AI for Kids

Become the Hero of Your Own Story with AI (Families)

• Brian Carlson • Season 1 • Episode 24

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What if the future of children's literature could be personalized, multilingual, and deeply engaging? Join us as we chat with Brian Carlson, CEO and co-founder of Storytime AI, who shares his incredible journey from a math and science enthusiast to a pioneer in the world of AI-driven storytelling. Brian’s adventurous spirit and passion for technology have led him to create a platform that revolutionizes how stories are told to young audiences. His experiences teaching in Vanuatu offer a unique perspective on the intersection of education, culture, and technology.

Our conversation takes a deep look into the role representation and inclusivity play in children's literature and the profound impact these elements can have on young minds. Brian discusses how personalized stories can inspire kids to imagine themselves in myriad roles, nurturing a lifelong love for learning. We also explore the balance between AI's potential to enhance education and the importance of preserving essential cognitive skills like creativity and critical thinking.

Brian's vision for "AI for Good" highlights the transformative potential AI holds for making education accessible to children around the globe. From the incredible advancements in AI, like creating full movies from simple prompts, to the ever-expanding capabilities of Storytime AI, we explore how these innovations can spark curiosity and creativity.

Use code: AIDIGI on Storytime AI application to get 1 free personalized story and free video conversion.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the AI for Kids podcast, where playtime, learning and creating collide bit by bit. Ever wonder how your phone recognizes your face. How does a game learn to get harder as you get better? This is AI. This podcast is designed for kids like you and your human parents, making the complex world of AI easy to understand and, most importantly, fun. So are you ready to unlock the mysteries of artificial intelligence? Subscribe and join us on AI for Kids. Hi everyone, Welcome back to the AI for Kids podcast. Today we have an incredible guest. Please welcome, Brian Carlson. He is the CEO and co-founder of Storytime AI. I know you're all wondering what is Storytime AI, but I love the title because I think we get a good idea of what it's about. But, Brian, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you started Storytime AI?

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, thanks for having me today, amber, and really excited to be here and talk about what we're working on and all things AI for kids. So I've always been involved in education, had a business before this that was involved in online education for K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities that was doing online education, and that business was acquired and after that started a new thing, and that new thing is Storytime AI and the boom of AI had come out when I was kind of trying to decide what I wanted to do next and I started thinking, like, what does it do? Really well, at that time and that was about a year ago At the time it's changed a lot already. Ai, as everyone knows, is happening very quickly and it's advancing very quickly.

Speaker 2:

But when I first started looking at it, I started thinking about personalized learning and decided to make an app, because I've never done an app before. I was always focused on businesses or colleges Rather than to kind of work through the schools. I wanted to start by going to individuals. So we landed on doing an app and doing an app that could build any story you could possibly imagine, and that's now also turned into turning those into videos. So it's books and now videos as well, and they're personalized on-demand books and videos for kids that are in 70 different languages right now.

Speaker 1:

That was fast and that's so cool. I want to talk to you about how you originally got here, and that goes back to when you were in school and when you were a kid. What was one of your favorite subjects when you were a kid and did you always love the ideas of stories and technology?

Speaker 2:

I was a big math person. I just love numbers and I think it's the way my brain worked. More than anything, you know you're, usually you love what you're good at and I felt like I wasn't as good, ironically, on reading and stories and literature and things like that. My brain didn't process that as well as it processed numbers. Now I'm more interested in that than I was when I was younger. But when I was younger I was very mathematical and I liked anything around math. So science was kind of an extension of math, astronomy was an extension of math. I liked astronomy for that reason. But math was kind of where it all started, because I was good at it and my brain just could process numbers a little bit faster than it could process words and I think a lot of people when they're younger like that. It's left side or right side of your brain and I was on the math side.

Speaker 1:

That's so cool, though how you started with math, but how it's evolved to the more creative side, and what it means to do that, and even though technology is fully based in math, that you're able to merge two worlds and two sides of your brain, which is really cool. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Speaker 2:

I want to fly just because I can get around fast. I'm a big traveler, so if I wanted to go over to Japan or if I wanted to go to Portugal, I could just fly over there and not have to deal with all the travel.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of traveling, you've actually traveled a lot and you've even taught in other countries. Can you talk to us about your experience and what it was like to teach in another country?

