AI is beautiful. Powerful. Promising.
But it's quite a complex term and field.The challenge here is that most of the words associated with AI won't work for a 5yo kid.
So I told myself: what if I tried to explain AI to a 5yo kid? What would I say?
Being able to explain complex concepts in is like a super power. And I wanted to play this game with AI.
How would ChatGPT explain AI to a 5-year-old kid?
Is there any better way than asking ChatGPT itself how to explain AI to a 5-year-old kid? That's what I thought. So I asked ChatGPT: "Please, explain AI to a 5-year-old kid".
Interested to read the answer? Here it is.
AI, which stands for Artificial Intelligence, is like having a smart and helpful friend who can think and learn just like you. Remember how you learn new things by asking questions and trying to figure out how things work? Well, AI does something similar, but it uses computers and special programs instead of a brain like ours.
Imagine you have a robot friend who can see, hear, and talk. It can learn new things by looking at pictures, listening to sounds, or even talking to people, just like you do! The more the robot friend learns, the smarter it becomes.
AI helps us in many ways. For example, have you ever seen a picture on your parents' phone, and the phone recognizes who's in the picture? That's AI helping the phone understand who is in the photo. It can do that because it has learned how people look by seeing lots of pictures before.
AI can also help us play games or watch shows by suggesting things we might like based on what we've enjoyed before. It's like having a friend who knows you really well and can recommend fun things just for you!
But it's important to remember that AI is a tool that people use. People tell AI what to do and help it learn. It's like having a helpful assistant that can make things easier and more fun for us.
So, AI is like a clever robot friend that learns from things it sees and hears, and it can help us do cool and useful things. It's a bit like having a friend who can think like a computer!
Not so bad, right?
But is our job done? No, of course.
It's quite long, and kids would get bored quickly.
So what if we explained with a video?
I started to do some research online. And I found a great video. You can look at it here.
It's short, it's well thought, and working pretty well.
TL;DR
The conclusion of the video is the following one
AI = machines who learn, think and behave like humans.
Ok, that's straight to the point and pretty efficient. But it's a bit generic. And the video is still using some words that does not resonate in a kid's brain.
So I tried to come up with my own AI ELI5.
My own AI ELI5
Goal is to make it fit in a few sentences. Here is what I came up with.
AI is when you make a computer like a little brain. You help it to learn by giving it a lot of words and pictures and numbers. The more you give, the more it learns. But it only knows what you show it and tell it, so it’s not as smart as you are.
I like this one. Especially the end, right?
What do you think? Oh even better. If you have a five-year old to try it on, send us their response—ideally in video or audio! We'd love to see how your kids react to this one.