AI for Kids

How Kids, Teachers, and Creators Think Kids Should Use AI (Everyone)

• Amber Ivey (AI) • Season 3 • Episode 7

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Amber Ivey (aka AI) shares standout moments from AI for Kids, conversations that made her stop and think about how kids, parents, and teachers are learning to live with AI. From creativity and coding to curiosity and critical thinking, these clips remind us that understanding AI starts with asking good questions and keeping an open mind.

If you heard something today that made you think or smile, share this episode with a friend, teacher, or family member. 

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SPEAKER_05:

Hey everyone, it's Amber Ivy here, aka AI, and welcome back to the AI for Kids. So this episode's gonna be a little different. Over the past few seasons, we've had some incredible guests from young inventors and AI researchers to teachers, CEOs, and creators who are shaping how we think about technology. And as I've been listening back, a few moments really stood out. These are the clips that made me pause, smile, or think, or even say every kid needs to hear this. So today I'm sharing some of my favorite moments as well as some of the ones that you all listen to the most. The ones that remind us what AI can be when we approach it with curiosity, creativity, confidence, and critical thinking. Whether you're new here or you've been listening since season one, thank you, thank you, thank you, this is your chance to catch some of the most powerful insights from our top episodes, all in one place. All right, let's hit it. How do you see AI change in the future as it relates to the way we learn and play in the future?

SPEAKER_02:

I think the good news is that probably the kids on this podcast are gonna be the ones in charge of the future. And the one thing I've learned from working with my son is he's always way more creative with it than I am. So I think I'm pretty creative with it. And then he sits down and he always thinks of the thing I hadn't thought of or the neat idea. And like my kids' class, he's actually got a video in there, thought up a lot of the activities. And so I think one of the important things is that everybody that is a kid out there that's listening on this podcast realize that your creativity is more important than ever now. Your ability to go and create amazing things, think up just wild ideas is what's going to allow us in the future to solve problems we can't solve today. It's not gonna be boring adults. And I just really emphasize you more now than ever, really, really appreciate how creative you are and keep doing it. Because that, when you put it together with generative AI, allows magic things to happen. And so many of us have forgotten how to be creative, and that's creating a lot of the problems as people go and it's like, I've got generative AI, and it's like this blank canvas, but I've forgotten how to paint. I've forgotten how to be creative. And you've already got that, so just hold on to it.

SPEAKER_05:

So for the kids who might be nervous that AI is too techy or complicated and not for them, what would you say to someone who feels intimidated by AI?

SPEAKER_07:

I would say to just take it one step at a time. It can feel really overwhelming because there's so much information online about AI, and people will commonly throw around these big words like neural networks and machine learning. But if you start with the basics, like understanding the definition of what AI actually is and how it's being used in your day-to-day life, you'll be able to slowly move on to learn even the most intricate topics.

SPEAKER_05:

What does prompting mean?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so prompting means talking with AI systems in a way where we want to communicate the tasks that we want the artificial intelligence system to do. So if I want an AI system to help me write some code, I'll I can just describe what I want that code to do, break it down into steps, and then send that to the AI system, and then I'll be able to execute something. So prompting is really just talking to AI systems.

SPEAKER_04:

My six-year-old asked AI the other day, Google Home, do you know Alexa? And I'm listening, and Google Home is like, yeah, she's one of my many friends. And then she said, So who's better, you or Alexa? I was like, Oh my god, for them, this is all organic. Did you realize that we talked about not doing Google search but instead using AI? Also, not using it within the framework of a laptop, but a smart device. Yeah. So they are using it on their remotes when talking to YouTube. They are using it with Lexas. So they are using it without even realizing, and that's why the whole child aspect comes into play. It is part of their immersive world. Oh, yeah. And we need to address that.