Speaker 2:

Thanks, amber. Yeah, I know I was really lucky. When I was getting out of college and when I was leaving university, I had an opportunity to go to a small group of islands in the South Pacific called Vanuatu and it was 80 islands that were off the coast of Australia by Fiji and New Caledonia and Solomon Islands. There was a group over there of islands called Vanuatu and it was a very unique place, very unique culture. Volcanoes there was eight active volcanoes there. Ocean all around you. You know I could scuba dive and jump in the ocean every day.

Speaker 2:

I lived about 100 yards from the beach so I went over there. Yeah, I was lucky. I just had a really unique opportunity. I took that opportunity. I went over there and I learned so much when I was over there about other cultures and other people and the way they learn, and I was lucky enough to find my way over there and become a teacher. I went over there mostly to teach science, but when I got there they actually asked if I could switch over to more business related classes because they just started a new program for that and they had a lot of opportunity for kids. It was 11th and 12th graders that I was teaching when I was there.

Speaker 1:

That sounds like the dream. Any story that includes being 100 feet from the beach is my type of story. Do you have any funny or surprising moments that happened while you were teaching there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, tons of funny and interesting moments. It's one of those things where I think probably the surprising moment, amber, is that when you go there and you think you know you're the one who's going to be the teacher, you're really the student when you go to another country. Right, I actually learned a lot more than I ever taught. You know, I was 21 years old when I went over there and I was lucky enough to have kind of, I think, an open mind and I learned so much. It changed my life, to be honest. It was one of those moments where you make a decision and you have no idea just how big of a change that's going to do to you as a person, and travel does that for you. So I'd encourage everybody out there to travel as much as they possibly can. I just was lucky that I did that and I kind of got the bug after that and I travel tons still to this day because of it.

Speaker 1:

You're so right when it comes to just having new experiences in different places, how it shapes and changes you. My story is a little bit different. My dad was in the army, my mom was in the Navy and that's how they met. My dad remained in the army, so we would travel over two to three years. But I always tell people, traveling every two to three years and being in different cultures, we lived as far West as Arizona, as far East as Germany.

Speaker 1:

I learned so much about people and experiences. Yeah, and by the age of 14, I had lived in so many different places and had so many different experiences. But, to your point, they shaped my life. They allowed me to see things I never thought was possible and for me that was the only thing I knew. So I had the opposite reaction of coming into, like outside of military life. What is the real world like? But it was so cool to be able to have those experiences and I just really resonate with your story of the life-changing moments that happen when you explore and expand your mind in different ways, and travel is an amazing way to do that.

Speaker 2:

Wow, how old were you when you lived in Germany?

Speaker 1:

I moved there first. In second grade we left in fifth grade. In second grade I was in three different schools, so I lived in Stuttgart. No, sadly I I took. No, sadly, I do not any longer. So as a child I was in German classes every year, but it did not take it did not take.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I wish, but that's cool. I was an Army brat as well. I was born in Fort Benning, georgia. My dad spent a lot of time in Stuttgart. We bounced around to some military bases when I was young, so we share that experience.

Speaker 1:

Very few people have been to Stuttgart, so it's such a beautiful city for folks who are also thinking about travel. I love Germany. Germany is just it's a beautiful place and it was just such a great place to live, seeing so many different cultures and just the history and all the things that are there castles it's just a really cool place. So glad we have even more shared commonality and that's really really cool place. So glad we have even more shared commonality and that's really really cool. I want to shift over to Storytime AI. Can you explain what it is and how it helps kids learn and also have fun, because fun is important in this whole learning journey.

Speaker 2:

It is important, you know, and that's kind of why we did it. When I was younger, like I said, I was a math kid. I love math I wasn't as attracted to books and reading. I am a little bit more now, but even still now I'm probably more mathematical, and with AI, we realized that you could make yourself the hero of your own story. So there's a lot of data that shows that representation and inclusivity matters in terms of outcomes. If I'm reading a book about someone that looks like me and that actually is me and it's my name and I'm, you know, traveling all over the world, I'm more likely to travel all over the world if I'm reading a book about me when I'm young and I'm in the army or I'm a doctor, or I'm more likely to follow that path because I can see myself doing it. If I read a book about myself becoming the president of the us, I have have a higher probability and I'm also more engaged in the materials, so I'm more likely to want to read.

Speaker 2:

So, really, what it is is a literacy play and, to start with, it's really important that you're reading something that you care about.

Speaker 2:

So we started with these short stories, we're actually expanding into full-length novels and I can talk more about that as we continue our conversation.

