Giving preschoolers an intuitive theory of AI

Today's children have not experienced a life without Artificial Intelligence. But despite this, it is difficult to become a competent user of AI - to have a good ability to understand its strengths and at the same time be aware of the shortcomings and challenges of technology - without an understanding of the mechanisms that drive AI.

The researchers in the project, led by Gustaf Gredebäck, will use children's natural curiosity and inner drive to explore the processes that govern AI. The goal is to give preschoolers an intuitive theory of AI that is similar to the mentalizing ability that children and adults use in interactions with each other.

The experiments will begin with a robot appearing in the classroom. The preschool children will together explore the robot's goals, motivation and thoughts through a series of interactive games where the children learn to interact and converse with the AI system. The children will be able to use analog and digital games to learn the processes that AI uses (decision trees, heuristics, probabilities, causality, nearest neighbor classifiers, as well as supervised and unsupervised learning). The children are then given the opportunity to use these abilities to interact with the robot. Each exercise is performed by a group of children together with the educator. Other children will participate in control groups where interactions with the robot aim at increased programming knowledge or promote the use of digital tools.

By interacting with the robot and gaining insights into how it processes information, the idea is that children will develop a better problem-solving ability, AI-related self-efficacy, confidence in their own ability to interact with AI in a competent way and critical thinking, through an understanding of AI system limitations.

By giving children early in life an increased competence and understanding of AI and a greater curiosity about AI systems, the researchers hope that the project will lead to reduced gender stereotypes and reduced gaps in the interest in technology and science between boys and girls.