One of the things that we’re working on right now at MIT is a tool that will help all kinds of people to create more applications based on the new technology that we have.
There’s so much coming out of CSAIL that has to do with particular cases, but this is more broad – it’s a way to make AI accessible to a large new user base, including those from new generations, and the traditionally underserved in the developing world.
The MIT App Inventor is a platform that has a lot of potential for collaborative use.
Talk about democratizing the process of change! Think about it – in the early days of responsive design, it was nearly impossible for any non-professional to make any kind of mobile app at all, let alone one that can classify, discriminate and ultimately, reason, to help humanity to solve problems.
The MIT App Inventor program is an open source web platform for making apps that is backed by an MIT partnership with Google, and a decade of research. Professor Hal Abelson heads the team and has given us overviews of this research.
In terms of the raw metrics, we have 60,000 daily active users and worldwide adoption, with the largest user base in the United States, and the most growth in Mexico with 8.8% total users.
The platform has been used in 19 languages and there’s a 4% increase in the development world, which shows us how widespread the opportunity is.
BTW, this is how you set it up.
So what are people doing with this resource?
You can see an example on the Jimmy Fallon show in August 2018, where a 12-year-old scientist shows off an application that can evaluate hazardous contaminants in water.
Someone else, for example, created something called App Pura that helps to achieve clean water sourcing. It looks like this particular project happened in Moldova. Obviously, clean water is a basic human need, and so I think this is a fundamental example of what we can really do with AI, not just to “become smarter,” but to save lives, and improve the quality of life for so many millions.
We can also see examples from places like India, interactive technology that can communicate, identify and translate, just to name a few; in presenting this tech, enthusiasts often talk about everything that this platform can do, mentioning some takeaways, including that democratization of technology and more capability for educational programs.
The team offers these options for schools:
App Inventor is an open-source tool, so advanced high school and college students could help solve one of the open issues in our open-source repository. Students aged 18 or older can also apply for Google Summer of Code projects to work on MIT App Inventor.
Teachers might consider participating in our annual Expert Trainers course.
It’s all very exciting, a major part of what we develop at MIT – not just individual utilities, but new ways to live in a high-tech world. I’ll keep bringing you more of what’s coming out of our learning opportunities at MIT and around our innovative community.