Speaker 2:

But I can tell you personally that when I'm reading more adult full-length novels, that I'm more intrigued by the material. If I've come up with this creative idea and then it comes to life with AI and AI isn't going to solve everything it has its little niche and it has its purpose, and I think one of those purposes is to just get the individual, the kids that are using it, to be more interested in what they're reading and to care a little bit more and to get more creative. Right, if you come up with this really cool creative universe story about something that matters to you, you're going to be more engaged, and we have it in 70 languages, so it's also a language learning play. I'm trying to learn Spanish or I'm trying to learn Hindi, I'm trying to learn Icelandic or Dalek or German. All those languages are in it and trying to expand even more than 70. There's hundreds of languages out there that are being right now, with AI, preserved, that have not normally been able to be in digital applications.

Speaker 2:

And that's a new thing that's coming with AI and we're including that in the app. So it's kind of all those things where I think the big benefit is really just personalized. Right, Personalized is the key word, personalizing the learning, making it more relevant to the individual. That's really kind of the premise of what it does and why we think it's sort of unique and fun.

Speaker 1:

If Storytime AI was an actual character let's just play a thought game in a storybook what kind of adventures would it be able to go on?

Speaker 2:

I think it would go on adventures all over the world. I think it would just go into places that it wasn't aware of and it would sort of use that to explore those, because the AI is really good at doing that. If you say, hey, I'm going to the Taj Mahal, it will make a character that looks just like you right in the Taj Mahal and you can sort of visualize that. So I think that that's what that character would do.

Speaker 1:

And why is AI so important for kids to learn about.

Speaker 2:

We have a change happening in technology right now.

Speaker 2:

You know, when computers first came out, the kids that jumped in and started using computers right away.

Speaker 2:

They're the ones that built businesses down the road. They're the programmers that built the internet, you know, and that's cool. So I think that when you have a new wave of technology and AI is obviously the newest biggest thing going on in the world of computers it's great for you to be at the very early stage, because we're in the very first inning of AI and if you are starting to get used to it and learn about it as a kid, you're going to be the person that creates businesses and builds really cool things or uses AI to cure diseases down the road. So all these things that AI is going to be able to do for us, and then these supercomputers and the way that they're working, and all this knowledge and information a better way of getting access to you, learning how to use those systems and interact with them and kind of how to start to imagine what they can do it's going to really kind of set you up for being really successful in life.

Speaker 1:

And I think you're so right If you think of, like some of the tech giants like your Bill Gates and people like that who learned to code as a kid. I just think it's so important for kids to, like you said, get access to these things early on so that they can one see themselves in these spaces and be prepared for that. But alongside, like the growth of this, the exciting part about this there's also dangers. What are some of the dangers that kids need to think about related to AI?

Speaker 2:

I think the one that's the most interesting to me is you don't want to lose your ability to be a critical thinker. You don't want to lose your ability to be able to write a book. If anything, what I've found personally my experimentation with this is this should help you be able to write your own books, because it shows you the structure of what good books look like and it gives you an idea of how dialogue happens in books, and because you're more engaged in the material. But you don't want AI to replace critical thinking. Just because it's good at something, we're still the ones that are using it as a tool, not a replacement for human critical thinking. So I think the big danger for kids is to kind of understand that this is an option, a tool to use, but you still need to develop those critical thinking skills that have always been a part of sort of the human experience and you should use it to enhance those, not replace those.

Speaker 1:

That's such a good point. I was talking to someone in another interview where we were talking about like how the kids' brains develop and how important it is for them to gain skills when they're kids so that those muscles will work. Those skills like critical thinking, problem solving, like those things are best developed at their age, when the brain is still developing. So I love the fact that you called out that as a danger that we allow technology to take the place of creativity, critical thinking and learning, because I think that's so important. And often people talk about other dangers. But I think this danger is even more scary because it actually prevents the child from continuing to grow if they're not developing skills at a certain point, or it makes it harder for them to develop these skills later on in life.

Speaker 2:

Yep, and any new technology can be a little scary at first, right, I mean, we both remember, you know, the internet was scary at first. Oh my gosh, what's this going to do? I think the dust is settling a little bit now and it's not going to change the world, you know, overnight, but it's going to be a powerful technology that can be used for a lot of good things. And I think what we do have to be careful about, you know, not relying on it so much that we forget how to think as people, and I don't think that will happen, but I think it's something that is a risk that needs to be at least considered.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I definitely agree. I think there's a balance with all things right. It's always a balance. Too much of anything is bad, even if it's the best thing in the world. So and then the opposite side of that is everything's not bad, there's a little good in a lot of things. So we got to make sure we find that balance. Are you ready to play a game?

