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We Asked Our VPs to Demystify AI for Kids. Here's What They Built.
Mahdi's winning project: hold a marker up to the camera, and the dog responds. The AI model was trained in minutes, and a kid can train the model too.
Hold a marker up to a webcam. On the screen, a dog in a Roblox world sits down.
A camera watches for a hand signal, and an AI model that was trained recognizes it, and that recognition travels into Roblox Studio and tells the dog what to do. Show it a different signal and the dog does something else. Show it something it has never seen, and sometimes it gets the answer wrong.
This spring, we gave our Ember instructors, our VPs, a challenge. Each of them had a few hours to build their own way of demystifying AI for kids: something a child could walk up to, play with, and understand. We gave them one rule: It has to be fun for a seven-year-old, not just impressive to a parent.
Lily made a character whose jump you control by blowing into the microphone. Blow harder and it leaps higher, with bigger flames.
Elizabeth built a real jack-in-the-box out of a Raspberry Pi that pops open when you show the camera an "ok" sign.
Kevin made a disco party where a bouncer scans you for an Ember t-shirt and either waves you in or tosses you out, which is exactly as funny as it sounds.
These came from instructors who study everything from electrical engineering to math to education at UCSD.
The project that won, Mahdi's, showcased best how AI is trained and was delightful for the kids to play with. He won by popular vote from his peers. He turned the whole idea into a dog you train. Hold up a marker and the dog jumps. Show it your hand and it gives you a paw. Just as you train a dog, you train your models with examples, it learns the pattern, and it starts to respond. A child already knows how you teach a dog. Now they will learn the similarities with how you teach a model.
Ember's AI Competition - starts Sep 26
The challenge we gave our VPs is a smaller version of the one we are giving every Ember kid this fall.
Starting in September, every student, including our youngest elementary builders, will take part in Ember's AI Competition. In teams of two to four, over eight weeks, they will learn how AI actually works, build a project of their own, and present it to their peers. A few important dates:
Sep 26: the eight-week project begins.
Nov 21: the Showcase, where every team demos and four finalists are chosen by popular vote.
Dec 12: the Finals. Three judges, one winner, and all families welcome to come cheer.
If your family is new to Ember and curious what building with AI actually looks like, we are hosting a Free AI Day on November 7, where kids can come train their first model with us. If your kid would like to participate in the AI competition, send us an email at hello@coder.build. We'd love to learn more about your family.
Our kids have spent this year coding the games they love and solving real problems with Python. AI is the natural next step. We are just getting started.