Our Mission

I founded The AI Equity Project to tackle a growing issue in the field of artificial intelligence: access. While elite institutions push the frontier of what AI can do, far too many students (especially those from underrepresented or under-resourced backgrounds) are shut out from the conversation entirely.

Most student competitions reward those with the best tools, datasets, or compute, not the best ideas. Many focus only on accuracy or benchmarks, rather than designing AI that benefits people. I wanted to create something different: a platform where young people learn by building meaningful, human-centered solutions.

My motivation is personal. One set of my grandparents is relatively tech-savvy, yet they still find AI overwhelming and unintuitive. The tutorials they try to follow assume too much. On the other side, my maternal grandmother (who is nearly immobile) sees no reason to learn about AI at all. But I know that, if someone showed her how it could make her daily life easier, she'd see its value. What they both need is not more content, but someone willing to guide them, step by step.

That’s why I designed this program not just for high schoolers, but for learners of all ages. At our competitions (like AIIC), younger students gain hands-on experience designing an AI solution for a real problem in their community, gaining feedback from AI professionals and the opportunity to publish, patent, and deploy their work at a global scale. At workshops, Elder students work one-on-one with mentors who help them apply AI to problems in their own lives. This approach grounds the topic in relevance and restores confidence across generations.

AI should be a tool for equity, not a barrier to it. You don’t need a PhD or a supercomputer to make a difference. You just need support, direction, and purpose. That’s what I hope The AI Equity Project provides.

— Kiran Raja, Founder & Executive Director

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