--- title: "AI with Raspberry Pi" slug: "paula-golden-broadcom-foundation-ai-with-raspberry-pi-asu-gsv-2026" author: "Paula Golden, Philip Colligan" date: "2026-04-13 12:00:00" category: "Premium" topics: "ASU+GSV 2026, conference transcript, AI in Education" summary: "Paula Golden of the Broadcom Foundation and Philip Colligan, CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, discussed their long-standing partnership to democratize access to computing and AI education for young people worldwide." banner: "" thumbnail: "" --- > **ASU+GSV 2026 Summit** | Monday, April 13, 2026, 3:00 pm-3:30 pm ## Speakers - **Paula Golden**, Broadcom Foundation - **Philip Colligan**, Raspberry Pi Foundation ## Key Takeaways - Paula Golden of the Broadcom Foundation and Philip Colligan, CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, discussed their long-standing partnership to democratize access to computing and AI education for young people worldwide. - The Raspberry Pi Foundation, which began as a charity before spinning off the now-public hardware company, operates across three pillars: school curriculum and teacher professional development, a global network of 9,000+ code clubs reaching 250,000 kids monthly, and original research on teaching computer science. - Colligan made a forceful argument that computer science education is more important, not less, in the age of AI -- and pushed back directly on the claim that "kids don't need to learn to code anymore," arguing that coding is how children develop computational thinking and the agency to challenge automated systems that increasingly make decisions about their lives. - The conversation highlighted the Raspberry Pi Foundation's approach of providing all resources for free, training tens of thousands of teachers, and seeing significant increases in girls choosing computer science qualifications in England. - Both speakers emphasized that the education community failed to embed ethics into technology education during the internet era and must not repeat that mistake with AI. ## Notable Quotes > "I'd just like to state very strongly my position that kids don't need to learn to code anymore is not true. The act of formulating a problem in a way that a computer can solve is how kids understand computational literacy." > > — **Philip Colligan (Raspberry Pi Foundation)** > "If you go back 30 years, I think we probably failed the educational moment with the advent of the internet because we didn't put enough ethics and societal implications into technology education. I think we need to fix that." > > — **Philip Colligan** > "We're all on the receiving end now of automated decisions. Increasingly those decisions are going to be in domains like healthcare, criminal justice, education. Young people need foundational understanding of computer science and AI so that they can challenge those systems." > > — **Philip Colligan** > "When teachers, students, parents, and partners in non-profit, out-of-school environments can tap into something that is accessible, free, well-vetted... it changes the game." > > — **Paula Golden (Broadcom Foundation)** ## Full Transcript Thanks for coming out, really appreciate it and hopefully what we have to share will be instructive for where AI can go with some good elbow grease and some great ideas that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has to share with you. So before I, forgive me, I have a frog this morning, he just didn't want to leave the bed, so forgive me. The Broadcom Corporation, now Broadcom Inc., is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. 99% of your internet traffic crosses a Broadcom chip. The secret sauce in this little guy, no matter whose platform or whose systems you're using, contains Broadcom chips. And our company, about 16 years ago, set up a foundation to focus on STEM and opportunity. At the same time that we set that up, a young engineer named Eben Upton came into my office, I was newly minted as the head of the new foundation, and said, I've got this thing, I'm calling it a Raspberry Pi, and of course the question is, why Raspberry? And he said, because all the other fruits were taken. And he said, this little computer is going to revolutionize how many people can access, young people, can access computational thinking and computer science. Eben was an adjunct professor at the University of Cambridge and realized there weren't enough kids out there who were coming into his computer science courses. He had learned to compute hacking around in a store, an old computer world store in the UK, and that's the way he learned to code. And he just said, we need more coders and we need this little gadget. So he asked the company, Broadcom, to give him a defunct chip that Nokia didn't want. So really what the little computer was, was your phone with a couple of plugs, if you want to look at it that way. This little computer, fast forward, is now a dot com, a product on a dot com company that has gone public, and it is used in not only monitoring systems at cities, at the city level, and managing visionary byproducts of what we do in society, whether it's traffic control or monitoring in factories. This little computer is a very busy, busy guy at the commercial level. And so over time, the Raspberry Pi team, Eben and his team, decided that what they really wanted to do was to create other educational tools in order to bring computational thinking, and now, of course, it's digital and AI literacy, to youth around the world. And I'm going to let my colleague here share that with you, but Broadcom Foundation made a decision about five years ago to devote its resources almost exclusively to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, because all of their resources are free. Now, to us, that is just huge. When teachers, students, parents, and partners in non-profit, out-of-school environments can tap into something that is accessible, free, well-vetted through great universities like the University of Cambridge and their partners, it changes the game. So we have decided that our goal as a foundation is to leverage up the Raspberry Pi Foundation initiatives in coding, AI, and computer science. And so with that, I'm going to turn this over to Philip Colligan, my colleague and friend who is the CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and he's also, for those of you that know what CBE is, anyone in here know? Oh, good, one person. Well, it is somewhere between being immortal and knighthood, and both Philip and Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi, and inventor of the Raspberry Pi, sit in a very rarefied air where the King of England has actually given them this title, which only goes to people who make extraordinary contributions to society in their fields, in this case, to education and social