What is artificial intelligence? How is artificial intelligence going to change our lives?
“Alexa, play my favorite song! Alexa, shut the garage door!” Imagine a world in which you simply call out a request while sitting in your living room and have a small computer comply. Suddenly, the driving beat of your favorite song fills the air while in the distance you hear the grind of the garage door coming down.
This scenario is no longer science fiction! Our world is becoming increasingly inhabited by machines that can talk to us, listen to us, perform as asked, and even solve problems with no direction from humans. A machine with artificial intelligence is one that can perceive its environment and change its computing and behavior to reflect that environment, while using tools at hand to solve problems or reach goals.
In Artificial Intelligence: Thinking Machines and Smart Robots with Science Activities for Kids, readers ages 10 to 15 learn the early definitions of AI and discover how these definitions, and the tests that are applied to determine whether a machine has AI or not, have changed as machines have grown increasingly competent in unexpected ways. Through a combination of science activities and student-paced learning, readers discover the AI machines of today and their uses in various fields, such as entertainment, the military, and health care.
What about the future? How will AI affect the way we understand and integrate with technology and with each other? How can AI improve our lives? Is there anything dangerous about AI? What are the ethical issues surrounding the use of AI? Essential questions such as these promote critical examination of issues from all sides, while primary sources and science-minded engineering activities, such as experimenting with the programs Sound Net and iNaturalist and making a model of a neural network, let readers have a blast learning about the age of thinking machines we're in right now.
Table of Contents:
Timeline
Intro: What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Chapter 1: The Hunt for Hal: Early Forms of AI
Take a Turing Test. (Can be done with 2-3 people)
Try a chatbot (like Cleverbot)
“Code” the steps to play and win at Tic-Tac-Toe
Make a model of a neural net out of playdough and toothpicks
Play Conway’s “game of life” sim online or on paper
Chapter 2: Good Morning Alexis: AI Today
Play Go (or Chess) and write steps to play/win
Talk to Alexa (online version)
Write steps for a person to follow as if he/she were a robot
Explore Mars via simulated Curiosity rover (on JPL site)
Try a deep learning driven app (such as iNaturalist.org)
Watch video of life-like android such as Sophia (Hanson Robotics)
Chapter 3: AI in the Future
Watch or listen to AI created `art’
Experiment with Sound Net
Make a doodlebot
Do the original Three Wise Man test with friends
Chapter 4: Do We Need AI?
Watch DARPAs Robot Challenge and design own rescue robot
Design a robot to work alongside humans in space
Explore the uncanny valley and make your robotic face
Chapter 5: The Debate around AI
Read about debate between Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) and Elon Musk (founder of Tesla and SpaceX) about AI. Then come up with your own argument!
Chapter 6: AI in SciFi
Write your own laws of robotics /AI
Write a short story or poem artificial intelligence 50 years from now.
Watch 2001 (or another twentieth-century movie about AI/robots). How has our view of AI changed?
Glossary
Resources
Index
About the Author :
Angie Smibert is the author of more than 20 nonfiction books about science and technology for kids. Some of those titles include Building Better Robots; How it Works: The Internet; All about Coding; and 12 Great Moments that Changed Internet History. Before writing full time, she helped pioneer online training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Besides writing, she also teaches writing and human-computer interaction at Indiana University East. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
Review :
Praise for other books in the series
Innovators
National Science Teachers Association Recommends
Innovators is a magnificent compilation of vignettes about creative and critical thinkers who have contributed to solving problems and improving existing products or processes. . . Innovators is a wonderful book. It is engaging, readable, and full of relevant information about important inventions and innovations and the context behind them. Readers will appreciate focus on equity of gender and race among the innovators throughout the book. This book does not contain glossy color photographs, but has cartoon style illustrations throughout. Innovators would be useful for teaching science or STEM classes, for background reading in classes, or can be read and used at home just because it is such an engaging book. As a fifth grade science teacher, I highly recommend getting a copy for any third to sixth grade classroom. Read the complete review online.
Learning Magazine
"What do Google and chocolate chip cookies have in common? Both were created by innovators! Learn about the people and products that have changed the world; then get your students innovating with 25 STEAM projects."
3-D Engineering
Science Books and Films
++: Highly Recommended
". . . This book is a wonderful resource for teachers and parents to use in the classroom and at home. It gets back to the basics with exciting activities that are hands-on that support the STEM program. When kids use their hands and work together to create a prototype, the outcomes are much higher when they are actively engaged in this type of learning. It gives students confidence in math while building problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. This is a book that teachers, parents, boys, and girls will enjoy as they learn about the many facets of the engineering world."
School Library Connection, April 2016
"Author Vicky V. May has produced a procedural book for the 21st century. Information covers electricity, chemistry, earth science, physics, and energy. . . The text, with fast facts, sidebars, and text boxes, is kid-friendly and the topics fit the science curriculum. Its guided inquiry approach makes this a useful tool for students seeking science fair ideas, teachers selecting creative outcomes to lessons, and learners who thrive on hands-on projects. Cartoon-like illustrations supplement the "how-to" aspect of the book nicely. Glossary. Index. Recommended"
Dr. Eugene Santos Jr., Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth College
"Captures the dream and inspires the imagination of AI all the while keeping it gently grounded in thinking about AI's realities. It's really a primer for all ages and thought provoking for all readers."