SPEAKER_05:

I'm glad you said that because I remember there's a little kid here who came to my house with his mom, probably about four. I know he can't like fully type out things. He was playing Among Us, and I'm like, How are you talking to people? And he's using the voice to communicate and then, like, how they're on YouTube without knowing how to read, they were able to navigate this world. So it's a good point of even though we enter this world very differently, they're already entering this world and they're going into it in a way that works for them, and they're navigating it way better than I'm able to navigate, even things like YouTube.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and in Little It, we always thought that we will build this for elementary and about. Be very honest, when we first started, I felt even if I'm saying elementary, I really mean maybe third or fourth grade, right? I was discounting the ability of kids to adapt. And we have so many users on Little It who are six years old, and they use the mics because we have mics everywhere, they just talk to it, they have skipped the writing altogether now. They're trying to work on creative ways to incorporate the ability to spell and articulate beyond to speak. But if it's empowering because this child doesn't have to wait to grow up to become a very fluent in to access information.

SPEAKER_05:

So, why do you think it's so important for all kids to have access to STEM education, considering what you just said, it's everywhere, it's all around us.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a high probability that they're going to work in a STEM-related job, or even if they don't see it as STEM related, it's going to use STEM. They may end up being a writer, but they could be writing about STEM. They could be a psychologist, a psychiatrist. So they need to do it because there's a high probability that whatever career, whatever job they follow, it's either going to be dependent on STEM or it's going to be connected with STEM. Also, just to navigate everyday life, to learn how and know how to use the computer, to learn and know how to use your smartphone. We talk about smartphones, but so many devices are becoming smart now. You have your smart refrigerators, your smart toasters. Many of us have heard about that they're working on developing driverless cars. And so to be part of this world, the more you understand STEM, the more you can use it properly, the easier and better your life is going to be. Over 50% of the jobs that people have in five years haven't been invented yet. So part of learning STEM is adaptability and, as you mentioned, curiosity. So by being involved with STEM, you'll be more adaptable and you'll be able to adapt to the future that is being created with STEM.

SPEAKER_05:

So speaking of getting involved, how can kids get involved, one, in STEM, and to make sure others who they know have access to well I'm gonna throw out an idea, and actually this relates it back to Archie's find an area of STEM you really like, learn about it, and then become a teacher.

SPEAKER_00:

Become someone who shares that knowledge with others. Archie, for example, really got interested in coding, which led to AI, and she's done a lot of teaching. She's run some events for the STEM festival. And every year we have a number of events that are run by students, sometimes for students, sometimes even for adults, that talk about or demonstrate some area of STEM they're passionate about. I like to say that not every area of STEM is for everybody, but there is some area for each person. You just have to find it. It could be AI, it could be astronomy, it could be agriculture. It's gonna be hard for a person not to find a particular area of STEM that they like, and when they do, take it and run with it.

SPEAKER_05:

Why do you think it's important for kids to know about AI and how it works? Or even about computers and how they work, because that's the foundational part of all this.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. I feel that as much as I say, like, even I wouldn't necessarily call them the TikTok generation, but just like the difference in generations between us is that the cool thing I feel about them is that they're super interested in technology. And I feel that when I was around their age, it was like more like the nerds and like people weren't necessarily interested. So I feel like when the computer wave first hit, it was only a certain type of people that were interested in it. True. And then I feel the second wave was when social media started with like the mind stakes and things like that. And then like we started to kind of catch on, but it was, I mean, computers had been around for a while before people had started to catch on. And I feel like AI is the next wave. There are things that I kind of feel that, you know, kind of come and go, but I feel like AI is here to stay. And I feel that it's very important for children to at least understand. You don't necessarily have to be a software engineer, rocket scientist. You just have to be curious enough to understand the technology because it truly is the wave of the future, and you don't want to get left behind on that one.

SPEAKER_05:

Why do you think it's so important for kids to learn about coding as it relates to their future?

