Is Inspirit AI Worth it? A Comprehensive Assessment

Inspirit AI is a program that offers project-based AI education to high school students. The program was developed by Stanford and MIT alumni and graduate students to help students practice coding, designing, and implementing their own AI projects.

Today, AI is everywhere. We interact with AI through our voice-activated devices, face-recognition systems on our smartphones, as well as autonomous vehicles.

Since the potential to apply AI for good is limitless, Inspirit exposes curious students to this robust technology to help them build projects for social good.

As mentioned earlier, Inspirit AI is run by a team of graduates from leading universities. The team is vast with AI matters to mentor students in a variety of domains, including law, education, AI and finance, education, healthcare, astronomy, and more.

But before we delve deeper into its features and how it works, it’s essential to establish the essence of evaluating Inspirit AI.

The program prepares students for college, so evaluating its worth will determine whether the ten sessions (25 hours long) are enough to immerse them in fundamental AI concepts.

The Inspirit AI team designed various courses for students and professionals at different levels. Inspirit also runs workshops, summer workshops, mentorship programs, and research fellowships for interested parties.

Inspirit AI program is open to students worldwide. The complexity of the program depends on the course a student selects. Students can enroll as complete beginners, intermediate learners, or advanced professionals.

Core Features and Learning

Inspirit AI’s primary objective is to bridge the gap between theoretical learning and practical application. The program empowers students with robust experiences that foster creativity, problem-solving capabilities, and critical thinking.

Inspirit AI online program runs for 2.5 hours per day. Before any live session begins, students receive preparation materials to enable them to maximize the benefits of the program once it finally begins.

The program is divided into two halves. During the first half, students explore foundational AI concepts, how to apply them in real life, and AI programming skills. The second half is more practical.

Students are expected to apply the knowledge acquired in the first half to create a mentor-led AI project for social good. In this half, students will also complete college and career prep workshops.

Let’s look at some of Inspirit’s core programs and offerings:

AI Scholars Program

The AI Scholars Program is Inspirit AI’s flagship program. It is an intensive program that takes ten weeks (25 hours) and exposes students to fundamental guides and concepts for building socially impactful projects.

The team of graduate students from leading universities offers personalized learning experiences to small groups at a ratio of 5:1. The students choose a domain for their project, after which they will present the final project to their peers and instructors.

Students enrolling for the high school tier must be in Grades 9 to 12 or equivalent. No prior programming background is required, but at least students should show interest in AI. There is an advanced program for students with programming experience.

AI Mentorship Program

The AI Mentorship Program is for returning students. In this program, students collaborate with experienced AI research mentors, extract insights from larger data sets, and architect key questions.

The team then engineers machine learning models to answer these key questions. At the end of this program, students would have completed independent AI projects, research proposals, and final research papers or articles.

In summary, the AI Mentorship Program features mentorship sessions, guided research experiences, access to multiple research resources, and Science Fair preparation. The program lasts for 10 to 25 sessions, one hour each.

Inspirit AI Conference

The Inspirit AI conference brings together students, researchers, and AI professionals. The annual event features keynote speeches, workshops, panel discussions, and networking opportunities among professionals.

If the testimonials on the Inspirit AI website are anything to go by, then there is no doubt that the program is quite beneficial to all participants. Participants praise the program, claiming that it helped them grasp crucial AI concepts quickly.

Generally, learning AI has multiple benefits to students’ education and future careers. AI can help students streamline education processes, learn tasks more easily, and receive tutoring from AI experts based on their unique needs.

The Inspirit AI program is also beneficial to students looking to sharpen their skills and improve their weak spots outside the classroom.

User Experience and Feedback

Inspirit AI claims to prepare young minds for success in an increasingly AI-powered world. The program inspires students of all ages, interests, and backgrounds.

Inspirit AI is grounded in high curriculum ethics to prepare students to leverage technology to solve real-world problems.

While the program is intensive, learners still appreciate it as it is packed with a large amount of information within a short amount of time. With its ability to help learners apply AI to solve real-world problems, the Inspirit AI program has been used as a launch of responsible journalism.

