The introductory video to the first On-line course on artificial intelligence for Italian schools is now available with subtitles.
The lab course, which is part of the Ambizione Italia for Schools Educational Programme promoted with Microsoft, is based on four modules that are available for free. Arin will reveal how an artificial intelligence learns, involving students and teachers in exciting practical exercises.
Would you like to try your hand at teaching an artificial intelligence? Follow Arin’s Lab ...
BOY: artificial intelligence is changing our way of living, working and studying.
GIRL: but what is an artificial intelligence?
ARIN: I know! A robot like me!
GIRL: Not exactly, Arin. Robots are just machines equipped with artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is the ability of a technological system to resolve problems or carry out tasks and activities normally performed by humans. And it does so just like we learn to walk as children, by trying again and again. Artificial intelligence must know how to learn from experience.
BOY: Have you ever wondered how our smartphones recognise whether Pino or Luca is in a photo?
ARIN: Because it is always with us and knows all our friends?
BOY: Not quite, Arin. Somebody taught it that Pino has a different face from Luca.
GIRL: We have to provide it with an algorithm, a list of instructions that the computer must follow to solve a problem or complete a task.
BOY: There are tasks for which a list of instructions is insufficient: for example, recognising a person crossing a road or translating a phrase from Italian into English. As humans, we can recognise a person in a photo because we have seen them so many times or we realise that a person is crossing the road. However, if we were to teach Arin to drive a car, the first thing would be to teach it to recognize people crossing the road and brake.
The solution is not to explain what a person crossing the road looks like, but to show it many images of such people. This approach is called machine learning. The machine uses these examples to learn how to complete a task. And the more examples it has, the more accurate the machine will be. This includes three main steps:
Collecting data: sampling many different images of the same subject and feeding them to the computer. For example, if we want to teach and artificial intelligence to recognize dog breeds, we would have to show it many images of the different breeds.
Then comes the training phase in which the artificial intelligence learns from the images it has been fed.
Finally, the artificial intelligence participates in a prediction phase based on the images we have provided to it, recognizing the subject of new photographs.
ARIN: I like all these algorithms. They will make me super powerful! Even if that scares me a little …
GIRL: at present, artificial intelligence has only reached the first level, that of an excellent student with a superb memory, not the level of a genius.
BOY: We do not know at present whether we are moving towards increasingly powerful artificial intelligences or whether we are reaching a new plateau as has happened in the past. However, whatever happens, I can’t wait to see how artificial intelligence will transform our lives in the future.
ARIN: would you like to learn more about how I learn and help me grow smarter? Come and meet me in my on-line lab!