SPEAKER_01:

As we can see nowadays, it's a new era. Now, all the jobs that we used to use with our own body, like our own hands that we can actually manipulate safely and we can manipulate physically, now it's completely changed. For example, in the groceries, in the supermarkets, all of that, in that industry, nowadays it's just getting controlled by these kind of machines, you know, like those self-checkout things. Oh, yeah. That's not runner by a person, there's not a person behind that actually that's actually a program made by coding. And a lot of things, like even this thing that we use to actually make this podcast, is actually made uh programmed by coding. Honestly, coding's all around us, and we really need to use it because even Tesla's self-driving cars, even when we had to launch the rocket Apollo 11 to go to the moon. Yeah, I mean, who saved the program? Who saved the program? It was this woman who just saved it with actually coding. Because everything is made by coding nowadays. Some of the biggest accomplishments in mankind and all of this history is made by coding. Nowadays, if you want to make something revolutionary, you need to use coding and math combined. So I really think that's very important. I'd recommend go through coding and learn coding because honestly, it's the future. It's the future. If you want to make anything new, if you want to make anything revolutionary, if you want to make something that you really love, anything that you want to do, there's a very high chance that involves coding.

SPEAKER_05:

What's one AI issue that kids and teens should really be aware of?

SPEAKER_07:

Over-relying on AI. I think that it's so easily accessible to us nowadays with it just kind of being at our fingertips. And it's so easy to think that, oh, I should just use AI to do this work for me or this work for me. But because of that, there's also this like worry like, what if you don't develop your own skills? And I feel like for kids and teens, it's important for them to also, you know, have those critical thinking skills, be able to develop their own skills before always just jumping to AI for everything. So I think it's always important to just think about how much you're using AI and make sure that you're also able to kind of just use your own skills as well.

SPEAKER_05:

You looked at AI when you were under 18 for the first time. So, how can kids who are younger become AI ambassadors?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's important to note that if students are interested in AI, there's so many different paths in which you can take in the AI space. So you can focus more on building systems, on coding, on the technical aspects of AI. You can also focus on policy. And within these two areas, you can think about AI's role in democracy, AI's role in education, AI's role in criminal justice. There's so many different subsets of AI that students can explore, which I think is exciting because it's affecting everything. So figuring out where you want to be, where you want to play a role is really interesting to think about. But for students who are interested in becoming AI ambassadors, I would say think a lot about how you're currently using AI as a tool right now and how that's something that you could advocate for with your school. So if you're finding that you're using AI to help you learn, you can think about talking with your school administration and saying, hey, we should be able to co-create these policies around AI, not just in this particular classroom, but as a school. Get involved in that advocacy and have that conversation with administrators. And then as that conversation continues to grow, you can think about how you can play a core role in facilitating discussions between students and faculty in this work.

SPEAKER_05:

AI can still, even if I'm a 10-year-old just learning the basics, right? It can still feel super complicated. You teach it in a way that makes sense for kids. What's the easiest way, once I've learned the basics, to start playing around with AI and actually understand it?

SPEAKER_04:

I think the easiest way is by doing. Okay. Like really exploring and experimenting and combining it with theory. So we thought a lot about how we will give these tools to kids in Little It. And this was our answer to your question as well, which is how do we do it? You combine learning AI with doing AI or using AI, and then it becomes a total sort of complete experience. So think about it as you're saying, okay, AI has memory, it retains a lot of information across everything, and you're learning this concept and you're becoming aware as a child that AI has memory. If right after that you tell the child, okay, now use this AI chatbot and why don't you ask it any question that comes to your mind? And you know, maybe it's a science question, or maybe it's about a person or a historical figure, and AI is giving you that answer. Now you're connecting the dots right away in the moment. You're saying, okay, AI has memory, it access this memory to give me this information. So this is how those two pieces come together. So I think constantly combining small bite-sized concepts with experiments, exploration, really trying and testing it. Another good example I would give you, because I really love this one, is uh understanding AI's bias. So we have all these different biases that AI can have, right? My favorite example is talking about gender bias within the AI construct and saying that a lot of data that was used to train AI is historical and has a lot of points of views from men, but doesn't have enough representation of women in the data, which means that AI can then make mistakes. And we need to be aware of that. Now that's a nice you know thing to understand, but immediately after that, there is a challenge where kids are told to make community figures like firefighters and asking AI to create stickers or images of firefighters, and then observing whether AI is actually giving them a woman and a man or just sticking to your stereotypical man firefighter, and then teaching them okay, so now this time around, say a woman firefighter and train that AI tool to give you a more equitable representation. So, again, an example of uh learning and doing. So, as long as we keep combining these two, I think it becomes real and it becomes tangible and immediately, and it's the same for any learning, we are just applying it to AI.