One learner praised Inspirit AI in a testimonial, claiming that the program inspired him to create an AI-powered fencing referee system. But what could make you want to enroll in the Inspirit AI program is its excellent curriculum.

The curriculum has a great introduction that is easy to parse with an understandable and accommodating format. The program is delivered in a supportive environment of AI experts and peers to help learners further their passion for AI.

Inspirit AI Pros and Cons

Now that you understand what is expected of students in every Inspirit AI program and their potential benefits, it’s also important to know its positive and negative aspects from the participant’s perspective.

Inspirit AI fosters technological literacy. Artificial intelligence is slowly becoming an integral part of our daily lives.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, technological literacy is now a core competency that each student needs to succeed in college.

On the downside, Inspirit AI is not clear about its selection criteria and acceptance rates. While we may understand a few things about what to expect once you apply for the program, it would be best if Inspirit AI considered having the information on its website.

From the reviews, you can easily tell that the program isn’t selective. So, we can conclude that its acceptance rate is pretty high. The program will not ask you about your past grades, personal statements, or recommendation letters.

Additionally, the program is open to students from more than 50 countries. With the 5:1 student-teacher ratio, it means there will be lots of students striving to secure a slot.

Therefore, since almost everyone is eligible for the program, I advise that you apply for the program in advance since selection is likely to be on a first-come, first-served basis.

Expertise of Instructors and Learning Support

As mentioned earlier, all courses for students and professionals are taught by researchers from Stanford, MIT, and other leading universities.

The team of professionals, also called Inspirit innovators, develops courses to build fundamental and technical AI skills with no prerequisites.

AI applies to all disciplines. So, whether you want to learn in-demand technical skills such as Python, SQL, or machine learning, Inspirit innovators will walk with you to see you achieve your goal.

Since the program is live for 2.5 hours per day, tutors encourage healthy interactions and participation. Inspirit tutors divide students into small groups of five to ensure that each participant receives a personalized learning experience.

Hands-on Projects and Practical Application

By integrating AI into the high school curriculum, Inspirit AI seeks to empower students to become responsible creators, ready to thrive.

On the other hand, practical learning improves students’ understanding and application of concepts while allowing teachers to analyze learning gaps.

Inspirit offers AI programs that expose learners to fundamental programming skills in Python to help them create their own AI projects.

The hands-on program covers crucial topics, including logistic regression, linear regression, natural language processing, computer vision, and neural networks. These topics are covered in four consecutive programs under the mentorship of industry experts from Stanford, MIT, and Ivy League students and alumni.

Through the above concepts, learners can build projects intersecting AI and a discipline they are passionate about. For instance, a student who is passionate about healthcare and medicine can build a project that trains an AI model to help detect pneumonia in patients.

On the other hand, a student passionate about business and finance can use an NLP to create algorithm trading to predict returns on business portfolios.

Comparison with other AI Education Programs

The Inspirit Scholars program is not the only course created to educate high schoolers about artificial intelligence. But, what sets this program apart from other AI educational programs is its hands-on approach to coding, designing, and implementing AI projects.

Additionally, the Inspirit AI program offers guidance from when students start projects to pursuing ventures or applying to college. Inspirit AI offers programs for different skill levels; therefore, students can check their interests and eligibility before applying.

The Inspirit AI program is not limited to AI enthusiasts. Students can also explore AI applications in art forms or healthcare delivery systems. The program immerses students in core artificial intelligence.

For the first two weeks, instructors offer personalized mentorship while helping students create AI concepts that can impact the real world. The live online sessions cost $1100, which covers the 25 one-hour lessons.

One advantage of Inspirit AI is that it accommodates young learners from elementary and middle school. The students have a chance to learn from experienced minds in the AI field.

While the program does a better job of preparing learners for college, some people may not be happy about its cost. The program costs at least $900, which might lock out a few families that cannot afford it.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

As mentioned earlier, the Inspirit AI program costs about $900 to $1100. The biggest question among participants is whether the program is worth the said amount. I’d say the program is worth the cost, given the rich curriculum it features.

