Are Kids Still Looking for Careers in Tech?

Today’s high school Students face an uncertain road ahead. A.I is change What skills are valued in the job market, and the Trump administration is cutting funding Suspended scientific research Most professions across disciplines don’t seem to look the same in 10 years, let alone 50. Even students are interested stem Things are asking: What can my career look like and how can I get there?

WIRED spoke with five high school seniors from around the country about their interest in STEM—and how they’re envisioning the future.

This comment has been edited for length and clarity.

This generation needs to be at the forefront of AI development

I’ve always had an interest in computer science, but my interest in AI started my junior year. The part that hooked me was how applicable it is to our daily lives. I have been able to see the rise of ChatGPT and other LLMs and how people are using them during my academic career. Some people will use it unethically in tests or assignments, but it can also be used to create practice problems. The main reason I was interested was to see how quickly it was developing in front of me. It is influencing our academic life so much that it is imperative that we stay at the forefront of how it is being developed.

My school is a maths and science academy, so I got to explore independent research related to the LLM. One of the things I worked on was that LLMs can sometimes give away personal data indirectly. Say you ask it to code something for you that requires an API key, which is sensitive information. Since it’s trained on a large amount of data, it might have an API key in its data set, and it’ll give you the code, possibly with the API key. My most successful research project was developing an algorithm to prune those private pieces of data during training, so that it would not spread these pieces of private data during use.

AI is a new field that is evolving, if we are able to put roots in it now, we will be able to see the result as we grow. Understanding its security is very important to me, especially considering that almost everyone is blindly using it. My interest is in being at the forefront and making sure I have a say in how my data is being used.

I’m applying to undergrad programs right now, and I’m also looking at some non-traditional routes, where you go straight into an industry. At this point, in computer science, sometimes a degree is just a baseline, and not even necessary if you have the skills. So I am looking for other options. —Laksh Patel, 17, Willowbrook, Illinois

Access to health care starts with the community

My family, on both sides, has a long history of female neurodegenerative diseases, mostly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. So I spent my entire childhood playing doctor, treating my family matriarchs, caring for them and seeing how their diseases progressed. I became interested in how these diseases worked and how I could help patients like my family and patients in my community who did not have access to medical resources due to their income.

I really developed a love for patient care, to be able to help a person at such a vulnerable time in their life. As those female family members began to fade and pass away, I realized how quickly these diseases spread and why they are so harmful, especially without proper medicine. When I got into high school, I started focusing on research, so that I could gain a basic level of understanding to bring to college to try to start my career as soon as possible and help more people.