SPEAKER_05:

What about AI and daily activities?

SPEAKER_00:

The most basic way, and the way that it's been used for a long time that people don't think about is gathering information. For years, people have been typing into Google a question: How far is it from Washington to Baltimore? The AI engine went out and searched it and came back with the answer. But now there's even more and more AI uses. I mean, I mentioned the one in medical research where it's used to look at large volumes of data. It can be used to create things such as documents. You tell it, I want to write a letter inviting Amber to participate in the STEM festival. And it will come up with a letter and you'll look at that and you say, It's a little longer, and then you type in make it shorter. And then it comes back with a shorter letter, and then you tweak a little bit and you send it to Amber, and hopefully she'll be in the STEM festival. It can now be used to create images and sound. A lot of what your phone does is generated by AI. So its uses are just increasing and growing. As they say, the sky's the limit. If you can think it, you can probably figure out a way to have it done with or by AI.

SPEAKER_05:

So, how can kids get involved and learn more about computers, AI, and all these different things that are coming to them as they're growing up?

SPEAKER_06:

I would say there are a lot of really great companies, and I'm glad that it's being more diversified in how kids are learning. Oh, yeah. I feel that it's starting in the school systems now. You can go to your local Walmart and Targets and find STEM-related activities. Some of my favorites, my kids love your book, by the way. Like they believe it, absolutely love it, and they're at the point where they're reading it on their own now. So it's like, okay, I've read it myself a few times, and I say few lightly. It's been an over 20, but now they're reading it on their own. So that's okay. That's awesome. That's the goal. Sorry, parents.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, they're they're so into it. I talk about AI for adults before this, and I was like, adults, we're a little bit harder to adapt to new things. And I have my nieces and nephew. At the time, my nephew wasn't born, but now he is, and he's in the world, he just had his one year birthday. I wanted them to move from just being on these tablets and devices or saying, hey Siri, hey, Google or whatever, to like understanding these technologies and being able to interact with them.

SPEAKER_06:

Beautiful book. Kudos to you. It is truly a beautiful book and a beautiful story. Thank you. We really loved it. It almost felt like a movie when I read it the first time.

SPEAKER_05:

That's the goal. How do you think about using AI and robotics to help communities and make a positive impact?

SPEAKER_08:

Well, I got to do a lot of work teaching teachers to teach AI, and that just brought me much closer to all of the things that teachers have to worry about. And this is during 2020. So teachers have extra things to worry about. 2020 and beyond.

SPEAKER_05:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_08:

Such as, you know, they work really hard. You have so many students, you have to grade the work, you have to personalize your lessons to what they want. You want to spark creativity, respond to different students' needs. And so I started thinking about well, couldn't you have a robot that helps with some of those tasks? And what should that robot do? Because there's a lot of so this is not inclusive AI. Okay. A lot of people will say, I was a student once. I know exactly what teachers need. So let me build the thing. So rather than do that, I asked teachers, what do you need? You're the expert on your students and how they learn. What could you use in the classroom that would help you? And then I sort of filter that through. Okay, what's actually possible to build?

unknown:

Because not everything possible.

