>>Narrator: How do I know which path is best for me?

Is it possible to take on these challenges and obstacles?

Where do I even start?

What should I do with my life?

Sometimes, the only way to find out is to go see what's possible Since 2001, we've been sharing the stories of people who ventured out and explored different career paths and different possibilities for their futures.

This is one of those stories.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

[MUSIC] >> Julie: I think technology gets a bad connotation, especially right now.

But technology means a lot of things.

It could mean the internet that you're using, but it could also mean AI that everyone is scared of right now.

I think with some of the advanced technologies, they're not thinking about some of the consequences.

There's like a gap between the people who are making it and the people who are using it.

>> Demaceo: It seems like we're in this new age space race.

People are just like, if we don't do it, someone else is gonna do it.

But what impact is that going to have on society?

But then also just what regulations are in place, if any?

And also see though there's a lot of great that comes out of this, too.

>> Anthoni: I'm trying to find my place in this field.

Making technology a lot more human-centered, where everybody's voices can be used and experiences can be used and not just one group's experience.

>> Julie: Thinking through the impacts of technology and where I wanna be in it, I don't really know, to be honest.

I'm excited to explore what that may look like.

[MUSIC] >> Crew: Hold the slate a little bit higher and then open it.

>> Julie: I get to do it?

>> Crew: Do it.

>> Julie: I'm shook, that's crazy.

>> Anthoni: The three of us are going to go on the road trip.

>> Julie: This road trip is going to be three weeks.

We're going to start off in Maine, going around the East Coast, and then swing towards the Midwest, and then we're going to end up in Kentucky.

>> Anthoni: And meet a lot of people, policy makers.

>> Julie: Government leaders, nonprofit.

>> Demaceo: Ethics experts, hearing other people's origin story to then where they're at now, and then seeing how they even got there.

>> Julie: I think we're all grappling through the same questions of like, just trying to figure out where we fit into the tech space.

But I think we're at different parts of our career, which I think is really interesting.

So I think it'll be kind of cool to learn from them and to kind of go through this together, but have different perspectives.

Today is day one of the trip.

That is crazy.

I'm feeling good, I'm feeling very excited.

I think I woke up this morning and I was just like, yes, it's here.

My name is Julie Lin, and I currently live in Washington, DC.

I do independent policy work, working with foundations and nonprofits, helping them with tech policy.

Does this thing come down?

>> Crew: It's broken.

>> Julie: Lovely.

I've worked on the tech side, I've worked on the policy side, but I'm not sure.

I think it could go either way or some new created pathway.

That's why I'm on this road trip.

Wait, this is our home for the next three weeks?

I get to claim bunks, we talked about this.

[LAUGH] Okay, so this is mine.

[LAUGH] I'm gonna claim.

Yo!

Yo, welcome to Maine!

>> Demaceo: My name is Demaceo Howard, and I live in Denver, Colorado.

>> Julie: Hi!

>> Demaceo: Hey.

>> Julie: [LAUGH] >> Demaceo: My goal would be to tie in marine biology and environmental work, and embrace tech and engineering where it could be utilized for a societal good.

>> Anthoni: My name is Anthoni Garcia.

I'm a recent graduate with a degree in psychology.

I'm excited for this road trip because I want to see how I can use my psychological skills to apply into public interest technology and see how I can combine both the worlds and find and create a career path that's unique to myself.

>> Julie: This is my bunk, y'all.

>> Demaceo: Okay.

>> Julie: So then these are yours [LAUGH].

>> Demaceo: Okay.

>> Anthoni: Feeling really excited, honestly.

I kind of don't know what to expect.

>> Julie: We started off the trip in nature.

I've never been to Acadia, but it was super cool.

I grew up in New York City, born and raised.

My parents were like very hard workers.

They both immigrated to this country from southern China and they were small business owners.

We grew up in this mixed Chinese-American household, and we had a million hobbies, kung fu, swimming, piano.

I feel like I'm a hobby collector.

I feel like I do a lot of things.

My friend and I were talking about doing a triathlon, so I've been trying to swim and run, trying to relearn Russian.