Speaker 2:

Of course let's go.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we have a game called tech trivia. I'm going to ask you a few questions related to technology and you have to try to answer as quickly as you can. Let me know when you're ready. Okay, ready, Okay. What does AGI stand for? And kids at home? You can also answer these questions out loud wherever you're listening to us.

Speaker 2:

It stands for Artificial General Intelligence.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, this is not in the part of TechTurvia, so I'm going to take a quick aside. Can you talk a little bit about generally what AGI is?

Speaker 2:

It's when the AI can sort of iterate and learn on itself, that is, making changes to become better on its own, without human intervention.

Speaker 1:

I love it and that's such a simple way to explain it. I may borrow that and I'll let folks know I got it from you. Second question name an AI that creates text with words.

Speaker 2:

There's a bunch of them. The most popular right now is OpenAI's ChatGPT, but there are lots of other ones, like Anthropic. Clawed is a new one that's out right now, version 3.5. They always number the versions with new iterations and that one's really good. And there's a bunch of open source ones which are open code that's sort of freely available for people to play with and manipulate. And the popular ones there Llama is the most popular, which is actually kind of sponsored and created by, at this stage, meta, which is our Facebook platform, and Instagram, that we all know well.

Speaker 1:

I want to use Antropic. I need to. I keep keep getting alerts in my email and then I saw that Cloud the upgraded version, came out. I need to actually use that one and play with it. So thank you for saying that. To remind me, I have an unread email in my inbox to make sure I activate that. Last question of our tech trivia what is the name of the first AI-generated children's book? And when I say AI-generated, it was a book, completely written and the images were completely made by AI, but it was also a children's book.

Speaker 2:

This one's Alice and Sparkle, I believe.

Speaker 1:

Yes, alice and Sparkle, and I think it came out like right after ChatGPT came out. Great job.

Speaker 2:

We had a picture of that book as a sample book in our app to start with. Oh cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, my question worked out just perfectly. So you were talking about just AI in general, and I know some of the things that you care about as an individual. Is this idea or concept of AI for good? What does that mean? Like, what is this idea of AI for good?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know there was a fear when AI came out that AI would be used for bad things. And it can be used for bad things, right. It can be used to pack computers. Or it can be used for some things that are not always great, right, and people were worried that might replace people's jobs. I think that that worry has died down a little bit.

Speaker 2:

But when we talk about AI for good, for me personally, I've always been involved in education and it's how can we maybe improve access to education for kids for a free level, as opposed to, you know, it being expensive to get a really good education. I've talked to a lot of people that said I'm here in the States and I haven't had Spanish materials for books that I can't get very easy, or Portuguese, or I'm from Turkey and I don't have Turkish. You know things like that. So, having it be something like getting books in Turkish or getting books in a language that maybe is hard for parents to get materials in, and then that inspiring more reading and more literacy and, you know, helping kids see themselves in the books that's what we mean by AI for good Doing something that's improving the world and and more literacy and helping kids see themselves in the books. That's what we mean by AI for good, doing something that's improving the world and making the world better, and I think there's a lot of things that are happening in AI right now in medicine and in education and all sorts of areas where it is doing a lot of good.

Speaker 2:

You probably talk about this on your podcast all the time. You have some things that are really good with it and some things that are not so good, and you want more good than bad, and then it ends up being, you know, a net positive thing. The internet was the same way. There's a tremendous amount of good. Look at us. We're talking here today, you know, due to the internet, and then there's there's obviously some downside with the internet as well.

Speaker 1:

And you have to weigh the good with the bad. Yeah, I like that point. Of all things, come with again the good and bad. You need to figure out the in-between. But speaking of the good, if you could create an AI robot or invent an AI robot to help you with something that was really great, really good or really important, what would it be?

Speaker 2:

Certainly dishes. I'd say I'd start with the dishes. Maybe laundry, all the things I don't enjoy.

Speaker 1:

I saw a meme that said and I'm probably going to get it wrong, but it was basically like we should be building AI to do things we don't want to do versus taking your job. So the dishes laundry, so you can actually work on your job, and I'm like. I'm totally here for the George Justin world where I have a robot helping me and supporting me in my everyday life.

