ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A summer camp at the University of Rochester is helping high school students from around the world get behind the curtain of artificial intelligence, the technology that powers song and product recommendations online. News10NBC Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean was invited into the room.

The camp looks like a typical computer lab, but students like Sara Eichinger and Teddy Bershtein are learning how to use machines to input data that would take a human days, weeks or months to understand and instead get a clear picture almost immediately.

“I didn’t know that’s how when I read Goodreads or TikTok, all of the videos or books that come up are from AI,” said Sara Eichinger, a rising junior at Pittsford Mendon High School.

Sara is a rising junior at Pittsford Mendon. Teddy will be a senior at his high school in Maryland.

“I think the biggest question is — when looking at how AI has evolved so quickly in the recent years, and honestly we’re trying to keep up, are we going to get to a point where the computers are going to be smarter than us,” said Bershtein, a rising senior from Potomac, Maryland.

The students are learning AI developed at the University of Rochester to take huge amounts of data and understand what it means. They work with massive data on things like incomes, crops, sports and health care and then use machines to make predictions. The instructors are computer science graduate students at the university.

Berkeley Brean, News10NBC: “What is the number one ethical thing you’re trying to impart?”

Neeley Pate, PhD. student in computer science: “The number one ethical thing I’m trying to impart is to think about ethics before you do anything rather than after.”

Dr. Zhen “Jen” Bai is leading the research. She says the takeaway is awareness.

“I mean technology, no matter or not, you learn it in the classroom. It’s around us and it really impacting our daily decisions,” said Dr. Bai.

This is one of several summer programs for high school students at the University of Rochester. But this one is focused on artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and trying to understand all the data around us every day, all the data we use every day whether we realize it or not.

Think about how much artificial intelligence is in our lives every day:

— According to Forbes Magazine, Chat GPT got 1 million users within its first five days.

— One in 10 cars will be self-driving by 2030.

— Half of all cell phone users in the U.S. use voice search every day.

— Almost 8 out of 10 people think AI will cause someone to lose their job next year.

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