I'm trying to learn how to sew.

I was a little all over the place picking a career path.

That's the monument.

So I applied to business school, engineering school, I think I applied to film school, some liberal arts school.

I just wanted to see.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julie: I think because also my parents were immigrants, and I'm a first gen college grad.

I think I didn't know what my options were.

I ended up studying mechanical engineering.

So after college, I worked at Microsoft.

I was a hardware engineer there, but I think a piece that was missing was the impact.

So I wanted to see if I could do something that was more impactful.

So I ended up finding this fellowship called TechCongress, which essentially brings engineers and technologists to Congress to work on policy.

But that was kind of a big pivot for me.

When I told my parents I was leaving Microsoft to work in Congress, they were like, what's wrong with you?

I think they actually want me to go back into tech and they think it's a little bit more stable and government's not super financially abundant.

[LAUGH] So thinking through the impacts of technology and where I wanna be in it, I miss some of the technical aspects.

I'm not really using that part of my brain right now.

So I think maybe some hybrid of it.

So I'm excited to kinda explore what that may look like.

>> Anthoni: Today we came to my first national park I've ever been to.

I had a book that listed little places to go visit and in Acadia Nation Park, Thunder Hole was one of them.

I love my book, I am really happy that my book mentioned this place.

I'm going down there, we're going down there.

>> Julie: Thunder Hole!

Is it gonna be crazy?

>> Anthoni: We did it.

>> Demaceo: All right, we got it [LAUGH].

>> Anthoni: We got thunder holed.

>> Julie: We got thunder holed.

>> Demaceo: Yeah.

>> Anthoni: It was an experience.

It was nice.

>> Demaceo: I liked it.

>> Anthoni: Refreshing, yeah.

I'm gonna go for the first time in many different states, from only the East Coast.

I'm excited for this because I've been in New York City all my life.

I haven't really like traveled that much, and this opportunity will give me the experience to see what's out there, but also meet a lot of people that are in the public interest technology field.

I was born and raised in Staten Island, New York.

Growing up, I always wanted to help people, I loved helping people.

I was like, I feel like I can do this for a career.

I started thinking about psychology.

My parents, they come from really small villages, like pueblos from Mexico.

And I'm the first one in my family to go to college.

As a first gen college student, I don't really have somebody to kind of like talk to.

It wasn't until the last year where I met my professor, her name is Katie Cumiskey.

It was social psychology with a perspective in public interest technology.

And I just found it so fascinating, because I was just like, this is really like psychology, like a more modern perspective.

It made me realize that, okay, because it's such a new field, I feel like if I try really hard enough, I can really make my mark here, leave a lasting impact.

And I hope that for this trip I'm going to see how I can help people and how big of an impact and of a reach I can do that.

I've just got to get out of my shell, honestly, because I'm shy.

I feel like this trip is really going to help me be more out there and help me communicate.

Then I'll be able to connect more with other people and sort of tackle mental health with technology.

>> [MUSIC] >> Anthoni: Lobster rolls, let's go!

>> Crew: How is it?

>> Demaceo: So good.

>> Crew: Perfect?

[MUSIC] >> Demaceo: So a day in my life, I wake up,feed Huey.

Let him out on a little walk.

We play in the creek.

He is the light of my world [LAUGH] Look at you, you're a swimmer.

And then get my day started, which essentially is coding, really.

My goal, as far as my career goes, would be to tie in what I was doing previous to software engineering, which was marine biology and environmental conservation work.

So initially, when I was in college, before I chose biology as my degree, there was that weighing out.

Do I want to pursue computer science or biology?

I stuck with biology, but I still had this itch to learn how to code and software engineer and what not.

And so that's where then 2020 happened, went to a coding bootcamp.

It was a seamless kind of a transition.

>> Julie: What you got there, how many is that?

>> Demaceo: There's four, only four, only four family size.

>> Julie: Okay, all right.

>> Demaceo: What I would like to get at the end of this trip is a better picture of different ways in which I can still be in tech while uplifting communities or just being more community-centered.

>> Julie: How do you like yours?

