It can be passionately argued that there is no better time than now to start studying artificial intelligence, otherwise known as AI. According to a report by Precedence Research, the global AI market size in the United States will jump from an estimated value of $119.78 billion in 2022 to an impressive $1597.1 billion in 2030. For today’s high schoolers, a career in AI may be especially prudent. That is why Blair Academy was most excited to welcome Veritas AI program manager Tyler Moulton to Society of Skeptics on Tuesday, January 24. 

Tyler graduated with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics with a focus on astronomy from Harvard University in 2020 and went onto a corporate career rooted in teaching and mentorship (recent positions have included college admissions coach with Prepory College Counseling and College Career Coaching, writing editor and consultant for graduate students at Global Graduates’ Union (GGU) Consulting, and head of the writing center and publication specialist at Lumiere Education). Today, Tyler is a program manager at Veritas AI, an organization founded and run by Harvard graduate students, that helps high school students learn the fundamentals of AI and build personalized projects.
 
The January 24 Skeptics presentation focused on AI, the diversity of AI projects, and how high school students can leverage the powerful toolkit “in building powerful insights into fields as disparate as literature and art to astronomy and medicine.”
 
“Artificial intelligence is all about leveraging technology to drive innovation through the replication of human intelligence in machines, and it is a method that can lead individuals to double, triple, and hugely multiply the impact they can drive in their day-to-day work,” explained Tyler, who is passionate about speaking to the next generation and looked forward to connecting with Blair students.
 
“Speaking to young professionals—particularly at the high school level—is all about helping students find their passions. While this might sound incredibly generic, it is both true and important. At a place like Blair Academy, students have a wealth of opportunities, and many will go to top universities, then to top companies and institutions, and likely top positions therein. There are potentially millions of trajectories every student here can take. It is, therefore, an incredible privilege to show them how AI is becoming an increasingly omnipotent concept, and how it will likely appear—in some way or another—throughout each of those numerous trajectories,” they said. “AI is everywhere, and I’m excited to share more of this with students who are on the cusp of deciding what the rest of their lives might look like.”
 
While the Skeptics presentation offered a plethora of advice, it also highlighted the biggest lesson Tyler has learned: That it is incredibly important to lean into failure. “Failure is not simply the inability to meet a goal, but it is a valuable learning experience that tells us as much about a phenomenon as success does,” they concluded.

Click "play" below to watch Tyler's Skeptics presentation.

History of Skeptics
 
The Society of Skeptics was established as a forum for students and faculty to discuss and debate important global issues; it has grown to become one of the premier high school lecture series in the United States. Each week, speakers from the political, social, scientific, economic and literary arenas share their unique perspectives with students, who are encouraged to engage with presenters, asking questions and debating points of view.
The program, which is funded in part by the Class of 1968 Society of Skeptics Endowment Fund, is an outgrowth of the Blair International Society, begun in 1937. Forty years later, former history department chair Elliott Trommald, PhD, Hon. ’65, established the modern Skeptics program as a regular forum for student discussion and debate; history teacher Martin Miller, PhD, took over in the mid-1980s and molded the program into a weekly lecture series, one that has since continued without interruption. Under the tutelage of Dr. Miller and his successor, history department chair Jason Beck, Skeptics has featured a wide variety of speakers who are thought-provoking, engaging, accomplished in their respective fields and often controversial. For a listing of upcoming Skeptics programs, please visit Blair’s website.