Activity 3: “Chatbot Conversation”
Explore how AI understands and responds to human language by interacting with a chatbot, introducing the basics of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Duration:
20 minutes
Materials Needed:
- Computers or Tablets: Devices with internet access for each child or small group.
- Access to a Chatbot Platform: Make sure the chosen chatbot platform is child-safe and suitable for educational use.
How It Works:
Step 1: Setup
Get your devices ready!
- Choose a kid-friendly chatbot platform like Replika or another educational chatbot tool that is safe and appropriate for your age group.
- Set up computers or tablets with access to the selected chatbot platform, so everyone is ready to start chatting.
Step 2: Start the Conversation
It’s time to chat with the AI!
- Take turns typing questions or sentences into the chatbot.
- Ask anything you like, from simple questions like “What’s your favorite color?” to more playful prompts like “Tell me a joke!”
- Watch how the chatbot responds to your inputs, showing you how AI processes and replies to language.
Step 3: Discuss the Experience
Let’s talk about what happened.
- Discuss how the chatbot understood your questions.
- Learn how AI is trained on a lot of data and uses patterns to figure out what your words mean and how to respond.
- Talk about why the chatbot might make mistakes or give funny answers sometimes, helping you understand the challenges and limitations of AI in understanding language.
Learning Outcome:
Through this activity, you’ll learn about Natural Language Processing (NLP)—how AI interprets language, understands context, and generates responses.
You’ll see that this is the same technology behind chatbots and voice assistants like Siri or Google Assistant.
Post-Activity Discussion
Objective:
Reinforce the learning from each activity and connect them back to the broader concept of AI.
Discussion Points:
1. Patterns and Learning
Discuss how each activity demonstrated AI’s ability to learn and recognize patterns:
- “Guess the Animal!”: Showed how AI uses questions to narrow down possibilities, similar to how it processes patterns to make decisions.
- “AI Drawing Challenge”: Demonstrated how AI can recognize images by learning from thousands of examples, picking up on patterns in shapes and lines.
- “Chatbot Conversation”: Explained how AI understands and responds to language by recognizing patterns in words and phrases.
2. Everyday AI
Relate these activities to the AI you encounter every day:
- Search Engines: AI helps find the best results based on what people search for.
- Voice Assistants: Siri or Alexa use AI to understand what people say and perform tasks like setting reminders or playing music.
- Games and Apps: AI adjusts game difficulty or suggests content based on your behavior, making games more fun and personalized.
This activity and the post-activity discussion are designed to help you not only engage with AI in a hands-on way but also to understand the broader concepts of how AI works in your everyday life. By connecting your learning to familiar technologies, you’ll leave with a clearer, more practical understanding of AI.