>> Demaceo: It's gonna do the job.

>> Julie: [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Demaceo: Our first interview is with Fernando Nacimento, who is the assistant professor of digital and computational studies at Bowdoin College.

>> Julie: He was like a software engineer for 20 years, and then decided to go back to school to do philosophy, that is so cool.

>> Demaceo: Having also done a career pivot from marine bio and environmental education to software engineering, hearing Fernando's story will hopefully show me ways to go about my path.

>> Julie: We are now in the middle of the quad at Bowdoin College.

This is our first interview.

>> Demaceo: Yeah, number one.

>> Julie: So how is everyone feeling about that?

>> Anthoni: I'm feeling a bit nervous.

>> Demaceo: We've got to go.

>> Julie: All right, got to go, talk to you later, wish us luck, bye!

>> Fernando: There are so many people talking about the negative consequences of technology.

A few years ago, I realized that there was something missing, and it was the attention to the positives.

And the idea is, how can we get these big emerging technologies and reuse those technologies to foster the common good?

So if you take a photo and it shows, do you wanna remove the background, that's computer vision, right?

But we can use that same enabler for smallholder farmers to optimize their production.

And it detects if there's a pest or weeds or anything like that.

And it sends it's an SMS message saying you need to take a look at row 17.

If we can get them a few cameras, two or three computers, they will be able to produce so much more.

So while we do have to worry about not doing harm with digital technologies, it's not enough, right?

Because it has a tremendous potential.

>> Demaceo: I'm curious, how did you, what sparked your interest in going down this path?

>> Fernando: Yeah, that's a very good, I was prepared for this one.

[LAUGH] To me, it's all about meaning, right?

So I was teaching for a while and I'm always trying to find ways in which my teaching, my research, can be meaningful.

I worked for 20 years in the software engineering industry.

I know that it's as important as knowing how to optimize 1000 lines of code is to understand the impact it's going to have in society.

Most of the digital technologies we use every day, they are based on one goal, that is increase the market value of the company right?

To me, the right way is to step back and say, can we use this technology with different goals?

So it's not a technology problem, it's a societal problem, right?

It's a humanities problem.

Why do we have social media in the first place?

Was it really to integrate people?

Why do we keep having the problems we do with social media?

Because the intrinsic goal is not to enhance public good.

The intrinsic goal is to capture attention, to sell advertising, and to make the investors happy.

That's okay, I'm not anti capitalist, that's not the point.

What I'm saying is that the incentive is different.

>> Julie: I'm kind of curious what your thought on how people should get involved is, because regulation takes forever.

That's happening on one side and technology is also being deployed on another side, separate timelines.

What is your advice to us, trying to figure out where we want to be in this process?

>> Fernando: No, I totally agree.

I'm convinced actually that we need to have humanities discussions, the public good, the common good, embedded into technology development skills.

So we need education to understand what it is, to understand how to use it for whatever you need to do, and to understand how you should vote, how you put pressure for better legislation.

So frankly, Julie, I think that all these spheres, they are eager for people like you guys that want to think about how technology can be used to foster the common good, right?.

People working with health systems, with educational systems.

The communities are already out there, but they don't have anyone to empower them with this technology.

And that's a huge area that you guys thinking about technology and the public good could be extremely helpful with.

>> Julie: It seems like you're fairly optimistic about technology, but I'm kind of curious, yeah, whether you are or not, and then what advice would you give to us as we go on this journey [LAUGH]?

>> Fernando: Yeah, I'm optimistic, but not about technology, I'm optimistic about you guys.

I'm optimistic about people who are now looking at technologies as ways to make society better.

And in terms of advice for you guys, you want to find meaning, right?

The key for whatever you decide to do in this area is to find a spot in which you can project yourself 10 years, 20 years ahead, and say, well, when I tell the story of my life, these 10 years, it was a meaningful story.

It was an intersection between being happy and being helpful.

[MUSIC] >> Julie: We just had our first interview.

>> Demaceo: I love Fernando.

>> Julie: Me too, we love him.

>> Anthoni: He is very kind.

