How We Taught 60 Kids to Love Artificial Intelligence
A month back, my team at IBM helped organize “Take Your Child To Work Day”, a day for encouraging children to learn more about the careers and companies of their parents. Our group had a unique challenge; explaining the world of IBM’s Watson to a room full of kids, in a way that was not only understandable to an array of different ages — but also (horror of horrors) — interesting to them!!
Watson, IBM’s prolific computer system that pioneered Artificial Intelligence, remains one of the technology industry’s most exciting and complicated applications ever. From healthcare to education, Watson is looking to catalyze the way we make decisions everyday. But how do you even begin to explain the impact of Watson to children of all ages?
Lets Go to the Tape
With 60 parents and kids scheduled to spend the day at our IBM office in Northern Virginia, my colleagues took on a herculean task of organizing all sorts of workshops, including a Chef Watson Demo in which AI helps you build recipes around your food! My workshop involved co-leading a demo of IBM Watson’s Movie Theater Application, showing students how they could chat with Watson to get recommendations on movies.
We introduced Watson as a “friend” and confidant, someone who asked pragmatic questions and had the kids’ best interests at heart. The app started out with simple, sequential questions, as we had participants from ages 3 and up, stand with us and answer in the order Watson asked. We even chuckled as Watson spit out its own opinions, using sentiment analysis of aggregated ratings to dictate whether or not the movie is worth watching.
In 45 minutes, kids were able to learn how powerful computers and artificial intelligence could be, when it was used to help humans. We asked the kids how many of them Watson had helped with their movie dilemma and all of them said yes. It was a neat microcosm of the role that AI and cognitive technology will play to make even the simplest experiences better.
Delight, Inspiration and Understanding
As the day ended, we had kids who came into the office barely knowing anything about AI, and leaving with a new sense of delight, inspiration, and understanding. In a world where it’s consistently difficult to get young kids excited about STEAM, making something like Watson relatable was no easy task. We managed to turn an intricate and robust cognitive machine into something kids really got. The kids saw Watson as an advisor. They understood how Watson could help them — and started thinking about how Watson could help the world.
Teaching young children about tough concepts doesn’t have to be hard. It’s all about finding a challenge they face, and showing them how technology could transform their experiences — and how that in turn could affect their lives on a highly individualized basis. We looked at a challenge children of all ages face — picking a movie — and showed how Watson could help them with that challenge. We taught them about its utility and vision, planting a seed that — if nothing else — got their brains working.
In order to make children curious about something complex, we had to start thinking about how to make it more relevant. And it started with understanding their challenges. Just like with our clients. While we didn’t have a group of children who could suddenly develop Watson applications, we had a group of kids who understood why Watson was important, who had a flurry of new questions for their parents, and who had thought concretely about one of the most advanced cognitive systems in the world.