advancement. So on that note, welcome, Philip. Thank you. Would you take it up from here and tell us a little bit about the foundation? Yeah, well, look, and you're very flattering, but it's great to be here. Yeah, so I lead the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I mean, one of the things you didn't say, which I think is so important about the story, is Raspberry Pi was set up as a charity first, a non-profit, and then we gave birth to the company which brought the product to market. And I think that's an important lesson because, you know, there's lots of entrepreneurs and innovators here at the conference, and we try to encourage many more entrepreneurs and innovators in technology to think social purpose first. And that, you know, right at the heart of the Raspberry Pi story was this idea of democratizing access to computing and now AI. So yeah, I lead the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Our mission is to enable all young people to realize their full potential through the power of computing and AI. We do that all over the world. We started life in the UK, but we're now a global organization. We have a team here in the US, and they're running various sessions at the conference. And we work across three domains. So the first is schools. So we want to help schools and teachers to be able to teach computer science, AI literacy, and we focus particularly on those schools who, without our support and resources, wouldn't be able to give kids the kind of education we think they need in relation to computer science and AI. So we create curriculum. We create free software tools, but mostly we invest in teacher professional development. So that's a big part of our resources. So schools is the first pillar. The second pillar is inspiring kids to get hands-on with technology. So with the support of the Broadcom Foundation and other partners, we run the world's largest network of code clubs. We have over 9,000 code clubs meeting all over the world. A quarter of a million kids every month participate in one of our code clubs, and they're building projects, using a wide variety of hardware and software. And then the third pillar is research. And so we invest working with partners like the University of Cambridge in original research to understand the teaching and learning of computer science and AI. And we use that knowledge to inform our own work, but also to elevate the field more broadly. I recall that the code clubs started in the UK, and what you've described as these pillars actually have now reached a maturity where not only the code clubs, but all the schools in the UK are in some way connected to the Raspberry Pi family. Is that correct? Yeah. So we have teams in six countries. We have partnerships in 75 other countries. But in those countries, our goal is to work closely with the government to design curriculum and to support teachers to be able to deliver it. And we are, in England, we're the official partner for the computer science curriculum. We're also now working with the Department for Education on new qualifications on data science and AI literacy. And it's no exaggeration to say that our curriculum and classroom resources are used in every elementary and senior school in England every day. And we've trained tens of thousands of teachers, and we're seeing significant increases in the number of kids, and particularly young girls, who are choosing computer science qualifications at age 16 and 18 as a result. So you've brought, we'll talk for a few minutes about the code club and then go on to the other initiatives. But you brought Code Club to the United States. We were proud to help you partner on that. We're bigger, at least geographically, if not in our spirit, we are bigger than the UK. And I'm curious how you're tackling this vast US landscape. What is your strategy here? Well, so we've got a growing team here. We're growing our network of partners. And we've really got three key things that we're working on in the US. So as you said, code clubs, so building a network of code clubs in schools, in libraries, in youth and community centers, engaging kids in hands-on learning experiences, and that is including building with AI. We launched last year a new curriculum for elementary and middle schools, which takes computer science concepts and integrates it across the curriculum. So this is one of the things we think is really important in the future, is this idea of integrating computer science into other subjects. So whether that's language arts, math, science lessons, we think you can both meet the core standards for those subjects, but also introduce computer science concepts because it makes computer science real and tangible. It gives real context. And then we're doing a big push, which we're going to talk about a little bit later today, around AI literacy in the US as well. Well, one of the things that I think is important to stress is that what you're describing is not something that is exclusive. People don't have to wait until it comes to their school. You can go online today, go to the Raspberry Pi platform, and find all the resources that any teacher can use, any school can use, any kid can use. Is that correct? Yeah, as you said. I mean, everything we offer is free forever, localized for different communities, translated into multiple languages, and yeah, absolutely free, and also editable, right? So one of the things that we believe very strongly in is that teachers know best. And so we put a lot of research and effort and care into designing learning resources, but we also make it so that teachers can adapt and contextualize it for their students. And for us, that's really important, putting the teacher at the heart of it. Well, before we turn to AI, I just want you to comment just briefly on Coolest Projects, which we also participate in. We had a Coolest Projects US in Minneapolis recently, which you said was very successful. And this goes back to Evan Upton being a maker kind of guy, engineer, hands-on engineer, and the making strategy of Coolest Projects, I think, is something you might just touch on. Because we're coming up on Coolest Projects Global. Yeah, yeah, it's live now. So Coolest Projects, it's like a science fair, but for kids who build stuff with technology. And what we do is create a space where young people who build stuff with software and hardware can come and show it off. It's not actually a competition, in the sense that a science fair might be a competition, because we believe that all young people should be able to celebrate what they've built. Just this weekend, actually, as you said, I was in Minneapolis, and it was really moving. That city's been through so much this year. I don't want to get political, but we were really nervous about whether we'd be able to