Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Applications

• Map everyday encounters with AI and identify the system’s role

• Run a human-versus-machine pattern-recognition simulation

• Test a no-code computer vision model with Teachable Machine

• Compare prompts and verify claims in generated output

• Audit an AI case for bias, fairness, privacy, and transparency

• Prototype and pitch an AI for Good concept with safeguards

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Explain core ideas behind machine learning, computer vision, and generative AI

• Evaluate AI output and system design for evidence, bias, privacy, and human oversight

• Design and present an AI concept with clear users, benefits, limits, and safeguards

Students will leave with an AI for Good concept and presentation, stronger evaluation and design skills, and greater clarity about continued study or careers involving artificial intelligence.

Responsible AI work requires both technical curiosity and disciplined judgment. Students practice separating a confident output from a verified claim, testing how a model behaves, and asking who could be helped, harmed, excluded, or misrepresented by a design.

Those activities strengthen evidence evaluation, problem framing, and communication. A prototype must make the user and purpose clear. A bias audit requires criteria rather than vague concern. A red-team review asks students to look for failure before presenting a solution. These habits matter in computer science and data work, and they are equally useful in media, healthcare, education, design, business, and public policy.

This course is for high school students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade and want to understand AI beyond headlines and automated answers. It fits students interested in technology, design, media, ethics, healthcare, education, business, policy, or another area where intelligent systems are changing decisions.

Students should be ready to test tools, question results, discuss difficult tradeoffs, collaborate on critiques, and explain an idea to a nontechnical audience. The course will appeal to students who want to explore what AI can do while taking its limits, risks, and human consequences seriously.

Based on students surveyed in Summer Discovery’s 2026 UCLA high school program.

UCLA gives high-school students the opportunity to explore an academic interest while experiencing university life in Los Angeles, a city where entertainment, technology, business, science, and culture constantly intersect. The campus has its own community and rhythm while connecting students to a wider environment built around creativity and new ideas.

Students learn alongside peers, navigate a large campus, and gain independence through everyday choices and responsibilities. Time outside class expands the experience through friendships, campus life, and opportunities to notice which subjects and settings hold their attention. For families, UCLA offers a valuable combination of substantive academics, personal growth, and clearer direction about what a student may want to study, experience more deeply, or pursue next.

Artificial intelligence is used in recommendation systems, medical tools, transportation, education, entertainment, customer service, and public decision-making. Computer vision interprets images. Generative systems produce text and media. Human-centered design helps teams decide what an AI system should do and where a person must remain responsible.

Students examine these applications from the perspective of both builder and evaluator. They also consider careers in software, data science, product design, ethics, policy, communications, and fields that apply AI to a specific problem. Developing one carefully bounded concept can help students decide whether they are most interested in technical systems, creative applications, or the rules that guide responsible use.