Speaker 2:

That's what we need.

Speaker 1:

It started with the Jetsons and we were supposed to be here by now, so I needed to hurry up. What advice do you have for kids who might want to start their own AI company, tech company or even literacy company, similar to what you've done?

Speaker 2:

I think the big thing is be curious. A lot of young entrepreneurs, young kids, think they're going to start a business right out of high school or college, and I think that that is a little bit unrealistic and you want to go out in the world and learn something first. So go work somewhere for five, 10 years in your career and then start a business when you become an expert. So don't rush, be patient I think that's really important right and then work hard and you'll get there. It will definitely happen for you All. You have to do those three for sure.

Speaker 1:

That's such a good point and that applies to all ages. But that's such a great point Getting that experience. So back to your first story and how we kicked off was around you, having this experience in another country and teaching and how that literally shaped your life. So thank you for calling that out for kids again. Can you tell us more about any of the projects or something you're really excited about that you're working on with Storytime AI and I know I often tell the kids like sometimes companies can't tell you what's happening because it's secret information or private to them until they release it. But if there's anything you can share, we would love to hear it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll share two things. So the technology is changing very quickly and we're trying to build for things that are going to be there six months down the road, year down the road, and set ourselves up for those. One of the first things that we see that's coming, and it's very quickly, is the ability to make full movies just by type. Or say, amber, brian, go over to Germany, make a movie about it, here's what we look like, and it would just start making a movie and there would be a movie about us and we would just say it and it'll be a movie. Well, that technology already exists.

Speaker 2:

There's a couple of companies that just gotten started with that over the last six months a year. Runway is one of them. Pico Labs is another one. There's a number of them that are working on this. Openai just put out one called Sora. There's a lot of different products that are doing this.

Speaker 2:

So what we're trying to do with Storytime AI is be what's called best of breed or the best technology that's out there. We're going to pull it into the app so we have the best language models. We have the best image model to create the images in the books. We're also gonna be able to have full videos. We do have videos right now, but they're more 2D. They take static images and they just let the image, sort of like, have a little effect on it and then have some music with read along across the bottom, so that kids can help learn to read and see themselves in actual movies. Certainly within the next year that will become full, actual movies.

Speaker 2:

The question for us is which of those technologies or which of those companies are we going to integrate with? We're still evaluating that, but that's certainly very exciting to think that you could just say, make a movie about us and then, voila, we watch it on the big screen. You know, that's very, very cutting edge and mind blowing, really, amber, to think we could have this. So I think that's one of the things we're most excited. The other thing is novels, and that's something that we'll have coming out soon as well, not just the short stories for sort of a younger audience, where right now we're more of a younger audience app, but we're expanding into a much older audience and adults. I've been reading them myself. They are getting very compelling and you can make a book about anything you could think of and it's a full novel 15 chapters, 150 pages, yeah, so that's getting really interesting.

Speaker 1:

That is so cool on a few levels, like I like that you pointed out where we are with text to video and what that looks like, or taking images and animating them using AI. I've used some of the text to video where you type in the text like you said, go to Germany and we're in Stuttgart and create a movie and been able to see some of those cool like clips that are happening. So I invite kids, with permission of your parents, to try some of those things out, and we'll make sure to drop the different resources that Brian is talking about today in his show notes, but it's so cool to work with those things and see the potential. We're going to address the skeptic for a second, the person who is like Brian you're taking away all the creativity from humans. You said we need to have critical thinking, but now we have AI creating books or novels. What is your response to that and why is this important as we evolve as humans?

Speaker 2:

Brilliant question, something I've wrestled with for a while as we've been working on this project and I had mixed feelings. Yeah, it really is a good question, because I had mixed feelings coming into it. For the same reason. You know, I always you don't want to be replacing humans or human creativity, and what I've learned so far is it's the opposite is what I feel so far. This is my opinion and I feel like I have a lot of. You know, I probably experimented with more than most and I've created thousands of books. At this stage, you know, oh yeah, but the reason why I landed on it being a positive is you look at things like fan fiction and the ability to create and be creative.

