, while others learned to train AI models to identify objects using computer vision. Eight-year-old Micaela expressed her love for designing games, saying, “It’s fun playing my own games,” as she created questions and responses for players to answer.
Parents like Timothy Lu, an engineer at Marvell Technology, see the camps as an opportunity for their children to explore and learn. “It’s good for her down the road,” Lu said of his daughter’s participation in the camp. “It’s a part of learning and exploring.”
Winfred Lin, a 17-year-old camp assistant and former participant, believes that exposure to computer science at a young age is beneficial. “In the future, it’s not just going to be software engineers doing computer science. It’s everybody,” he said, comparing it to learning a new language. “If you start younger, you learn more naturally.”
Integem’s camp division was started in collaboration with children’s clothing company Gymboree and now serves around 30,000 kids annually. The camps, which start at nearly $600 per week, aim to provide a one-stop-shop for parents with children of different ages. Du, who holds a doctorate in AI engineering and previously taught at Purdue University before moving to Silicon Valley, started Integem in 2015.
Read more at the San Francisco Standard here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
