While it is wonderfully summer outside, seventeen children from 9 to 12 years old are in the headquarters of IT company Ctac in Den Bosch this week. Here they learn during the first AI Summer School for Kids how to build games, programs Doolhoven and especially: what artificial intelligence actually is.
Ask the children and you get surprisingly different answers. “AI is artificial intelligence,” explains Floris (11). “A program on the computer that knows a lot. For example, you can ask if he makes a picture or resolves very difficult calculations.”
Oliver (10) describes it as “a way to have a doll resolve a maze, or to make difficult sums”. Liam (12) says it is “a program that searches the entire internet and then tries to find the right information”.
And according to Diederik (10) it is “a kind of homemade intelligence that you can use, for example, to do homework. Although I don’t do that myself.” Teacher Annemieke summarizes it very simply: “That you learn to take a computer yourself.”
The laptops in the classroom buzz softly while drawing, typed and tested everywhere in the room. Liam is busy with a digital maze: “Then you learn how to make a doll move and that it cannot go through the wall.”
Diederik has sent his doll looking for a key. “If he has that key, he can go back home. But if he touches a wall, I program that he goes back to the beginning. Here you learn to cod. At home I have already made a gambling machine with my father.”
For many children it goes further than just making games. “It is important to know how to use AI well,” says Liam. “In the future it can help us a lot, for example to stop hackers. But you have to keep it under control.”
Teacher Annemieke Matyas-Tuemen explains why the company is organizing this Summer School: “We want to make children enthusiastic about the tech sector. AI is becoming increasingly important. It is good that children learn what it is, what the pros and cons are, and that they come to that world in a playful way.” According to her, this year there are “a few very smart children in between” that she would like to see at CTAC working later. Laughing she adds: “Some could already get started, they are so handy.”
And the nice weather? Nobody stops that. “I think it’s very cool that they are sitting here instead of at the pool,” she says. “They have been in that swimming pool for five weeks. Instead, they build knowledge and skills that will benefit them all their lives.”
The summer school lasts four days and is full of variety. On Monday the children built their own games and quizzes at Ctac. On Tuesday they will travel to the Microsoft office at Schiphol to program with robots, among other things. They learn how to train your own AI model. The week ends on Thursday with a visit to Techniekmuseum Nemo in Amsterdam.