The super-intensive program is divided into halves, with the first one introducing learners to the AI world. Students also learn to complete tasks involving crucial AI concepts, including computer vision, NLP, and classification.

But just before the program begins, Inspirit AI asks students to fill out a survey to highlight their top three projects for social good. Inspirit AI promises to ensure that students are best matched with what resonates with their career goals.

Learning AI through Inspirit AI does not only teach students to code AI software. The program is proof of competency and an effective preparation for college and internships.

Student Success and Career Outcomes

We can all agree that AI is significantly transforming homes, cities, the economy, transportation, healthcare, agriculture, education, and more. The second phase of the Inspirit AI program encourages students to work in groups to implement socially impactful projects.

On the website, Inspirit AI highlights some of the key projects that students work on in line with their career objectives.

The projects cut across criminal justice, autonomous driving, mental health, algorithmic trading, health and safety, law and politics, and environmental sustainability.

Suitability for Different Learning Goals

Inspirit AI is experiential. It accommodates students at all levels. Therefore, whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or hoping to advance your AI knowledge, you will benefit from Inspirit AI’s case discussions and interactive demos, and you’ll learn about real-world AI applications.

The sessions are highly personalized, as at the end of the day, students are expected to develop their own projects. Once students submit their projects to instructors and peers, they get access to an online portal with coding assignments, quizzes, and more AI projects.

Regardless of students’ levels, students can benefit from the Inspirit Scholars program. Grades 2- 5 fall under AI Adventurers: Level 1, which covers AI fundamentals, paper programming, block-based coding, storytelling, and UX/UI design basics.

Level II is ideal for Grades 3-5. At this level, learners explore AI fundamentals, optimized search algorithms, block-based coding, UX/UI design basics, and build interactive games. Levels 1 and 2 take ten sessions.

As students advance to Grades 5-7, they are exposed to real-world AI applications, AI and ethics, block-based coding, UX/UI design basics, and project building.

The program is ideal for AI creators and features projects like self-driving cars, chatbots, and emotion detection and text classifiers.

The last level of the Inspirit Scholars program is perfect for AI Pioneers in Grades 7-8. Like the AI Creators level, this level takes about 20 sessions, amounting to 75 minutes.

The AI Pioneers level encompasses PythonNLP chatbot programming, AI algorithms and techniques, web app deployment, and AI+ Social Good projects.

Like any educational AI, Inspirit AI has multiple benefits over traditional class education systems. While we’ve focused more on these benefits in this article, it’s essential to note that Inspirit AI also has potential limitations for learners from various backgrounds.

Inspirit AI appears to provide quick answers as opposed to helping them get to an answer. The program somehow accustoms students to getting information as opposed to taking time to learn and understand their own thoughts.

Like any education AI, Inspirit AI poses a series of security concerns, following the amount of data it extracts from students when creating an AI model. But overall, Inspirit AI is instrumental in expanding and improving the education sector.

Is Inspirit AI worth It?

By now, I hope we can agree that the Inspirit AI program is worth your time and money. We’ve covered in length what makes the program tick, but we can still go over some of the pros that make it the right program for high schoolers.

Inspirit AI helps students become better problem solvers. It prepares them for college and internships, as Inspirit classes allow them to figure out solutions to complex problems that affect the environment around them.

If you are still unsure as to whether Inspirit AI is good for your child, I recommend you take time to read through reviews on the Inspirit AI website. Many students are happy with the program for having helped them grasp the AI knowledge within a short time.

Students also share their experience with the program on other platforms, praising the program for having equipped them with the right tools to pursue artificial intelligence with a strong foundation.

I highly recommend Inspirit AI for students who wish to use computer vision to diagnose patients in healthcare, use AI to create a simple and safe autopilot system for cars, and use machine learning to predict returns within economics and finance.

Inspirit AI can also be helpful in the sphere of politics, law, and democracy. In law and politics, AI can assist in compiling supporting legal evidence, detect fake news, predict whether an offender is likely to re-offend, and understand the nuances between political candidates in a debate.

The best part is that the online Inspirit program is no different from an in-person program. All the assignments and instructions are customized to offer a personalized learning experience.