Discovering Artificial Intelligence
| Aim | To introduce students to the idea of Artificial Intelligence, the concept of computational agents, and the idea of a test for whether or not an agent is intelligent (the Turing Test) |
|---|---|
| Duration | 1-3h |
| Technology | Access to online "chatbots" e.g. Cleverbot.com |
| Materials | Printed copies of the AI ordering game (1 copy). Worksheets, two per student. Pens, paper. Two mobile phones. Whiteboard and pens. |
| Student/teacher Ratio | 30:2 or better: need one person who can go out of the room with a volunteer |
| Age of students | 9-16 |
Special information
It is important for the person leading this workshop to be familiar with the concept of the "Turing Test", by reading the original paper (Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460. or one of the many articles that can be found online (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test).
Step by step overview
To carry out the full workshop will take about 3 hours. You can make it shorter by omitting any of the steps (apart from the first). There are slides available to help with this, along with a teachers' guide and some printable material.
- Communicate the idea of AI to the students, and the idea of the Turing Test.
- Ask the student to vote, if they think computers can be intelligent. This should be repeated after every exercise to test whether opinions have changed.
- Do the “Turing test” using text messaging and an adult helper and a child participant. Can the class guess whether they are talking to the child?
- An intelligence ordering game, where each kid gets a different thing to be (from a range of natural and artificial intelligences – cat, robot, washing machine, Sherlock Holmes) and they have to get into order of intelligence. Once they are in order, you can investigate different properties of intelligence by asking the kids to put their hands up if they can speak, be creative, form relationships, have emotions, and so on.
- A scientific experiment where students write down questions for a Turing test, and then try these questions on a couple of chatbots.
- A “program a robot” exercise where one student plays the part of a robot, and the other students write instructions (turn left, turn right, etc.). Bonus: do this bit blindfold.
These activities are supplemented by some videos of robots and intelligent machines; the aim is to get children thinking really hard about what makes something intelligent. Does embodiment matter? How about perception?
http://users.aber.ac.uk/hmd1/ai.zip
The workshop materials in a zip, featuring – 2 sets of slides (short version, long version) – Intelligence ordering game (to print double sided) – Speaker notes – Worksheets – Voting forms – List of video links
Tips to make the workshop go smoothly
- If the workshop goes well there will be some deep and philosophical questions. Be aware that these can come up and encourage the discussion - this is where the real learning can happen:
- What is the difference between intelligence and programming?
- Can a computer be creative?
- Is a computer just pretending to be intelligent?
- If you can pretend to be intelligent really well then is that good enough?
- What is consciousness? Can computers be conscious?
- Test the chatbot in your chosen language. Cleverbot will work in many languages, but there are other chatbots.
- Be careful to test the chatbot with swear words: left alone with a chatbot, many children will be naughty in what they say.
- Test the chatbot in the school, as some school networks can block these conversational agents.
Extensions and challenges
This workshop is self-contained. If students are really interested in what is covered, then they can play with chatbots themselves. If they know about coding, they can try to write one. You can even try to write a chatbot in scratch.
Sources of additional information
There are lots of sources of information on chatbots and AI online. The Turing paper http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html is very good (and anyone running this workshop should read it).