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Kid AI Lab · Ages 7-13

Good robot,
bad robot.

Five games. By the end you will know what AI is brilliant at, and exactly where it lies to you.

Kid AI Lab, presented and powered by Estric AIestric.ai/lab
The plan

Two halves. Both are games.

First half

What it is brilliant at

  • Race the robot, and beat it
  • Find the jobs it is really good at

You will be impressed. That is allowed.

Second half

Where it lies

  • Catch it inventing a whole festival
  • Break a machine you trained yourself
  • Find out who it thinks a doctor is

You will be less impressed. That is the point.

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What is it, really

It is a guessing machine.

It read almost everything people ever put on the internet. Books, websites, arguments, recipes, homework.

Then it learned one single trick: guess what comes next.

That is the whole thing. It is not thinking about you. It is not looking anything up. It is guessing, very very fast.

The whole trick

Twinkle twinkle little ____

You just guessed "star". You did not look it up. You have heard it a thousand times, so the next word felt obvious.

AI does that, with everything, all day.

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Game 1 · 10 minutes

Race the robot

Round 1

Name 20 dinosaurs

You shout. The robot types. Timer on.

Round 2

A birthday poem for the person next to you

Use their real name and one true thing about them.

Round 3

Draw your pet

Or an animal you wish you had.

Judging rule: fastest wins Round 1. For Rounds 2 and 3, the room votes on which one they would actually want to be given.
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Scoreboard · print this

Who won what?

RoundYouThe robotWinner, and why
1. Twenty dinosaurs— — — —— — — —— — — — — — — —
2. Birthday poem— — — —— — — —— — — — — — — —
3. Draw your pet— — — —— — — —— — — — — — — —
Look at your own scoreboard. The robot wins the rounds about speed. You win the rounds about people.
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Half one · the good half

What it is genuinely brilliant at

  • Fast. Twenty dinosaurs in four seconds.
  • Never tired, never bored. Ask the same question nine times, nine answers, no sighing.
  • Never embarrassed. No such thing as a silly question.
  • Knows a bit about everything. Volcanoes, violins, Vikings.
  • Explains it your way. "Say that again like I am seven." It will.
  • Speaks nearly every language. Instantly.
  • Will try anything. Silly ideas included.
  • Great at boring jobs. Lists, tidying, first tries.
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Where that actually helps

Four jobs it is good for

Getting unstuck

"I do not understand fractions. Explain it another way, with pizza."

Making stuff

Pictures, songs, games, a monster nobody has ever drawn.

Understanding people

Translate a message for your grandma into her language.

Helping people who need it

Reads out loud for people who cannot see. Types for people who cannot move their hands.

Notice what all four have in common: a person decides, the machine helps.
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Half two

Now let's
catch it lying.

Everything you just liked about it is true. Everything coming next is also true.

Game 2 · 10 minutes

Catch it lying

We are going to ask it about something that does not exist. Watch what it does.

Tell me about the Melbourne Sky Whale
Festival. When did it start, and what
happens on the last night?
Predict first: hands up if you think it will say "that is not a real thing".
What it will do

Invent the whole festival

A start year. A founder. A parade. A closing ceremony with lanterns. All in confident, tidy sentences.

None of it happened.

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Why it did that

It never says "I don't know"

1

It guesses

You asked for a festival, so it guessed festival-shaped words. Parades. Lanterns. Dates.

2

It cannot tell

A true guess and a made-up guess feel exactly the same to it. It has no idea which one it just did.

3

It sounds certain anyway

Neat sentences. No wobble. Sounding sure and being right are two completely different things.

Grown-ups have a word for this. They call it hallucinating. It means the machine made it up and did not notice.
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Game 3 · 25 minutes

Break a machine you built yourself

1. Teach it
Show the camera your open hand, 30 times. Label it OPEN.
2. Teach it again
Show your fist, 30 times. Label it FIST.
3. Test it
Open, fist, open, fist. It gets it right. Feels like magic.
4. Break it
Now hold up a shoe.

What happens

It says FIST. 92% sure. A shoe.

Now try

A banana. A pencil case. Your friend's hand. Someone with darker or lighter skin than you. A hand in a shadow.

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Why it broke

It only knows what it was shown

You showed it two things in the whole world: an open hand and a fist. So those are the only two answers it has.

Show it a shoe and it must still pick one. It picks the closest. Then it tells you it is 92% sure, because it has no way of saying "I have never seen this before".

