Teaching Young Children about AI 

Guest Author: Steve Shepherd and Samantha Meghawry

Book six is still in development, so consider this a preview rather than an announcement. The topic is AI, and the concept we've settled on is one this audience will recognise instantly: garbage in, garbage out. 

Fizz wants to make a birthday card and turns to AI for help. Her first attempt is vague, and the result is useless. Pixel helps her see why: an AI needs clear, honest instructions just as much as any person does. She tries again, properly this time, and it works. Fizz realises she was the creative one all along. The AI was only ever the assistant.

That's the whole lesson, and we think it holds up as well for adults as it does for young children. Vague prompts get vague results, whatever your age. The thinking still has to come from you. It's the same principle behind good data going into a model and good instructions going into a request, just told as a story about a birthday card instead of a training deck or a technical specification.

One thing worth saying plainly, given the subject: we haven't used AI to write a single word of this story. The books are written entirely from scratch by the two of us. AI has a role in this project, helping with feedback and formatting, including some of what you're reading now, but never in generating the stories themselves. It felt important to hold that line, particularly in a book about teaching children to think clearly about where their
information comes from.