SPEAKER_08:

So I was teaching AI, right? So it was a robot that would argue with you. One student wanted to build a robot that would deliver food around their house. So it could drive and deliver food and say, Here are your chips, and then like drive away.

SPEAKER_05:

Again, another robot I need.

SPEAKER_08:

And I would always ask students, okay, this seems like a cool idea. What are some of the ways it could go wrong? And they would say, There are no ways it could go wrong. It's perfect. The skill that teachers really wanted their students to practice was critical thinking. How do you sort of problem solve and say, what are the things that aren't immediately obvious that could come up? And how do I take steps to get there? So we built a robot that could argue with them. Oh, okay, well, your robot delivers snacks. But what if it means that you don't get enough exercise because you're not getting up and getting your snacks anymore? Or it delivers snacks, but what if you get a soda and it spills on the robot and then what? And what that did was it made people much more creative because they were like, oh, I shouldn't just build a robot. I should build a robot with a cup holder that's waterproof or soda proof so that it'll be able to be more flexible inside of different scenarios. That was really, really important for them as their engineering seat to be able to think through how I might design this even better. Because we don't always get the perfect solution the first time. That was really helpful for teachers because they couldn't have 30 different conversations with all of the students.

SPEAKER_05:

That's such a cool idea, the idea of creating, even for other things, of creating an AI that is able to go back and forth with you. And one thing we always talk about here is problem solving. So thank you for like giving an example of where parents and teachers are concerned that AI is going to stop things like creativity and problem solving. But that's a way you can use AI to help with problem solving and help with the issue of, like you said, a teacher can't answer 30 to 100 questions per child, but this AI can actually speed that up and the teacher can focus where the teacher needs to to help further that problem solving. I absolutely love that. Do you have any advice for kids who want to use technology to help their communities or just any advice in general that you want to make sure you leave behind?

SPEAKER_08:

If you would love to use your amazing skills to help your community, then I would highly recommend you learn a new skill and teach it to someone else. Because it turns out that you really, really know something when you can teach someone else, even better if you can teach it to a preschooler. I think that that has helped me a lot because when I teach other people things and they ask questions that I don't have answers to, and so I get to learn more and I get to go off the excitement that they have. So I guess what I'm saying is if you want to learn something, find someone who you want to teach that thing to, maybe a parent that's sitting nearby you and wants to learn about AI with you or from you. Maybe you go and teach a class about it. I think that your teacher would really appreciate that. Maybe you go and teach a friend. There's so many people who I think could benefit. One of my favorite projects, I built an AI storybook and then I tried to make a version of it with my dad. It's medium results, y'all. But it was a big learning experience for both of us. Yeah, that's my recommendation. Learn something, teach someone else, pass it on. I believe that National Coding Week is coming up, so go and get your opportunity to learn how to program. That's where I started, and never let anyone tell you you can't have both technology and art. You can have both, and it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_05:

I love listening back to these moments. They remind me why I started the show in the first place. Kids, you all are growing up in a world surrounded by AI, whether it's talking to a smart speaker, YouTube algorithms, interacting with different AIs through apps. And I know you're already curious about this new technology, but I want to make sure we have safe spaces and real conversations to help you explore it. If you heard something today that made you think or smile, share this episode with a friend, teacher, or family member. That's how we keep spreading AI literacy for kids. One story, one question, one curious conversation at a time. And if you didn't know, we have a new project coming out called AI Digicards, which allows kids to explore AI in a screen-free way and helps families keep learning together even after this podcast ends. Our first deck is the ABCs of AI Activity Deck, Focus on Kids 4 to 8. And your parents can sign up to be notified of our Kickstarter campaign that we're gonna launch November 4th. All this information can be found in the show notes. I just want to thank you all so much for being part of the AI for kids family. And until next time, stay curious, stay creative, and keep exploring the possible. Bye-bye.

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Amber Ivey (AI)

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