hold the event. It was phenomenal. There was 70 or 80 young people who had built projects with technology, a huge number of young women, young girls who'd built technology projects. And it was such a family-focused event. They were showing off. And if I can tell you just one story, a wonderful woman who actually received the Broadcom Coding with Commitment Prize, which you kindly sponsored, she had built a kind of physical device which was able to detect, it sensed gases. You could put a piece of fruit in it, and it could detect whether or not the fruit had gone off or not. The problem she was trying to solve is, for people who are visually impaired, how can they tell whether or not their food is healthy, right? She'd designed and 3D-printed the casing for it. She used an Arduino to plug the sensor into it. And she had written the most complex code, using AI. One of the things that was so impressive is she had sort of vibe-coded it. She'd used AI to build the software. But she could explain what was happening. So she hadn't sort of offloaded the work to the AI. She'd used it to support her. But it was just incredible to hear her present her project and see what she'd built. Yeah. And that leads me to something that you and I have chatted about, is AI going to end education as we know it? And what is AI in the future of young people who need certain, what I consider to be critical 21st and soon-to-be 22nd century skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity? These basic skills, some people think, aren't going to be needed because you can just let AI do your job. And I know you have some thoughts about where coding and AI still need to intersect in computational thinking in education as we go through this new kind of extraordinary transformational age. Yeah. So we think about, this is the bulk of our work at the moment, is thinking about how is AI changing what young people need to learn? Not only how they learn, but what they need to learn so that they can thrive and have agency and actively shape an AI-enabled future. And so a few things I'd say. Firstly, is that computer science is more important, not less important, in the age of AI. We think that all young people need to have a foundational understanding of computers, how they work, how they can be used to solve problems, but they also need to understand their limitations and the societal and ethical implications of technology and how it's designed and used in the world. We think that that is more important that more young people have that foundational knowledge than ever. And partly that's about the future of work and problem solving, but it's also about agency and power. We're all on the receiving end now of automated decisions. Which song do you listen to next? Which movie do you watch? Which route do you take when you're driving your car? But increasingly those decisions are going to be in domains like healthcare, criminal justice, education, where we're going to be on the receiving end of automated decisions. And we think that young people need to have a foundational understanding of computer science and AI so that they can challenge those systems, they can advocate for their own rights. And so we think it's a question of power and agency as much as it is the future of work. In this question, one of the things I hear people say too often is that kids don't need to learn to code anymore. And I'd just like to state very strongly my position that that is not true. The goal was never kids coding being the end state. Think about coding as the way that humans give instructions to computers. The way that humans give instructions to computers has changed since the advent of technology and it's changing again now with AI. But the act of formulating a problem in a way that a computer can solve is how kids understand what we call computational literacy or computational thinking. The hard work of figuring out how you can get stacked together technology to solve a problem is how kids develop a deep understanding, the sort of fluency that would enable them to use AI technologies in the future. So we think it's more important than ever that kids have hands-on experiences with technology that does involve translating messy human problems into formats that computation can solve. We think kids should be learning with AI, for sure, but we think that they should also be, yeah, they should be exposed to, one point I do want to make, actually, is that this isn't just about the computer science class anymore. Like if you think about biology, that is essentially a data science subject now and kids need to be exposed to computational thinking in the context of other subjects that they're studying. Well and beyond that, I think, and something that we really appreciate about the Raspberry Pi Foundation is that it makes people better citizens. I mean the role of critical thinking and the ability to do that needs foundational levels. And so if you start and you look at mathematics and computational thinking and then you build mathematics computational thinking into all the subjects that are part of what we do today and really with the benefit of AI and the benefit of computers, right, that ability to assimilate and think about all these things and then ultimately come up with reasoned and good judgment that leads to you being a better citizen is something that certainly with Broadcom we appreciate, which is at the bottom of the Broadcom Coding with Commitment Award. Yeah, and we're opinionated that we should be helping young people understand how they can use technology for good. You know, we shouldn't be agnostic on these questions. One of the wonderful things about, you know, Coolest Projects or Code Clubs is we see kids all the time thinking about how they can use technology in ethical ways to solve real world problems that they experience and that they care about. You know, if you go back 30 years, I think we probably failed the educational moment with the advent of the internet because we didn't put enough ethics and societal and ethical implications into technology education. I think we need to fix that. And that's the conversation that we'll all continue on. It's been great to be up here with you and, of course, to see you on our side of the pond. Thank you for coming over. And we're in so many countries together in Malaysia, Mexico, United States, India, everywhere, Africa. Very excited to continue our journey together. Thanks, Philip. Thank you, Paula. Cheers. Cheers. --- *This transcript was put together by our friend [Philippos Savvides](https://scaleu.org) from Arizona State University. The original transcript and additional summit resources are available on [GitHub](https://github.com/savvides/asu-gsv-2026-summit-intelligence). Licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).*