Latinx Youth as AI Designers: Building Their Communities' Present and Future

Santiago Ojeda-Ramírez

Latinx youth in the U.S. are often framed as disengaged from technology and underprepared for STEM fields—a stereotype that not only distorts reality but contributes to systemic underrepresentation in tech fields. As generative AI rapidly reshapes society, these same youth face heightened risks from biased algorithms and automation-driven job loss. Yet, AI also offers powerful possibilities. When embedded in critical and culturally sustaining approaches, AI can become a tool for empowerment, resistance, and imagination. This study investigates how Latinx youth can be positioned not as passive users, but as designers of AI-powered artifacts that articulate their communities' needs and futures. Drawing on critical and speculative design, students engage with AI to explore its social, ethical, and cultural implications, while envisioning technologies that reflect justice-oriented futures. Rather than centering technical mastery alone, this project emphasizes AI as a medium for cultural expression and civic participation. Conducted through participatory design-based research at a predominantly Latinx high school in Santa Ana, California, this study involves co-designing and implementing a curriculum with three teachers and over 50 tenth-grade students. Together, they explore how design practices rooted in Latinx knowledge and aesthetics can support critical AI literacy. Three questions guide this research: (1) What features of co-designed artifacts support critical AI literacy? (2) How do Latinx youth use AI in critical design to examine societal impacts? (3) How do they use speculative design to imagine socio-technical infrastructures for community transformation? This project offers a framework for reimagining AI education as a culturally grounded, justice-oriented endeavor.

About Santiago Ojeda-Ramírez

Santiago Ojeda-Ramírez is a Ph.D. candidate in Education at the University of California, Irvine, where he explores critical AI literacy, speculative design, and computing education among Latinx youth. His research aims to theorize and implement design as an interdisciplinary practice that draws from both the arts and STEM—pushing the boundaries of what can be known, expressed, and imagined in educational settings. Santiago's work centers on how Latinx students use cultural practices to critique and reimagine artificial intelligence, positioning themselves as designers of socially just technologies. He holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and an M.A. in Digital Humanities from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. After completing his studies, he volunteered at the National Museum of Colombia, where he became interested in informal learning spaces and the possibilities they hold for knowledge exchange. He then worked as a science and computer science teacher, where he witnessed how students were often positioned as consumers of technology rather than creative agents. In California, Santiago has co-developed interdisciplinary STEAM curricula in partnership with Latinx students and educators, creating opportunities for youth to build AI-powered artifacts that reflect their identities, values, and aspirations. His work demonstrates how collaborative design processes rooted in community knowledge can support deep engagement with technological tools and their broader social implications. He aspires to become a professor who mentors the next generation of Latinx researchers and cultivates learning environments where technology serves as a medium for cultural expression and collective transformation.