About

Stanford AI4ALL is a two-week program co-hosted by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies, designed to bring 9th grade students — particularly those underrepresented in computing — into direct contact with Stanford's AI research community. The program is available in both residential and online formats and requires no prior coding or AI experience. Students are placed into one of four small-group research tracks — Computer Vision, Medical AI, Natural Language Processing, or Robotics — led by Stanford graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Each track involves hands-on project work in a real sub-field of AI, culminating in a group research presentation. Daily lectures from Stanford CS faculty and guest speakers from industry cover both technical foundations and the societal implications of AI, including ethics, bias, and applications in medicine, disaster response, and poverty reduction.

The program was co-founded in 2015 under the influence of Fei-Fei Li, Sequoia Professor of Computer Science and founding co-director of Stanford HAI, whose advocacy for human-centered and inclusive AI shapes the program's intellectual character. The admission process seeks students with academic strength, STEM curiosity, a history of self-motivation, and evidence of outreach or community engagement — not just technical credentials. Financial aid is available to all applicants, domestic and international, with the explicit commitment that aid applications do not influence admissions decisions.

For 9th grade students with a genuine interest in AI who want substantive exposure to how the field is actually practiced at a leading research university — not a survey course — Stanford AI4ALL offers a rare combination of mentored project work, access to Stanford HAI faculty and researchers, and a cohort deliberately assembled to reflect a breadth of backgrounds and perspectives. It is among the most credible introductory AI programs available to students at this stage.