Speaker 2:

Not everyone can be a writer of novels. Not everyone can be a writer of novels. Not everyone can be a writer of stories. But what it does is it sort of teaches you what makes a great story, so you can come up with the ideas and then you can see it come to life and then you can manually iterate from that or, you know, it really allows you to sort of play around with ideas quickly. So, for example, if I wanted to create my own Star Wars universe and I wanted to have a story about Chewbacca and his backstory and I wanted to create my own Star Wars universe and I wanted to have a story about Chewbacca and his backstory and I wanted to know him having his own series and his own books. I could do that in a matter of minutes and read that and then iterate on that, and that, I think, is powerful for people that are trying to, you know, evolve concepts, and there's actually a lot of this already on the internet and it's called fan fiction and there's a whole community of people that share. Hey, I wrote this short story, I wrote this book, and other people read it and they kind of explore creative concepts with each other. So I think it's good for that.

Speaker 2:

But it goes back to it has good, it has bad. Maybe you don't want to have everything written with AI, but it's a good place to start, or it's a good place for you to find something that's captivating and engaging to you personally, a story that you want to read, and then that could also be good for people that maybe want to take that into a screenplay and maybe try to turn that into a movie, and I think what it's doing is it's democratizing the process of building books, building stories and storytelling is so important that I think it's opening it up to more people, because it's traditionally been something that only a very small amount of people have the energy, ability, time to sort of develop concepts and ideas, and I think this is going to open up a huge different audience that's going to be able to start to do these things. So I think it's a net positive. That being said, I do understand the arguments and worries that people have, but that's kind of where I've landed in sort of the experiments that I've been doing.

Speaker 1:

I definitely think you're right and while you were talking, a few things came to mind. So one was the idea of democratization, allowing people to have access to things, more access, I think, about things like TikTok or YouTube, whereas when you and I are growing up, we had to turn on channel 10, 13, 5, whatever channel you were on to get news or information and things like YouTube, tiktok, these other places. Now you can get access to entertainment, news and all these things and allow people who traditionally wouldn't have been a news anchor or who wouldn't have created their own play or not, have like quick access to that. They were able to use platforms to do that. And I think you're right when it comes to evening stories.

Speaker 1:

I didn't think about this before, so I'm glad you actually called it out, because it's opening my mind to the amount of time and also how limited that space was and you had to have time to write and do those things. But now you can literally say I have this concept in my mind, but I may not be the greatest writer in the world, but I have an amazing story. Can you help me put the story on paper and then can we turn it into a movie, like I think it does truly transform things and, like you said, of course there are things that are bad, but I want us to really focus on the good and also the potential of this thing, like when you're thinking about AI. What are some of the new things that you think AI will help us do in the future and, possibly, how will it change the way we learn, play, think, et cetera?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is personalized learning that everyone has access to. If you look five, 10 years ago and you wanted a personal tutor, you'd have to be rich, you'd have to have you know so much money to go get that personal tutor and pay them per hour, and it was very, very few people had access to that kind of information or those personalized individuals that could come in and help you learn, and I think that's wrong. I think that everybody should be able to all over the world should be able to come in and learn as much as they want to learn, and right now that is happening, and I think that it's already happening fast and if you look another couple of years down the road, it's going to continue to get better. So the thing that really I think is coming that's gonna be the biggest change is very inexpensive, borderline, free personalized learning where you can learn about whatever you wanna learn about.

Speaker 2:

You don't have to say, oh, whatever the school's teaching me, no, you wanna learn about something. You don't have to say, oh, whatever the school is teaching me, no, you want to learn about something that they don't offer? No problem, it's a click of a button and it will start teaching you and you just ask more questions. You tell it to make you a quiz to test your knowledge. What should I know? Next? It can send you links. It can send you full information that you can read, and it's very good at that right now and it's only going to get better.

Speaker 1:

One. I love it. I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Dr Rama Shapala over at Hopkins. We both for the listeners, brian and I both were in a city called Baltimore City and we have a school called Johns Hopkins University, and Dr Shapala has been working on AI for decades and one of his moonshots is we have one teacher with 26 AI teachers, so one AI teacher or tutor for every student.

Speaker 1:

To get to your point, right, we know that US education system for the most part focuses on the middle. Folks who are the front are going to be fine. The folks behind often get left behind or put in different classes and aren't focused on right. So imagine if you had that direct AI teacher working with that student based on what they need and based on what's happening for them. That day, someone said something to me and I was like this is such a good point. They're like kids may not want to learn math that day, but it's in the schedule, so we have to learn math.

Speaker 1:

But what if you're able to know that that kid may need to work on reading or creative writing today or something else, because something else may be going on or just not a good day for them?

