Solving Problems with Artificial Intelligence
Ideation 4
This lesson will help you earn points in the selected technology section of the Pitch Video part of the rubric.
In this lesson, you will…
- Learn how people solve problems by taking advantage of the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence
- Be able to recognize some examples of AI around you
- Analyze what actions AI is able to power
Key Terms and Concepts
- Artificial intelligence (AI) - machines/programming that can do tasks normally thought to be done only by humans
- Machine Learning - the subset of AI where a technology is trained with data and “learns” to recognize patterns in order to make predictions.
Artificial Intelligence
The world is changing rapidly! Artificial intelligence or AI is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the world we live in. Did you know AI made these things possible?
What is AI?
Source: "How to Train Your Robot”, created by the I2 Learning and Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab
- Not real
- Made by people
- A copy of something real
So, you might say that AI is something made by people to emulate the human brain by solving problems.
AI can do 4 main things: (1) understand or sense, (2) learn, (3) use models to make decisions, (4) interact with humans.
Do these 4 criteria sound like things that humans are capable of? So, AI is really something that tries to work or think like a human.
Here are some AI examples of the 4 criteria:
Here are some examples of artificial intelligence:
| Image recognition | The ability to recognize object in pictures or in videos and identify them |
| Speech recognition | The ability to understand spoken words and translate them into text |
| Sound recognition | The ability to recognize and identify what a sound is |
| Translator | The ability to translate text from one language to another |
| Text to speech | The ability to take text and speak it out loud |
Activity: Quiz Yourself!
For each example below, choose which one you think uses AI. As you consider, ask yourself these questions:
- Does it understand or sense things?
- Can it learn over time?
- Can it make decisions?
- Can it interact with humans?
- Can it do it on its own or is it following commands?
OR
OR
OR
OR
Reflection
Did any of these inspire you? AI is capable of many things and has huge potential. It’s already making a very big impact in our day-to-day relationship with technology. We’ve only just scratched the surface but you will learn more as you progress through the curriculum!
As you brainstorm problems and solutions for the problem you decide to solve, think whether AI might help your solution. Could it be part of your solution? Part of a mobile app solution?
In fact, you can decide to make an invention that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) for your Technovation Girls project! You have a choice on whether to make a mobile app or AI project for your Technovation Girls submission.
Additional Resources: AI Tools for You
AI is a complicated subject! Learn more with this video:
And here are some examples of scientists using AI to solve global problems from our Technovation friends at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence!
Flood Monitoring using Google Earth Engine (with slides!)
Tracking Illegal Deforestation with Global Forest Watch
