What is Artificial Intelligence and Why is it Important?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a widespread form of technology as the tech world continues to expand. At CODE, we believe STEM and AI education for children is important, but also necessary, in today’s day and age. Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the world as we know it, becoming a staple in most fields—health care, manufacturing, banking, and automotive industries just to name a few.
Artificial intelligence refers to the development of computer programs & models that have the ability to learn from experience and accomplish human-like tasks while maintaining an exceptional degree of accuracy. Some examples would be tasks that require some form of learning and problem solving, in particular visual recognition and speech recognition. These tasks are categorized under a more specific type of AI referred to as deep learning, where artificial neural networks are created in an attempt to mimic the networking of the human brain. While our computer coding classes teach students to program rules and data to result in an output, deep learning models draw from an input of data and answers to result in an output of rules.
Deep learning is widely used today, becoming more useful with every day that goes by; our VP of research & design at CODE, Shira Agam, believes that deep learning will one day become as standard as computer programming. Agam has had recent successes in holding 5-7 class workshops teaching students to create deep learning models that are able to process data in order to classify images. In just 7 classes, students accomplished image classifying models that distinguished animals to a higher degree of accuracy than a study done by Oxford University in 2012. The takeaway from this is that ANYONE can learn how to create artificial intelligence models if they set their mind to it; at CODE, we strongly disagree with the narrative surrounding AI as an intimidatingly difficult task. To prove this, CODE will soon be implementing AI workshops for children.
These workshops will cover AI subcategories of machine learning and deep learning, teaching students about neural networks, sentiment analysis, speech recognition, creative AI and more. We will also be educating students on the applications of AI in our daily lives & various fields while discussing and bringing to light the ethics and issues that surround AI (ie. issues of data privacy and bias). The workshops will be using the common programming language Scratch, which is already used in the majority of our beginner workshops—which further emphasizes the notion that AI does not have to be difficult. The workshops will be geared towards elementary school through to middle school students who will be educated through the creation of different computer games—an effort to remove the attitudes that children may hold towards computer programming being boring.
Artificial intelligence has the ability to eliminate the need for humans to perform tedious tasks, improving human efficiency and accuracy while transforming health care, automotive & traffic related safety, and transportation & agriculture industries. In the near future, AI will be relevant to nearly all job sectors, merely adding and improving existing technologies. By educating today’s youth on artificial intelligence and the ethics surrounding it, our ultimate goal is to diversify who builds these AI systems, empowering our students to utilize and promote the positive applications of AI to solve real-world problems.
Keep your eyes peeled, and contact us if you would like to be added to our AI workshop wait list.