>> Julie: I feel like we all took mental notes at different points, and the second interview ended, we were just writing everything down because we're like we can't forget, we can't forget.

>> Demaceo: Having done software engineering and coding and what not, I do love it.

And also, I feel like I gravitate more towards things Fernando is doing.

>> Julie: Welcome [LAUGH].

You can find your spot.

>> Demaceo: It was good knowing that those paths are out there and that you can be involved in tech but not necessarily coding, essentially, right?

But still having that seat at the table.

>> Julie: Thank you so much.

Really good.

>> Demaceo: Yeah.

>> Julie: Good job.

Okay, high fives, everyone [LAUGH].

[ENGINE REVS] >> Demaceo: Nice.

>> Julie: [LAUGH] >> Anthoni: Thank you book for the 50th time.

[MUSIC] >> Anthoni: This is my first time being in a lighthouse, I like the ocean views a lot.

>> Julie: We're going to Eartha, which is this big globe that he found in the 50 states book, which has honestly brought us to some fun places.

>> Demaceo: Yeah.

>> Anthoni: It's like the world record largest rotating globe.

That's pretty big.

>> [MUSIC] >> Anthoni: After Maine, we went to New York.

We interviewed Noel Hidalgo, who is the director of BetaNYC.

>> Noel: We're a public interest tech nonprofit using technology, data, and design to improve everybody's lives.

We essentially go out and map public spaces, and all of it goes into a geo wiki called OpenStreetMap.

So that way we have open data that we can then do an analysis on the equity of public space.

>> Jazzy: So we want to document as much as we can.

>> Anthoni: It was super inspiring to me.

It opened my eyes to what's really around me and how everything around me kind of is connected in some way, shape, or form.

>> Jazzy: Uh oh.

It's broken, oh no.

>> Noel: If we're gonna advocate for better public spaces and better public services for everyone, we need to make sure that those services are registered and digitized.

And that there's some record of them.

I definitely wanna learn more about their data collection and then take it to both governments to fix our communities and neighborhoods in New York City.

[MUSIC] >> Julie: I feel like so far in my life, I've kinda separated work and my personal aspirations.

The work I'm doing right now is kind of merging tech and policy, I feel like I'm missing in creative aspect.

Policy is a little bit more removed, so I think the tangibility piece I think is missing, and then the creativity piece.

But what does that look like, how do I combine those things?

I think it's the how that I'm missing, but especially the how can I be still true to myself?

>> Demaceo: Our third interview is in Boston with Dr. Randi Williams, who is the program manager at the Algorithmic Justice League.

[MUSIC] >> Julie: I used to work at Microsoft, I was a hardware engineer there, and then recently switched into tech policy.

So I'm interested in doing this road trip and chatting with you to try to figure out kind of where I want to be in the public interest tech space.

>> Demaceo: Could you tell us a little bit about the work that you do at the Algorithmic Justice League?

>> Randi: Yeah, technology is not neutral.

Yes, it's becoming a part of everyday life but not always in helpful ways.

And so, at the Algorithmic Justice League, we use art and research to just raise awareness about AI and help influence change makers to build a better future.

I'm constantly thinking about what it is about our stories that spark that kind of engagement and sort of sidestep the debating about technology can't be racist and all that.

So the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, Dr. Joy, she uncovered algorithmic bias and had to code in a white mask, because the camera wouldn't recognize her dark skin.

And she wrote a poem about it.

And when she was first bringing up this issue, the poetry was the thing that brought people in.

This is my experience not being recognized by a camera, that being so powerful.

A lot of our work is just about reaching people, where we're just like amplify the message, show people what's out there, show them that they can make a difference.

And we do things like make documentaries, there's one on Netflix called Coded Bias.

And when people watch stuff like that, they're just like, I didn't realize that was happening.

Where's that happening in my life?

They're more curious and they want to engage more.

So now when people say algorithmic bias, there's less of that look of confusion, like what, people are like, yeah, I've heard of that before in the news.

Yes, that's changing the conversation, and that's so exciting.

>> Anthoni: I really am fascinated about the interaction of what is technology doing to us mentally and also, how can we use technology to kind of better ourselves mentally, use it as a tool in a way?

