The Gen Arm 2Z Ambassadors

Arm has a program with four teenagers known as Gen Arm 2Z Ambassadors. They appeared on a panel session at the recent Arm DevSummit. Since it was virtual, they never appeared on screen together. But as it happens, they were on stage with Simon Segars (pre-beard) at last year's MWC that I attended in Barcelona. Of course, they are a year and a half older than in this picture. You can read about their previous appearance in my post MWC Part Dos, The panel session was titled 4IR: Designing and Ethical Future for the Next Generation (4IR is the 4th Industrial Revolution).

The Panel

Their backgrounds are as follows (this will probably make you feel you didn't achieve very much by the time you were their ages):

• Emma Yang (on the left in the above photo). She is 16 years old and the founder of Timeless, an app enabling people with Alzheimer’s to stay connected to their families.
• Josh Lowe (3rd). He is 16 years old and believes kids should be taught to code just as they are taught to read and write. So he founded EdBlocks, a drag-and-drop version of Python 3 that makes it easier for students to learn. 
• Samaira Mehta (on the right). She is 12 years old and is the founder of CoderBunnyz and created the board games CoderBunnyz and CoderMindz to teach other children how to code.
• Avye Couloute (2nd). She is 13 years old, and founder of Girls Into Coding, a volunteer event series to empower girls with the skills they need in tech.

They were interviewed by Andra Keay, who is managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics, a non-profit group supporting innovation and commercialization of robotic technologies.

Andra introduced the four ambassadors, and pointed out that "they already have more experience than most of us".

Andra started by asking them why they do what they do.

Josh: I started coding when I was about eight. I always had a passion for messing about with computers, but since going to an event I found out coding was something I was interested in. I worked on my skills for years, and I knew it was something I wanted to do in the future. Then I created EduBlocks which lets people learn how to code in a simple and easy way. I think it is important for other kids to get the opportunities that I did.

Samaira: I loved it when I started learning to code. But my friends didn’t seem to have the same passion as I did, so I wanted to find a way to develop that passion. I think coding is a superpower that everyone should learn. That’s why I developed these board games.

Emma: Covid has given new significance to Timeless now that technology lets people talk to each other.

Avye: Pandemic had a big effect on us all, we still wanted to do workshops, so we switched to virtual events, and sending out robotics kits.

What makes GenZ different? What role should companies have in the future?

Avye: We want companies to be clear about what they are going to do to address poverty, hunger, environment, climate change, and so on. Also have more portable technology so that nobody gets left behind.

Emma: The biggest problem is who has access to technology. There were no apps in the market to help someone like my grandmother with Alzheimer's. We are thinking about building the next Uber, the next Instagram, but not how to make things more equitable.

What’s different about how you use tech compared to earlier generations?

Smaira: Ease of use, we just press button and facetime our friends, watch movies on our phone rather than TV.

Josh: I think we have a unique opportunity other generations haven’t had yet. Every day were are surrounded with devices. We need to make sure that everyone has access to the technology that we have now.

Do you do everything on the smartphone?

Josh: Definitely in the last 10 years we've seen a move from laptop to phone. Maybe in the future, there will be AR glasses, since there is only so much you can do on a smartphone.

Samaira: We do spend a lot more time on things like smartphones but there is still stuff you need to do on computers.

Avye: Day-to-day stuff we always had the internet on our smartphones growing up. Doing homework, the smartphone has been the go-to tool. TIktok, instagram, etc are very popular with our generation. But for complex things like the robotics workshop, I tend to use laptop.

Emma: The smartphone is still a developing technology. Edit my essay, turn in my homework, it’s an integral part of my life. Change is coming with integration with AR and AI. Machine learning in your camera, which five years ago you wouldn’t even know what that meant.

All of you have been involved in workshops. Technology tends to be aimed at older people. Have you had to make things easy to use?

Emma: One design goal is to make things easy, graphical rather than text based. My email, my calendar, Instagram, it’s a different sort of intuitive design. The aging population has been exposed to more technology than aging populations in the past. So it is not just young people.

Where do you see technology in ten years' time?

Josh: Like I said earlier, there will be a shift to augmented reality. It will be a huge driver in the tech space. There's only so much we can do on what we have now. We can have a virtual computer instead of an actual laptop in front of us. But technology is not accessible to everyone. Having internet and a device to access it has become an essential part of our daily lives. It is a huge problem we really see this year with COVID-19.

Samaira: Technology is making advancements, the number one thing I’m looking forward to is the advancement of AI in things like healthcare and education. Diagnosis, making decisions. But it can play a huge role in education too, better education especially online.

Avye: I see more tech in education to deliver virtual lessons. We will use tech to become more self-sufficient. Virtual reality will become more common in training and to improve educaiton. Also to change attitudes and behavior in a positive way.

Emma: Proliferation of AI is going to be one of the greatest advances, but I think we will see technology as a social problem. Whenever I’m with the school robotics team, I’m seeing girls who are interested in technology but not necessarily with confidence. We need catalysts to drive change.

One project they then discussed was a summer challenge that the ambassadors had worked on to create an app called PlantPal to create a smart garden. There was a video that doesn't seem to be online either on YouTube or Arm's website.

Where did the idea for PlantPal come from?

Josh: We had a virtual meeting about what we could build for one of the millennium development goals. We came up with a smart gardening system for indoors and outdoors. So people could have an app on their phone to monitor their plants. Gamification so people could communicate about how their plants are doing. The idea was to make gardening a bit more fun.

What aspects of putting a prototype together did you most enjoy?

Emma: Developing the app. It's been a while since i worked on something from the ground up rather than just working on improving something.  I worked on the backend and how we stored the data.

Avye: It was my first time doing anything like an app, so I had to learn a lot of new things. I was given the role of creating the user interface, which was really fun, working with Android studio.

Samara: This was my first time doing an app, too.

Josh: I was responsible for creating the hardware. I’d done a small hardware project before, but I never learned how to connect hardware to an app, it was a new experience.

What’s gone wrong with technology? What are the biggest problems?

Emma: Thinking about who is going to use technology the most, versus who could be using technology. We haven't tried to develop technology for the elderly. I was inspired by my grandmother.

Avye: I think a lack of diversity in tech. We need to make technology more inclusive.

Samiara: The biggest ethical lapse we see in advanced technology but we haven't been able to provide education outside the school environment. COVID-19 has disrupted normal education but we’ve not been able to deliver the same quality.

Josh: I think about what’s next and how can we make what we have better, but we kind of forgot that everyone doesn’t have access to the technology that is already out now. The problems with online schooling, and making sure people have access to the internet is a problem that has become really apparent.

What projects do you have planned for the future?

Josh: My main project is to make sure I can help teachers with the capability to deliver coding lessons to their students. Teachers should be able to do basic programming. Teachers pass on knowledge to the next generation so they need to be trained.

Samara: Right now my biggest goal is to get one billion kids to code. Right now I’m working on the steps required to make that possible. That is the biggest thing. Also, I want to get the voices of young children heard so that they can build the next solutions, create their own businesses.

Avye: Working on next robotic workshops, after first two, and developing robotics further. It's great to have a start but always want to make things better.

Emma: I want to keep on developing Timeless and we want to make sure that it is available not just people who can speak English. Also learning more about how AI and CS impacts us as a society.

Thank you, everyone.

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