Teaching Conversational Robots in a Museum Exhibition with Interactive Surfaces

Abstract

Teaching Artificial intelligence concepts is incorporated in many formal and informal educational institutions. This demo showcases a novel learning experience of fundamental AI concepts for children in a 30-minute, engaging, hands-on, and playful experience designed for museums and community centers. The experience aims to make children to comprehend that AI systems are built from and by people, and is materialized in a series of activities where the children improve the abilities of three AI-powered conversational robots competing in a quiz game. The demo shows how children can learn about AI by teaching machines in natural language with interactive surfaces in a way which enables them to grasp intuitively those essential ideas about AI. As part of the formative design process, 109 children interacted and evaluated the prototype.