Machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is all around us. We all use machine learning systems every day – such as spam filters, recommendation engines, language translation services, chatbots and digital assistants, search engines, and fraud detection systems.
Technology is constantly changing and thus as a result, we must adapt and evolve the way that we do things. It will soon be normal for machine learning systems to drive our cars, and help doctors to diagnose and treat our illnesses.
What is machine learning?
Machine learning is learning how to perform a task from a collection of examples. To get the computer to perform a complex task, you collect a set of examples of that task being done. The computer learns how to do that task from the examples that it is given. It is increasingly becoming the most effective way to do a wider variety of tasks.
Should we introduce this to children?
As ML becomes a tool we use for more and more things in everyday life, we need the people who are making the decisions to understand how it can and should be used. And this affects everyone who will make up the public of tomorrow. The next generation of our community. It’s important that we introduce ML to children. Not just the ones who will invent it or build with it (although that is super important). But the ones who will use it and be affected by it as well. And that’s all of them.
How can we introduce machine learning to children?
The best way for children to learn about ML is for them to get hands-on, first-hand experiences.
Scratch is an easy to use tool, that provides a visual metaphor for the concept of ML.
p>Games are a great way to introduce ML. Children can train the computer to be able to do a job they know very well – playing a game – that would be difficult to do using the rules-based approach to coding that they normally use.
Building chatbots are another great project that could help children understand ML. If children are already researching a particular topic, instead of preparing a presentation about it, another way to deliver that research can be to train a bot to be able to answer questions about it.
You can find out more about machine learning from the following links: