This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Yes, it is Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education.
When's the classes in session?
Oh yeah, Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, producer Jess,
in the house, good to see you guys.
Man, it's been, what, a day and a half?
Yeah, you know, it's always great to see you guys in a week.
We love this, and Tim, I love classes in session
because boy, we get some awesome guests.
Just some really inspiring stuff happening out there
in education, and you know, today's guest
doesn't fall short of awesome.
So let's go, let's dig right into it.
Absolutely, in fact, you know, we have the guests.
He's Intel's first principal engineer
for digital readiness programs and future of work.
He's a trailblazer in global AI skilling models
and a trusted advisor to governments and organizations
and a thought leader on workforce transformation,
youth empowerment and the intersection of technology
and social impact.
He's a global traveler, keynote speaker,
and mentor who has spent 27 years
shaping the future of work in education
across 50 countries.
Welcome to Busted Pencils, Ansel Soneck.
Ansel, how are you, our friend?
Good morning, good afternoon.
I'm very good, very excited,
looking forward to speaking to each one of you.
Education and technology is close to my heart,
so very excited for the opportunity.
This is great, and just, you know, so the listener knows
I was at an AI Workforce Education Conference
in October here in Central Ohio,
and this is where Ansel and I met.
I was just there.
He was presenting this connection of workforce development,
the connection with community colleges,
and really this whole AI and education,
and we got to talking, and I said, Ansel,
we got this show, Busted Pencils.
I would love to have you come on the show.
And he said, yes, and as Jess and Johnny know,
I'm kind of a guest stalker.
When I find them, I chase them, I hunt them down
until they either block me
or they eventually come on the show.
You've got a pretty good success rate, Tim.
I'm pretty good at getting them.
So Ansel, we had you come here.
I wonder though, if you can just before we really get
into the conversation, the work that went on in Ohio
that's going on in Ohio and Intel,
community colleges, artificial intelligence,
just kind of summarize a little bit about that work
that's a little bit of the history
and where you're going with it,
and that'll kind of lead us into our conversation.
Oh yeah, sure.
So Intel Digital Readiness Programs,
a receipt of programs to really bring
digital readiness for everyone.
Hey, so now the bigger issue is,
digital economies are growing much faster
than physical economies worldwide.
And for digital economy to flourish,
we really need to bring the benefit of digital economy
equally in a more inclusive way for everyone.
So that's why digital readiness of people,
of all people, irrespective of gender, location,
ethnicity, economic background is very, very, very important,
especially for emerging technologies
like artificial intelligence.
So what we do is really help prepare digital readiness
of people by giving them enough skills,
more trusted environment and show them
what can the responsible outcome mean
in an economical environment.
That's where schools, colleges, community colleges,
universities are very important for us.
So I really drive that public-private partnerships
with Academy of Worldwide and in US,
we have a flagship program AF of Workforce,
which is what you saw over there in Ohio in action.
And it was at a community college,
Hawking Community College, where we're there.
So a lot of this work really does a connection
to community colleges seem to be at the heart
of this initiative.
I was wondering, you know, is why community colleges
and how they're working,
talked to us about that population of students
and kind of why you're saying,
this is a great place for intel
and artificial intelligence
and that's skilling you're talking about.
So, yeah, so the bigger issue is,
right now, artificial intelligence,
the way it is exploding worldwide, right?
It's like a new electricity, it's touching everyone's life.
But the awareness and education of artificial intelligence
is with a very small percent of population.
So it's a geeky conversation today, AI researcher, AI engineers,
AI developers, right?
So only the technology speak about it,
but it's a new electricity.
Everybody should be knowing
because everybody's using artificial intelligence.
So when you think from a future of work
and future of job standpoint,
hardly one or two percent people worldwide
and also in the US go and become AI researcher
or AI engineer or AI developer.
Most of the people like you and me
go and become an average AI responsible user and consumer.
And if you have to really contribute to the economy,
you have to go beyond that
and really become a responsible AI creator, solution builder.
So like in your job, you are in a media job,
you are talking of a marketing function, right?
So functions like marketing, purchase, sales,
you know, all kinds of functions
in all kinds of industries,
beat media, beat healthcare, beat transportation,
manufacturing, so and so forth.
They will require AI solution builders.
So you don't have to be necessarily AI developer or engineer,
but still need to know how to create solutions responsibly.
Now, if you think about it, what's the best place
for you to really bring your skill at a scale level
at to create an impact which can touch everybody's life?
Now, that's what Intel is passionate about.
Intel's corporate purpose is to really build world changing
technology that improves everybody's life.
Now, improving everyone's life is very important
and our strategy around AI at a corporate level
is bring AI everywhere.
So you cannot bring AI everywhere
if you're not bringing AI skills everywhere.
And that's where the community colleges in US come in
because if you look at US landscape,
more than 50% of the US workforce, right?
Goes via community college system.
And again, as I said, if AI has to be truly inclusive,
you have to think about bringing AI skills for all people,
the respect of a gender, location, ethnicity,
economic background, and so and so forth.
So that's the pivotal role
which community college plays in this country.
And that's what we do through our programs, AI for workforce
by providing them not just killing related content
and training and resources, but more importantly,
opportunities, platforms, policy guidance, technology guidance,
so that everywhere it can benefit from AI
in their own day-to-day lives and day-to-day work.
Johnny, well, that's excellent, Ansel.
And it kind of sets up this next question
because I think you started to go and do it here.
But I really love that you talked about Intel's corporate mission
and you connected with that sort of what I'll impose
my language on it, like social impacts.
You're really looking for a better society
in a role that not only Intel, but partnerships
with Intel and educators can contribute to a better society.
Can you talk a little bit more about for our listener,
that potential social impact that you see there?
Do you see the, like, there's a better world ahead?
And these partnerships can help us get there.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, so the way we live and the way we work
is changing very fast.
But the fundamental, both learning and work
will remain an integral social experience, right?
So if that is a soul, it learning is a social experience,
work is a social experience.
AI is not just then a new technology.
It's also a new way of working.
It's a new way of building intelligence.
It's a new electricity as a lot of people say.
So we have to figure out a new way of collaborating
a new human machine partnership, right?
Where human strength, what humans can do better than machine
really is always at a forefront.
When a lot of intelligence can be built with AI,
let's not forget there are certain things
which humans can do only, right?
For example, feelings, for example, I forget a lot, right?
That's my advantage because I do not carry
them the grudge, right?
I can forgive, I can forget, AI cannot, right?
So that's a new way of thinking about human machine partnership,
right?
So when you think about a social impact
and from a social landscape or a broader development, right?
AI can really add a lot and that's why you have to think
about bringing not just tech skill but a social skills.
The social skills around problem solving,
understanding new problems, building empathy,
explaining it in a simple language.
All these other social skills with AI skills
in an education setting,
which is where community colleges play pivotal role, right?
Taking it beyond the developers and engineers
and computer science nerds, right?
For everyone so that they can build right solution
for their own context, their own communities.
So that's where the social impact landscape is going.
What can I do with AI to solve my own community
water problem or how can I improve
my own city transportation using AI?
If everybody starts becoming a responsible solution builder,
that will really add a lot of value.
Anchal, this is such a great conversation.
And yes, bus defencils,
we are talking to the principal engineer
for digital readiness and programs
in the future of work from Intel, Anchal Sonak.
If you have a question and want to drop us, you know,
something that you'd like to know,
remember we have the busted pencils mail bag number
and that's available to you six, oh, eight, five, five, seven, eight, five, seven,
seven, six, oh, eight, five, five, seven, eight, five, seven, seven, seven.
That's the busted pencils mail bag.
You can drop us a note.
If you have a question for Anchal, we will get it to him
and he will gladly, well, I kind of put him on the spot.
Help us answer that because I would send it out to him.
Anchal, you're talking about that social impact.
And I think maybe one way to is to put a contextual way of describing
was what I saw there in Southeast Appalachia, Ohio
with Hawking College and that connection to rural and healthcare
and how those were all kind of coming together
because in rural Southeast Ohio,
the ability to get the services one needs is a real challenge
and that's the kind of social impact you're talking about, right?
And if you could talk more about that.
Yeah, so the social impact has to be contextualized
to the local community needs.
Now, the local community problems and here's the solution
has to also come from the local communities, right?
And that's where the rural economies have to really embrace AI
in a much more open way rather than thinking
that somebody from Silicon Valley can will come in
and solve my problems.
Now, that's exactly where the issue of taking agency with AI,
taking ownership that I know AI and I can use AI
responsibility to solve my community problems.
This is where the future entrepreneurs,
this is where the future solution builders will come in.
What can AI mean otherwise for my neighborhood shop,
which has a florist shop of people which is run by an old lady
with four or five employees, right?
How can I use AI to attract more customer,
give better customer service, give better pricing?
So and so forth.
This is exactly where AI can add a lot of value
in my context, in my community.
So instead of just saying that AI is something
which Silicon Valley geeky people will keep on talking,
we all need to build fluency and literacy about AI
and then think about responsible outcomes
in our own context.
Now, that is exactly where the AI for development,
AI for social impact can play significant role.
And that's exactly what we want to really bring
through community colleges and all our partnerships.
Well, so the community colleges, sorry, John,
I got so these questions just pop up in my head
and I have this statistic, 110 community colleges
have been involved since 2020.
The future then is to continue to add more
or to continue to develop what the partnerships you have.
I'm just thinking if there's a community college
out there, president or provost or vice president
of administration listening to the show
and they're like, wow, wait a minute.
I mean, what's the future of this partnership?
A couple of things.
So one, we physically cannot go to all the community
colleges across country.
Definitely, we don't know that.
So we need to scale anchors.
So we have a few scale anchors like American Association
of Community College, which is an anchor partner.
We have National Applied AI Consortium,
which is an anchor partner.
We are developing colleges in a few focus states
where Intel has a significant presence,
like what you saw in Hawking College, Ohio, right?
Or similarly in Arizona, similar Maricopa, Arizona,
or Miami-Dade in Florida.
So and so forth.
So we are building this anchor colleges
which in turn can do a lot of scaling
and build a local communities.
Having said that, if there is a college
which has a higher interest
and if they want to build a deeper relationship,
they can always talk to us directly too, right?
But we really want to show the impact via this anchor partner.
So that the scale happens without over dependency on Intel.
Johnny.
I mean, this is great.
So I am appreciating this conversation so much
and I bet our listeners are as well
because we've talked so much on busted pencils
about the importance of like career readiness
and about, you know, we teach teachers,
whether that be at the community college level,
the university level or just K-12.
And we talk so much about the role technology plays in our lives.
And so seeing these kinds of partnerships
and hearing about them, strengthens our public education,
strengthens global education.
So we are honored to have you here
as someone who shares that vision,
but from a different sector
and talking about the way that, you know,
we talk about public education being a better off of democracy.
But you talked about collaboration and partnerships.
And I think that's really Tim what it's about
are those collaborations and partnerships
that make our community stronger.
And like, Ansel shared, it's got to come from our communities, right?
And so I love this conversation
and I love the work that's happening here.
Ansel, can you share with us and our listeners
from your perspective, what are your goals looking forward?
Like, hey, 10, 15 years from now,
what should we hope to see
through these amazing partnerships
and this exciting work?
So from the perspective of a goal, right?
Every college, every workforce coming in this country
to be ARAD is the goal which we
and all our ecosystem partners are taking, right?
And we want to really be a proactive catalyst
in that goal or a vision
that every workforce is an ARAD worker, right?
Workforce, a responsible ARAD workforce
for the country's economic and social growth.
But for that to happen, I mean, at an operational level,
we have to really build a lot of operating models.
So with the colleges, we have wanting
to build very inclusive AI ecosystem with better AI access
and especially with the faculty since you talked,
we really want to give this message that AI
and delivering this AI learning and teaching ecosystem,
it has to be both high tech, which is where the AI is.
It's a high tech, but it can also be high touch.
Now, that's where this community collaboration model
high touch, right?
We do not believe that faculties of all kinds of colleges
will just go online and learn some of the skills.
It's not going to happen.
We have to really build a good high touch model
whereby they learn from each other.
There's a good proactive community support.
So these are some of the operational goals
which we are saying that build a skill
but in a very responsible and intentional way
so that everybody feels included.
Rather than think that, oh, this is too
techy a conversation is not for me.
That's not how you build an inclusive environment
in this country.
Yeah, Ansel, can you expand on high touch?
I love that concept and I think I understand it
but maybe clarify it for myself and our listeners.
So a conventional model of AI training
which many people say is, okay, here are my hundred resources
go and do the training yourself.
If you are sitting in a college in rural Ohio, right,
we would say come to our sessions,
really have an interactive interaction,
immersive learning and teaching environment like this,
high touch, whereby we learn from each other.
We really build solution together.