Speaker 1:

But to give a personal experience to the student, but also have the teachers in the background making sure they understand, or even the AI could alert the teacher as its assistant to say, hey, john or Jane is struggling in this area. This is what we're working on. I think you should spend a little bit more one-on-one time with them in this space. I totally agree with you. I think that can fundamentally change the world and open us up to a future where, like you said, people have access to things, because even today, tutoring on some of these apps is still a lot like $30 to $50 an hour. That's some people's salaries and it's hard for them to be able to give that to their child, and one hour isn't enough. So if you only can afford an hour a week, you're not getting the benefit of folks who are in tutoring and things like that after school every day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's going to level the playing field, and I think that's what we all want in the world. Everybody should be able to learn anything they want and become anything they want, and this has, again, a really strong possibility of making that happen. Ai for good, and that's the good part of it. Right, there's pros and cons with everything, but this is definitely part of the exciting part of AI right now.

Speaker 1:

I totally agree with you Speaking of becoming anything you want to be. We want to have a little game called Two Truths and a Dream. You're going to talk to us about what you wanted to become or who you wanted to be, so you basically tell us two true facts about your life and then one dream job you had as a kid. The kids at home have to also guess. So again, two truths and one dream, and we'll play around and guess which one is the dream. Are you ready?

Speaker 2:

I'm ready.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so go for it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, all right guys, let's see, let's go with. I've been to all 50 states. I was a breakdancer.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

I was in a rock band.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you've been to all 50 states. You were a break dancer and you were in a rock band this one's hard Brian. I'm going to use my critical thinking skills that we talked about earlier. So, 50 states I'm going to actually go ahead and cancel that out as a fact, because I just realized in the interview remember back to earlier you said you traveled a lot, so I imagine that is a fact that you did travel to all 50 states. Also, kudos to you. I'm still missing, like I think, seven, so I'll catch up with you at some point. The second one is break dancing. I don't know, like where are you from originally? I'm cheating a little bit. I don't know, like where are you from originally?

Speaker 2:

I'm cheating a little bit. Well, so I did grow up in Baltimore for a lot of my adolescence, but I was a military brat, so I've been everywhere. I was born in Georgia, moved all over the place Wisconsin, fort Bend, fort Dix, new Jersey, omaha, nebraska.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, that could have happened.

Speaker 2:

Then Philadelphia, then Seattle, so some cities in there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay. So I'm going to take a leap. Knowing that you are a military brat and I know in my life a lot of military brats were in rock bands and had rock bands I'm going to say that was also true. I'm going to say breakdancing was the dream.

Speaker 2:

Wow, you got it. You're right. Yeah, I mean I want to be a breakdancer, but I just don't quite have it. You know, have it yet I'm still working on it, but you got it, you got it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, great Kids. I hope you got to the same conclusion, or somewhere near it for sure, because that one was hard actually. So very good job. Before we go, do you have any advice for kids who want to learn more about AI and how to use technology responsibly?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think this podcast is a great place to start. I think you want to follow other people, just like Amber here. I think you need to. If you start to use social media, you want to start to follow people that are experts in the field, leading companies, see what they have to say, and that's a really good place to start is watching you use social media to follow experts and follow people that are reporting on this and talking about this. So you start to learn the lingo, the jargon, the words that people are using for AI, and sometimes confusing, but it's actually really easy once you break those words down. So the more you're hearing them from other sources, the more likely you are to really kind of demystify AI, and it's really not as hard as it sounds once you start to understand the vocabulary.

Speaker 1:

That's such a great point and, I think, just a great way to wrap us up. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I set up a special code for all your listeners A-I-D-I-G-I, a-i-d-g, and that'll give you 10 stories in the app. The app is Storytime AI and if you search for it on the app stores, it should pop up on Android or on Apple and you know. Hopefully you can get in there and try a couple of stories, create a couple of videos and get 10 free stories if you use that code when you log in.

Speaker 1:

That is so cool. Thank you so much, and the listeners will definitely take advantage of that. We'll have that in the show notes. Brian, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you, listeners, for tuning in again. Don't forget to subscribe to the AI for Kids podcast and stay curious.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, Amber.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us as we explore the fascinating world of artificial intelligence. Don't keep this adventure to yourself. Download it, share it with your friends and let everyone else in on the fun. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. See you next time on AI for Kids.

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Amber Ivey (AI)

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