Technology for all: Holyoke Community College partners with CanCode Communities to offer free classes on AI essentials

To many lay people, the world of tech seems like something almost mythical: a world of innate genius, absurd wealth and complex mathematical algorithms that make the idea of entering the field seem almost impenetrable to those without the talent, the education or the privilege.

But pull back the curtain and get a peak at its inner workings, and suddenly tech seems a lot less intimidating. Highly useful computer programs can be written using just a few lines of code. Many powerful software tools and even entire operating systems are distributed for free. Algorithms are just multi-step instructions.

What is true is that acquiring the skills to utilize the latest tech proves useful in improving one’s career outlook. Technology — including the recent advancements in artificial intelligence — permeates almost all facets of society, and knowing how to utilize it properly can give a competitive edge in the job market.

The idea that anyone, not just a graduate of a top-tier university, can harness the skills needed to succeed in tech first became apparent to Annmarie Lanesey around 10 years ago. At the time, Lanesey was running a software development company, and recently hired an intern who had never gone to college and whose primary work experience consisted of working in a commercial kitchen. But he proved to be remarkably adept, quickly mastering Ruby on Rails, a web application framework written in the Ruby programming language. Lanesey realized there must be other people with similar backgrounds who hadn’t yet realized their inner potential.

“I remember one day looking out my window in our office, and I had a light bulb moment,” Lanesey said. “I started pointing at people like, she could be a developer, he could be a developer, they could be a developer, but they have no idea, because schools largely are not teaching computer science in any depth.”

That insight led Lanesey in 2016 to start CanCode Communities, a non-profit that provides affordable means to learn about software and programming. Originally founded in Albany, New York, CanCode-run trainings have begun to make their way into western Massachusetts, partnering with community colleges in Pittsfield and Holyoke to teach courses in programming languages like Python and JavaScript, and now more recently, courses in artificial intelligence.

“We just kept adding more technologies that employers were asking us for,” Lanesey said. “Our whole thing is about workforce development and training for someone’s economic mobility through job training.”

Courses range in difficulty, from beginning computer literacy to training skills required to enter the information technology workforce. Following the pandemic, CanCode offers its courses exclusively online through virtual lessons, with the organization seeing an explosion of interest with knowledge of computers becoming essential for remote work.

“We believe the medium is the message,” Lanesey said regarding CanCode’s virtual courses. “We mail people laptops and hot spots if they don’t have internet or a computer to make sure they’re able to take the class.”

The issue of bridging the digital divide remains of particular interest in western Massachusetts, which tends to be more rural, older, and lower income than its eastern counterpart. A 2021 study by the Alliance for Digital Equity, a local coalition of organizations advocating for expanded digital access, identified four main barriers affecting various groups in the region. Those barriers are lack of internet connectivity, lack of proper equipment, lack of digital literacy and lack of adequate policies.

According to the report, more than a third of households in Holyoke and Springfield do not have a desktop or laptop computer. Similar figures can also be found in more rural communities, such as the towns of Monroe, Wendell and Montague in Franklin County. It also noted that older adults and those whose first language is not English also struggled more with digital literacy.

“The digital divide negatively impacts the education of students — including adult learners — and widens pre-existing educational disparities,” the report noted. “People’s inability to connect online is resulting in reduced enrollment and participation in community programs and services. The quality of these programs and services, offered by organizations and systems designed to support people, may be impacted as well.”

Another study published by the alliance and the Northern Hilltowns Consortium of Councils on Aging in 2024 looked at the impact of the digital divide in the seven hilltowns of western Hampshire County (Plainfield, Cummington, Worthington, Goshen, Chesterfield, Williamsburg and Westhampton). The survey found that although 86% of survey respondents used technology, there was need for increasing skill levels and increasing internet service.

“Learning interests are highest for learning to use technology for interaction, using the Internet, completing computer tasks, and getting online information about personal interests,” that report said. “Most desired ways of learning are one-time workshops, ongoing classes, watching videos, and being told helpful websites to visit.”

Though Lanesey continues to live in upstate New York, she said she’s been very impressed by local efforts in Massachusetts to address digital inequality.

“It’s really ahead of the curve from what I've seen in other places,” she said. “It’s just doing a really great job of making sure that this is an issue that the state cares about, and they're investing in these programs like the alliance.”

CanCode’s latest venture is a partnership with Holyoke Community College to teach a free course on the essentials of the latest craze in technology, artificial intelligence. AI tools like ChatGPT have consumed the public imagination, with Silicon Valley titans like Sam Altman and Elon Musk dedicating billions towards its development. The ability of AI to seemingly mimic human thought or generate lifelike images at the click of a button can make it seem like some kind of omnipotent being out of science fiction.

Learning a little about how AI models work makes them seem much more approachable. AI that can generate human-like text, known as large language models or LLMs, works by being fed massive amounts of text data and then making predictions of what subsequent text should be produced given an input. These outputs can be controlled by adjusting the “temperature” of a model, with a higher temperature giving more variety in predicting what word comes next in a response.

But with any new technology, there are also drawbacks. Chatbots have a tendency to “hallucinate,” creating fictitious facts and persons and presenting them as real. Others can spit out an amazing wealth of knowledge but struggle to tell you how to spell the word “strawberry.” And the computing power required to build an AI model is well beyond the means of ordinary computers. Instead, users make an application programming interface (API) call to connect to preexisting models that can be worked with, such as Google’s Gemini or Ollama, created by Facebook parent-company Meta.

“What we’re teaching is the AI essentials, for which no coding experience is necessary,” said Pat Lacey, an instructor at CanCode who teaches the AI course. “We focus on empowering people with the tools of AI. There’s so much that’s misunderstood by AI and what it can do, especially trying to mitigate any negative effects of hallucinations or following bad instructions.”

AI models can also be finely tuned to adopt specific traits. During one of the course sessions in the HCC partnership, a guest speaker, Jonathan Razza, shows a chatbot created that mimics the personality of the “Star Wars” character Obi-Wan Kenobi. The bot was created using the Voiceflow Creator app, and Razza shows how prompts to build a chatbot can itself be created by asking AI, a process known as “metaprompting.”

“I find that his advice in general is really good,” Razza says of the Obi-Wan chatbot. “Its not a replacement for human connection, but there’s a lot of knowledge that it draws from.”

When entering the tech field, many job positions are often specialized to focus on a particular area. But Lacey emphasized that a broader general knowledge of the industry, whether its AI, programming languages or cybersecurity, helps to get ahead in the field.

“You’re working with so many other people that do so many other things, and you need to communicate with them properly,” Lacey said. “Even if this isn’t exactly what you think you’re going to do at the end, the more you have under your belt, you never lose time learning on that end.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at [email protected].