Professionals are invited to create short videos and upload them to YouTube in response to six questions posed by students from all over Germany.
The initiative has three goals:
- Transform career guidance for the future: Career guidance around AI-related companies, which have an increased need for young talent due to accelerated development, needs to be expanded in a timely and innovative manner. Teachers generally have limited knowledge to provide adequate guidance in this field.
- Make the AI ecosystem more tangible and visible: The sheer number and diversity of companies and institutions working in this field is often hidden from the general public. The aim of the video diversity is to give an impression of the professional groups working in multi-professional teams on the research, development and use of AI alongside computer scientists and data scientists.
- Increase acceptance and trust in AI by demonstrating that the foundations of AI development are being laid by people at the heart of our societies and cities. The sometimes mystical "black box" of AI must be demystified and the people behind it made visible.
Anyone who wants to contribute a video to the initiative can choose from six questions on the topic of AI that have been compiled by the students and teachers of the 18 schools in a nationwide cluster of STEM schools (see below). It is up to each individual to decide whether to record only one video on one question or several videos on different questions.
- What activity takes up most of your time / how much coding do you do?
- What do you enjoy most about your job?
- Does your current job have anything to do with your original studies/training?
- What professions make up the team you work with?
- What is your favorite AI project at work or in your personal life?
- What are the general conditions? What is the working atmosphere like? Does the company apply: #Gerne_per_du? Are there free drinks? Is there a dress code? How much can you work remotely?
The videos should be no longer than 30 to 60 seconds. The brevity is due to the initiators' preference for young people to get several short impressions from different people on a topic. The videos should be uploaded to YouTube by the protagonists themselves.
The homepage of the initiative www.imakeai.de provides further information on the structure of the videos and a download option for a starting image.
However, a wide variety of videos can only be achieved through a comprehensive call for professionals to participate in #I_make_AI. The portfolio of callers who have come together for the initiative is correspondingly valuable:
- Willms-Gymnasium Delmenhorst, Lower Saxony, Germany
- MINT-EC
- NORDMETALL Foundation
- KI-Campus - The Learning Platform for Artificial Intelligence
- Bitkom
- German AI Association
- German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
- human magazine
- Fobizz
- EVACO GmbH
- Women in AI and Robotics
- Forum Education Digitalization e.V.
- Federal Competition on Artificial Intelligence
- The National Initiative "Create a MINT Future!
- smart schools by bitkom
- Vodafone Foundation
- Körber Foundation
- Franziskusgymnasium Lingen
- Deutsche Telekom Foundation
- EWE Foundation
- Bertelsmann Foundation
- DAK Health
- Network "Ethical Use of AI"
- SCHULEWIRTSCHAFT Lower Saxony
- #ai_berlin
- Lower Saxony.Next Digital Agency
- AI Transfer Center Bremen
- K.I.E.Z. Berlin
- Lower Saxony Business Associations
- Lower Saxony Digital
- EduEngine
In the fall, an edited selection of videos on each question will be made available on the website www.imakeai.de. This will allow interested teachers in the classroom or young people in their free time to get a varied impression of several key questions.
The initiative's main target group is the current generation of students. Since the videos will be uploaded to publicly accessible platforms, the initiative has added value for society as a whole. At the same time, YouTube allows individual foundations, initiatives and companies to create their own playlists.
The initiative was launched by Gymnasium an der Willmsstraße (Delmenhorst, Lower Saxony), which since 2023 has been leading a Germany-wide cluster of 18 MINT schools on the topic of artificial intelligence and has developed further offerings on the topic of AI. The schools come from the MINT-EC and MINT-School networks. The cluster is supported by the NORDMETALL Foundation and the KI-Campus. Companies from industry and the (digital) economy as well as research institutions are also involved. The network's "Career Orientation" working group has further developed the #I_make_AI initiative. The contact person at the Willms-Gymnasium is StD Klaas Wiggers (wiggers@imakeai.de).
(Press release of the Willms-Gymnasium)