Calgary students taking part in Hackergal’s 14th National Hackathon

Many of us are intimidated by the power and the potential of artificial intelligence, but not the 11-to-14-year-old girls involved in a national hackathon.

Girls 11 to 14 years old across the country enrolled in the Hackergal program are taking part in a one-day Hackathon, where they’re exploring this year’s theme, “Hack the Bias in AI.”

They’re diving into how artificial intelligence impacts the lives of Canadians and who the people behind AI are.

“It’s all about just looking twice at material that they’re presented with,” said Rebecca Hazell, Hackergal director of programs.

“Whether that’s ChatGPT, generative images that they can find online or maybe algorithms presenting them with things that they may think are not really the thing that they want to do, but the algorithm is recommending it to them and they’re thinking, ‘Why is that? Is it because I’m a girl?’”

Hackergal has seen more than 30,000 girls and gender-diverse learners from across Canada enrol in its programs since 2015, and many are now continuing their STEM journeys in post-secondary.

Hazell says starting girls early in the program is beneficial because it launches them on a journey of learning about the sciences that are typically male-dominated.

“We work specifically with Grade 6 to (Grade) 9 students and girls and gender-diverse kids specifically because we notice that there is a lack of confidence and a lack of interest that comes when they start to see that they’re not represented in the classes later in high school and in post-secondary,” said Hazell.

“So that they can become professionals in that sector and make sure their voices are heard.”

Organizers say only 25 per cent of Canada’s tech workforce are women and AI is typically being built by teams that lack gender diversity.

“Throughout the academic year, kids are coding in clubs in their schools and libraries and community centres across the country,” she said.

“They all work hard to learn how to code in either Scratch or HTML and then they put their coding skills to the test at our live Hackathon event. They take the full day and they’re able to just code a project according to our social impact mission.”

In Calgary, students from Alice Jamieson Girls’ Academy are taking part in the Hackathon.

Danica Birch, 11, is in Grade 6 and likes how everyone works together in Hackergal to come up with solutions to tech problems.

“I’ve done coding and stuff like that here,” she said.

“I tried graphic designing and I thought it was really hard. It’s harder than it looks because there’s a bunch of things that are kind of like gibberish to me—computer language.”

Tinishia Usborne, 14, in Grade 9, isn’t used to seeing this many girls working on a problem together.

“If you ask AI something, it may have some stereotypes and biases toward women because of the people who created it,” she said.

“I think it’s very important to have gender diversity and everyone, no matter the culture or the gender, just participating in whatever they like to do and whatever they enjoy.”

Heidi Vandenberg, a teacher at the academy, says the students learn from each other and work together well.

“I love the curiosity and I love the willingness to take risks and build that confidence to take on those leadership opportunities,” she said.

“And especially take those risks in math and science, in those traditionally male-dominated subjects.”

Prior to the Hackathon, Vandenberg had her students see what ChatGPT would give them if they asked for 13 different career fields.

“Eleven of those came back men and they were traditionally male-dominated fields,” she said.

“The students also observed on their own that a lot of times, if there was a woman in the photo, she was in the background and she was busy working and the man was kind of in the foreground and he was smiling at the camera.”

Organizers of Hackergal’s 14th National Hackathon say the program is designed to motivate the girls and give them confidence through their coding clubs, so some will hopefully choose a career in STEM.

You can learn more about Hackergal at https://hackergal.org/.