SamWise

SamWise

SamWise

An AI-powered assessment tool providing personalized education to millions of incarcerated Americans.

Cambridge, MA, USA

United States

Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit

We are tackling the problems of incarceration and recidivism by addressing the lack of educational opportunities available to incarcerated students. There are nearly 2 million incarcerated Americans and nearly two-thirds will end up back in jail or prison within three years of re-entry. While recidivism statistics are less well known for the 9 million incarcerated people globally, the problem remains. This cycle can be broken by a maddeningly simple solution: education. Simply taking classes of any kind dramatically reduces the chance of recidivism; even a high school degree reduces this amount by over half. And yet hundreds of thousands of Americans are unable to take classes for their high school equivalency due to lack of access or lack of proper education accommodations.

Justice-impacted students have strengths not captured in current education tools, and playing to their strengths will empower them to succeed. Justice-impacted students are better at telling you what they know than taking multiple choice tests. SamWise uses large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) to create mini adaptive oral exams out of existing learning content. SamWise uses LLMs to grade these conversations and provide insights to help instructors and students better understand learning progress. SamWise is a non-profit company that will implement AI models to promote education equity, starting with carceral education. SamWise will pursue project-based funding, combining grants and revenue from non-profit partners such as Edovo to support a sustainable business model. Since November, SamWise has built an application prototype and tested it with the 50 students in the Maine Department of Corrections' college readiness program, proving its viability and potential. https://youtu.be/XIqTWSb1pNc

SamWise serves incarcerated students across the United States correctional system, a population that is critically underserved by current educational assessment and delivery methods. This population of approximately 1.9 million Americans faces significant barriers to education, including outdated placement tests like the TABE that fail to accurately measure their true capabilities and educational levels, particularly during the stressful intake process. SamWise addresses their needs by: 1) Providing accurate educational assessments through AI-powered oral evaluations that better capture students' true abilities compared to traditional multiple-choice tests 2) Supporting nine languages including Spanish, making education more accessible to non-native English speakers 3) Creating personalized, adaptive learning experiences from existing educational content 4) Enabling students to demonstrate learning through conversation rather than written tests By placing students on appropriate academic tracks and making education more engaging and accessible, SamWise will help reduce recidivism rates, which drop significantly with educational attainment. This directly improves incarcerated individuals' opportunities for successful reintegration into society and meaningful employment upon release.