>> Randi: Yeah, my gosh, come join my lab.

[LAUGH] Yeah, those are exactly the kinds of questions that I think technologists can be answering, can technology contribute to human flourishing?

And if so, how, and also, what are the risks?

There are people who are experiencing AI harms.

I'm thinking about one of my heroes, Robert Williams, who had been falsely arrested because essentially there was security cam footage that identified a face, and they were like, this is your face.

He was nowhere near the store where the thing got robbed, but he got arrested in front of his kids, and came out of that fighting.

He was like, I never want something like this to happen to anyone ever again.

How can I change that?

So, when someone is harmed by AI, you can come to AJL and share your story and we will help you fight for change.

When we have all of these stories in this community of folks who are interested in shaping AI for better, interested in seeing recourse for harms.

Then we can go to policymakers and decision makers at companies and say, this is a standard we want you to be held to.

We advocate for that kind of change.

>> Julie: That's so interesting.

I'm curious, so you have a technical background, and then you also got your PhD, how technical is your work now?

What does that look like for you?

>> Randi: Ooh.It's definitely changed.

Though I do build things for fun just because otherwise, where would I outlet that creativity?

>> Julie: Do you miss it?

>> Randi: Yeah, all the time.

Constantly.

[LAUGH] My house is full of LEDs because I'm like, I gotta solder something today.

[LAUGH] But yeah, I think that's okay, I definitely feel like what can be powerful in a career is to know how to do multiple things.

I talk about AJL as an art and research organization.

We're tech and we're storytelling, and those have to go hand in hand to create change.

>> Julie: Dr. Randi Williams is so cool.

I think the way that she mentioned using art as a medium to explain technology and broader issues is actually really smart.

There's something that like touches you from art, getting that human perspective evokes emotion, and emotion drives change and action.

>> Demaceo: Do you have any advice for us three?

>> Randi: Do I have advice for a psychologist, policy engineer, and a marine biologist?

Just to bring your full selves to every conversation, that's something that I had to learn and something that I really grew to appreciate.

Being able to combine discipline, to talk across discipline, to realize that the tools that I have in my toolkit aren't all the tools, and so I need to always be learning from other people.

My advice would be to really lean into that, everyday people can make a huge change, and not just people in tech, but literally anyone.

>> Julie: What do we think?

>> Anthoni: It was such an insightful conversation.

It went to so many places I didn't even think it was going to go.

Like policy, something like humanity ethics, accountability.

>> Demaceo: Yeah.

Biases, racial biases.

[MUSIC] >> Julie: This is our home, our humble abode.

>> Randi: How do you all fit in here?

>> Anthoni: [LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Julie: I think for me, it was really interesting that she kind of connected her passions in general.

Not necessarily work passion, but just she has life passion where she was just very community centered and focused.

And she was able to combine that with her technology passions and the arts field.

Seeing her combine it kind of just opened this new pathway in my brain of like, this is a possibility.

[MUSIC] >> Anthoni: There are people out there that think the way I do about technology.

That felt really validating.

>> Julie: I feel like this field of tech for public good needs everyone.

We need diversity of experiences, diversity of voices, representation, all the things to make decisions for society.

>> Demaceo: You don't have to just focus in one lane, you can really put all this stuff together.

So what I would like to get at the end of the trip is a better picture of what exactly that could possibly be.

So stay tuned.

[MUSIC] >> Anthoni: So far, the experience has been amazing and very excited for what's to come for the next week and a half.

>> Julie: This field of tech for public good needs everyone.

So I'm excited to kind of explore what that may look like.

>> Anthoni: What kind of advice could you give people like me who are hesitant to make a decision?

>> Theresa: Yeah, I mean, I think don't be ashamed to follow what energizes you.

>> Genevie: I was most successful when I started being my authentic self You'll see soon as you start showing up, the right people will see it and they will see you.

Wondering what to do with your life?

Well we've been there and we're here to help Our website has some awesome tools to help you find your path And you can check out all our documentaries, interviews and more Start exploring at roadtripnation.com