We really kind of demystify the topic of AI together
and really build that pipeline of career readiness
rather than saying that, here is my great product,
here is my great website, go and learn yourself.
I love this.
I touch, that's where the touch comes in.
I love this.
A couple of things Ansel talking to us
and our listeners about the high touch training,
the opportunity to learn from a person.
I come back around to you shared earlier
in this wonderful interview here with us in class in session
that you called it, that this is an integral social experience.
And that just folks, that just really ties it together.
It sort of busts that myth that Ansel is saying here
and Intel is saying that AI is for programmers,
for technology, you know, minded folks,
for folks who want to work in tech,
but technology is part of our culture.
It's part of all of our work experiences,
all of our collaborations, all of our friendships,
even we talk about the role that social medias
are playing and everything we do.
And so I love how you talked about it, Ansel,
as an integral social experience.
So I just wanted to highlight that really great stuff.
Go ahead Tim, sorry, I'm taking this.
No, no, I appreciate that too, Johnny,
because there's so many things we're thinking about here
and Ansel just to point that out.
Yeah, you know, so many people are like,
I don't like technology, I don't like computers.
Like, and that's okay, that's okay.
And that doesn't mean though that you shouldn't have skills
and an understanding of AI.
In fact, a lot of the users are going to not be high tech
skilled people.
And we find this coming up all the time is going,
you know, as I've really moved as an educator,
you know, working with future teachers,
working in the community to bring the ability
to help people recognize that our lives in Johnny,
you talked about that and we had a guest on earlier
that this is a cultural move in a direction that requires,
yeah, of course, the teaching and learning skill set,
but that high touch, that connection,
so that, you know, we use the metaphor here
on busted pencils, Ansel, my neighbor,
so that my neighbor starts to recognize that.
And then again, using that illustration from rural Ohio
because that's in rural Ohio, we're all neighbors.
We're all neighbors and so that high touch
and that connection there really, really makes a difference.
Ansel, one last question though.
Success story, awesome connection,
a student that had something or college, you know,
if you can, if you could share one story
that really gets somebody excited
because you've done this now for so long,
you probably have more than one story I'm sure,
but if there was a story that stuck out to you,
what would it be?
A lot of them, so one story which stuck out to me
from US standpoint is in Houston Community College,
we had an Impact Festival winner last year,
a 51 year old lady named Dina.
So after 20 or 29 years of administrative experience,
she went to Community College, learnt her skills,
she became a global winner because she along with her teams,
they formed a team and they created an AI model
to predict industrial hazards in the factory shop floor
where there is no GPS signals.
So they created digital twin model to really predict
okay, where can be the potential hazards.
So very, very important to people's life,
which can really impact everybody created by somebody
where no AI learning experience earlier,
totally a non-technologist.
So it's just creating a whole new social experience,
forming a new type of team,
playing with the strength of each other
and really solving a problem,
which otherwise nobody was thinking earlier, right?
Factory shop floor, small factories,
where there are no GPS signals.
If you can imagine a model where you can predict
industrial safety, industrial hazards, right?
Those are some of the things which we see.
If I can give you a second story,
I just made a student, I just made a student
earlier last week who created a simple web browser
which forces me to sit straight.
If I sit like this, the web browser become blurry,
can you imagine, right?
So that's what's, and this is a young student,
16 year old, right?
So this is what people can do with AI,
once you have a basic AI literacy and AI fluency.
Very simple innovation, very important,
but it changes my habit to sit straight.
If I'm not sitting straight,
it's like just the browser detection,
it becomes blurry, right?
So people can move straight out of local innovation.
Yeah, it's funny, Angel,
all of us kind of set up straight when you said that
because we're seeing ourselves, Johnny.
Yeah, I just want to take this moment
for all of our listeners and for us, Tim, Jess and I,
Anshalsana, thank you for joining us.
Thanks for Bust and pencils
and keep up this exciting and really impactful work.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
And now, for your moment of Zen,
I have no right to despair.
I insist on hope.
Hey, thanks listeners for tuning in
or for downloading the podcast.
Remember, you can always call or text us.
Leave us a message in our mailbag 608-557-8577.
And don't forget Friday's drop, free throws and face-offs
and to tune in on Saturday.
What does it mean to be a super teacher?
Also, don't be late for home room on Monday
and keep Bust and pencils.
Don't stop, don't stop.
Don't stop, don't know.
Don't stop, don't stop.
Stay with us and come to the end.