Submission Number: 463
Submission ID: 1599
Submission UUID: 68834ac0-0d95-4f76-9fa3-71b5c95b460a

Created: Fri, 03/14/2025 - 22:48
Completed: Fri, 03/14/2025 - 23:55
Changed: Wed, 05/07/2025 - 21:42

Remote IP address: 172.59.130.27
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Flagged: Yes
Locked: Yes
{Empty}
Saanvi
Trivedi
She/her
Pleasanton
California
United States of America
94588
Computer Science
English (5), French (4), Hindi (3)
In a shoebox dorm room across the world, I unpacked on the hottest day in United Kingdom history. As a student at the University of Cambridge’s summer program, I was surrounded by deep thinkers. Engineers who were building their first robot, students philosophizing about the future of the tech industry, and others focused on expanding their academic horizons. But surrounded by friends from Lebanon, Ukraine, and countries that had only existed as words on the margins of a map to me, I became acutely aware of what I took for granted as an American. Not just AC and being surrounded by people who knew what the SAT was, but the safety that allowed me to pursue my education with passion.
Learning next to students who’ve grown up beside bomb blasts and who spoke languages I’d never heard on a television screen before, I realized how large the world was, with conflicts that I’d never been taught in school but that shaped people’s everyday lives. I knew that with all the opportunities I had to make an impact in the world of computer science, I wanted to solve global issues that prevent students around the world from achieving their full potential. Studying under engineering professors and learning how code can create projects that save and improve lives, I took my first step as a computer scientist to making technology a tool for positive impact in my community.
I’m notorious in my house for teasing Siri. After her third response apologizing for not understanding, my sister and I would tell her to shut up and giggle at her robotic, hyper-polite responses. It was only this year, talking to Alexa, that I stopped to wonder why these artificial neural networks designed to be completely obedient were given female voices and names. AI is constructing a new world, a world to bring safety and progress across the globe— but when only 30 percent of the AI workforce and 10-15% of leading companies’ machine learning researchers are women— that world does not represent our diverse perspectives.
As a programming intern at Learndesk, I created an AI interview tool for the company. Researching previous AI networks, I learned how Amazon’s AI recruiter had such skewed training data that it became biased against all female candidates. These mistakes, while unintentional, stem from the marginalization of women in the world of innovation. Working on my tool, I used many diverse sources for the AI to base itself on in order to provide realistic interview simulations for everyone.
Biases against women aren’t the only problems that stem from only having one worldview dominating the engineering field. In fact, facial recognition software consistently struggles to identify darker skin tones and voice recognition software is designed only to understand American accents. By incorporating perspectives around the world when it comes to designing new technologies, engineers can better understand the needs of different communities to create inclusive and accessible projects.
There were invisible strings across every car on the street, linking across to street lights, all the way down to a pink bicycle, where I watched the strings tangle into a labyrinth of questions.
“Let me answer you before you ask another,” called my dad’s bemused voice. But I couldn’t help it. Mysteries were all around—how the all-knowing Google knew the quickest route to the library and how the traffic lights sensed us coming.
I took my dad’s advice of taking life one question at a time, but I still find myself as curious as ever. In today’s endless stream of information, can AI ever generate honest, helpful responses?
Ultimately, I believe it can. Interning for accesSOS, I saw firsthand how careful, dedicated work by developers can bring safety and joy to communities. Providing emergency aid to disabled communities, I learned technical skills in coding that allowed me to debug the teaching company Learndesk’s website and create tools like my AI Interviewer. As a high school student, I wrote a research paper on different philosophies that have emerged from modern technologies. With mentorship from a current graduate student as well as learning from faculty participating in Global Engineering research, I can learn more about worldwide engineering developments.
At the Global Engineering RAP’s Disaster Recovery research on helping communities rebuild after natural disasters, I can contribute my experience working at AccesSOS to set up secure access to 911 technology for disadvantaged communities. As a tutor in mathematics and coder in Java and other programming languages, I can bring my teaching experience to become a student grader for the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering. In the Global Engineering RAP, I can develop my education in computer science as part of a community that focuses on how engineering can help create a more equitable world.