Explaining AI To My 5 Year Old Sister

Constance Rosemond
Nov 1 · 4 min read

Imagine a world where self driving cars are the only cars on the market, where humanoids can identify human emotions and respond to them, where robots can perform surgery, where Siri can respond to a rant with empathetic advice. Now picture the infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in your life who will be young adults in a world where all of this is the norm.

New discoveries about Artificial Intelligence are being made everyday!

As I sat in my room, I contemplated how drastically different the world as we know it will be, due to emerging technologies. One such technology is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the crazy thing is, we are already in the “Age of AI.”

Why not take a crack at explaining a daunting topic like AI to my 5 year old sister?

I call her into my room and begin.

The first step to understanding what Artificial Intelligence is, is to understand what Intelligence is.

Simply put, Intelligence is the ability to collect knowledge, use this knowledge to recognize problems, and solve these problems.

Artificial Intelligence is intelligence shown by a computer or a machine.

In an attempt to show my sister how AI is being used in the real world today, I pulled out my laptop and clicked on Siri’s icon. I told my sister to ask Siri for the time.

“5:32 pm,” Siri responded. My little sister’s eyes widened and suspiciously she asked, “Is there a ghost girl in there?” I smiled and shook my head no.

Siri is an example of AI algorithms in action. She listens to what the user is saying, converts that speech into text, translates this text into commands a computer can understand, looks up the command, collects the data, and converts this data into speech.

Face to the computer, my sister told Siri about the highs and lows of her day, and how nap time was extended by 15 minutes. Siri responds with an “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Frustrated, my sister turns to me for an explanation.

Siri has limited capabilities. She can only understand simple phrases and terms. She cannot learn to do new things and cannot yet interact in a way a human can. Siri in as example of ANI, one of the three types of AI:

Imagine what it will be like when AI can think for itself!

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) or Weak AI: ANI can only do the specific thing it was designed to do. All AI systems today are variations of ANI. ANI ranges from Apple’s face recognition technology Face ID to Tesla’s self driving cars.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Strong AI: AGI is an AI system that is just as smart as a human. It can learn quickly, understand difficult ideas, and make decisions.

Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI): ASI is super smart AI. It surpasses human intelligence, creativity, decision making, and learning rates.

Right now the AI community is hard at work trying to transform AGI and ASI from concepts to reality.

Often times the terms above are used interchangeably, but they are actually subsets of each other!

Siri uses a subset of Artificial Intelligence called Machine Learning. Machine Learning is an application of AI that uses data to make predictions and come to conclusions based on these predictions. Siri uses machine learning algorithms to match your speech input against the most likely output.

Below are 3 broadly recognized methods of Machine Learning:

Supervised Machine Learning:

The data we give an SML model (input) already has the correct answer (output) attached to it. When an SML model gets new data it is able to identify what category this new data should be in based on the labelled training set.

Unsupervised Machine Learning:

The data we give an UML model (input) is unlabelled. An UML model learns by identifying common attributes and sorting examples with similar attributes into groups.

Reinforcement Learning:

Reinforcement learning isa self teaching algorithm that learns from trial and error. It self corrects to minimize error and maximize rewards.

Deep Learning is a subset of machine learning that is responsible for things like autonomous vehicles and image recognition. Deep learning is a self taming system that recognizes patterns in data and uses these patterns to make predictions.

🔑Key Takeaways:

  • AI is drastically changing the world and will continue to do so
  • Three Types of AI (two of which are conceptual): Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)
  • Three Types of ML (a subset of AI): Supervised Machine Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Reinforcement Learning
  • Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning

Constance Rosemond

Written by

A 15 year old TKS Innovate who’s passionate about social justice. I’m interested in how BCI, Haptic Tech, and VR can be used for the advancement of the world.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade