LOS ANGELES — When she’s looking through data sets, code and the language of machine learning, UCLA computational biology student Hritika Chaturvedi sees challenges she believes AI can help solve.

The 21-year-old has spent time studying AI – she sees her own future in the emerging field. “With AI and machine learning specifically, I want to use it for predicting pandemics,” Chaturvedi said. She explained that in the future, AI could be used to predict and see where pandemic hot spots may emerge.

For now, she’s still studying – but she began to see all the possible career opportunities within AI thanks to Break Through Tech AI – a program that supports undergraduate students in building tech and AI skills. Break Through Tech is focused on bringing more Black, Latino, Indigenous, low-income women and non-binary people into the AI field.

Chaturvedi, is a graduate of the program and says diversity in tech is essential because it leads to better innovation.

“What we talk about a lot in AI is bias, because when you’re training a model on information that you're given, that information comes from us as humans. The larger your sample space, the more people you ask, the more diverse your data set is going to be,” she said.  

Nicole Feliciano, assistant director of recruitment and placement with Break Through Tech, says the more people who help build the technology and computer systems of the future, the better that technology will be at serving everyone.

“AI is obviously affecting our future it’s going to continue to affect our future and if we have people that are creating this technology that only look a certain way, or don’t represent the entire population then I think that puts us in a dangerous place,” Feliciano said.

According to data collected by the World Economic Forum, women make up just 22% of all AI professionals globally.

Break Through Tech AI aims to change those numbers. For nine months, students in cities across the U.S. participate in classes taught by leading AI and tech researchers and learn essential AI skills. UCLA Samueli School of Engineering hosts the program and while UCLA students are able to apply, Break Through Tech is open to any second and third year undergraduate students in Southern California.

Feliciano says they want to offer advanced classes, to as many students as possible, “In some cases, students that lets say are going to a community college studying computer science and are completely capable of learning these skills, just don’t have access to it.”

And access to the most cutting-edge technology and teaching available is what drew Isabel Lopez to the program. The computer science major is heading into her senior year at Cal State Long Beach.

“It was for AI and machine learning, and I saw how much opportunity that provided,” she said. Lopez says AI and computer science is exciting because it’s all about problem solving, “that really is what computer science and coding is, it’s first about the problem and then about how to implement that with software and using technology,” she said.

According to recent studies from Pew Research Center, “22% of Americans say they interact with artificial intelligence almost constantly or several times a day.” 

It’s a moment that Chaturvedi says will change how we all use technology. “AI is everywhere in every space. This is definitely a revolution that’s similar to the introduction of the internet,” she said.