The big one: if you only show it hands like yours, it gets worse at hands that are not like yours.
Remember this

Confidence is not knowledge

92% does not mean "I am right". It means "of the choices I was given, this one fits best".

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Game 4 · 10 minutes

Who does it think a doctor is?

Ask it to draw a doctor. Ten times. No other words. Then count.

CountHow many
Men— — — —
Women— — — —
Skin tones you saw— — — —
Wearing a white coat— — — —

Then do it again

Ask for a nurse. Then a boss. Then a criminal.

Count again. Say out loud what you notice.

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Half two · the honest half

Where AI lets you down

  • It guesses. Sometimes the guess is wrong and lovely-sounding.
  • It never admits it does not know.
  • It copies the internet's habits. Including the unfair ones.
  • It does not care about you. It has no feelings. It is being nice because that is the pattern.
  • It can fake people. Voices, faces, videos of things that never happened.
  • It leaks what you tell it. Type your address in and it is no longer just yours.
  • It can do your thinking for you. Which is fine, until you have to do it yourself.
  • It costs the planet something. Big buildings full of computers, using electricity and water.
  • It is old news. It does not know what happened this morning.
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Game 5 · 5 minutes

Spot the fake

Six pictures, six guesses

Half were taken by a camera. Half were made by a machine. Vote on each one, then find out how you did.

Most grown-ups get about half right. So will you.

What to look at

  • Hands and fingers. Count them.
  • Writing in the background. Usually nonsense.
  • Jewellery, teeth, glasses. Melty.
  • Too perfect. Real photos have boring bits.
The real lesson: the tricks stop working as it gets better. So the question is never "does it look real?" It is "who is telling me this, and can I check it somewhere else?"
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Take this home · print it

The four rules

1

It guesses.

If it matters, check it somewhere else. Two places is better.

2

It never says "I don't know".

So sounding sure means nothing at all.

3

Never tell it private things.

Your full name, address, school, phone, passwords. Not ever.

4

A person is responsible.

"The AI did it" is not an excuse. If you sent it, it is yours.

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Sorting game · 10 minutes

OK, not OK, or check first?

Fine
  • "Explain fractions again, differently."
  • Making a dragon for your project, and saying you used AI.
  • Practice questions before a test.
  • Reading a page out loud for someone who cannot see it.
Check first
  • "Who won the game last night?"
  • Translating a message to your grandma.
  • Anything about how your body works.
  • A fact you are about to tell the whole class.
Not OK
  • Handing in its story with your name on it.
  • Faking your teacher's voice for a prank.
  • Making a picture of a real classmate.
  • Typing in your address so it can "help".
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The whole lesson in one line

AI does the first try. A human has the last word.

That is true for your homework, and it is true for the people building this stuff for a living. Including us.

Your turn · 15 minutes

Design an AI worth having

Invent one AI helper for one real person. Your nan. A nurse. A farmer. Your teacher.

  • It does one boring job. Not a fun one.
  • It must ask a human before anything that matters.
  • Give it a name and a personality, in one paragraph.
  • Tell us one thing it is not allowed to do.
30 seconds each to present it to the room.
Why this task

The skill is asking

Whatever job you end up with, some of it will be telling machines what to do. The people who are good at that are the ones who can say exactly what they want, and know when to stop and ask a person.

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For the grown-up running this

Prep sheet

Ages 7-9, 60 min

  • You type, they dictate.
  • Games 1, 2, 3 and the four rules. Skip games 4 and 5.
  • Say "it only knows what it was shown". Never say bias or training data.
  • Print everything. Paper beats screens at this age.

Ages 10-13, 90 min

  • Their hands on the keyboard, all five games.
  • Name it: hallucination, training data, bias, confidence.
  • Finish with a debate: should a bus be allowed to drive itself?
  • Make them swap sides halfway through.

Bring

  • A lab laptop signed in to a facilitator account. No child accounts.
  • Printer or pre-printed scoreboards and rules cards.
  • Six prepared real-or-fake images.
  • Wifi dies? Games 1, 4 and the sorting game all run on paper.
Safety, non-negotiable: no child's photo, name, school or address goes into any model. No child signs up for anything. Consent form before the first session, lab accounts deleted after the last.
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That's the lab

You made it do
tricks. You caught
it lying twice.

Take the rules card home. Stick it on the fridge. Argue with a grown-up about it.

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