Welcome to the first lesson! You will learn that:

1. Agents sense their environment to take actions that achieve goals
2. AI and humans are agents that can sense their environment and take creative actions to achieve their goal

For materials, you will need an AI Inventors Notebook

Key slide notes:

• An agent senses its environment to take action towards a goal (9)
• An agent can be both a human or AI (10)
• A machine that searches for rocks to pick them up is an example of an agent (11)
• A smart thermostat that monitors the temperature to turn on at 70 degrees is an agent example. (12)
• A sprinkler that records weather conditions and turns on when needed is an agent because it sense its environment to take action towards a goal (13).
• A sprinkler that always turns on at 3 pm is not an agent because it doesn’t sense its environment to take action towards a goal (13)
• Markov game is a game where we program an agent to Markov at Rock-Paper-Scissors (15)
• Agents with creative actions are able to do different types of behaviors to achieve goals (18)
• Remember, AI agents sense their environment to take creative actions toward a goal. (22)
• This specific AI agent, called a chatbot determines user’s needs to provide different information to help reserve a room (22)
• Siri is an AI agent that receives vocal commands from the user and then assists them by providing them with information (an example of a creative agent) (23)
• Humans and AI agents have different abilities to sense their environments + take creative actions (24)
• Sometimes, humans create AI agents that imitate human actions and goals (25)
• AI agents gather information + find patterns in the information (sense their environment) to achieve goal (to creative actions) (32)
• Human and AI agents gather and use information differently

Activities:

Activity #1: How do Agents gather information to sense their environment and actions?

Pick one of the following two options to explore

Option 1: Explore how humans and AI use information to understand their environment

• Humans get information through their five senses, which are: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. How do your senses help you understand?
• Humans also gather information through their memories. How do your memories help you know what activities you enjoy?
• Humans also gather information through their memories. How do your memories help you know what activities you enjoy?
• AI agents understand their environments by finding patterns in information. The following are examples of AI that find patterns in information:
  1. AI agents can find patterns in images. Follow the link and type in a word relating to space. Navigate to Nasa’s Visual Universe
  2. AI agents can find patterns in text. Follow the link and then type in a word or phrase to see what types of books it’s included in. Navigate to Talk to Books
  3. AI agents can find patterns in sound. Follow the link and then use the microphone to say “Hello, how are you?” You can have the tool translate into many languages – pick any others you want to hear!” Navigate to Google Translate

Option two: Explore differences in how humans and AI create and understand language (Explore at least two of the following three AI agents)

1. This AI agent identifies trends in what people search for through Google. As you explore this agent, consider the following questions. What type of language can this agent understand? What is this agent unable to tell you? What patterns is the agent finding? What do the patterns tell you about the people using google? Follow the link and explore trends in google searches. Navigate to 20 years of Google Search
2. This agent determines if a human or a machine wrote a certain text. As you explore this agent, consider the following questions. What information is this agent sensing? What is the agent’s goal? Try entering lyrics to a song. Also try entering text that you know is written by a machine. Follow the link and add text to the box. Navigate to Giant Language model Test Room
3. This agent determines if an article of text is positive or negative in nature. As you explore this agent, consider the following questions. What information is this agent sensing? Can you trick this agent? What types of patterns do you think this agent is finding? Follow the link and add text to the box. Navigate to uClassify Sentiment Classifier
   What do you think are the differences in how AI agents and humans create and understand language? Are there similarities? Think about how we understand and use language. What can humans do that AI agents cannot?

After exploring those links, draw a comic in your inventor’s notebook that explains what you learned.

Activity #2: Which agent is better at achieving the goal?

Determine if an AI or human agent would perform better in achieving the goal.

Activity #3: Is this an AI agent or not?

Determine if the following agents are AI or not.

1. Alarm that turns on every day at 6:45 AM
2. A light switch (flip)
3. A vacuum that learns the layout of your home and where it’s always dirty
4. Remote controlled cars
5. Sensing words in emails entered to guess what information might come next
6. Microwaves
7. GPS maps
8. Prosthetic leg
9. Prosthetic learning to deal with picking up different shapes

Reflection:

Q: Which is an example of an agent taking creative actions?

1. A calculator on your computer that completes math equations, like 2 x 2 = 4.
2. A light bulb that turns on each day at sunset.
3. A vacuum that cleans rooms in a house on a schedule it makes.

A: 3) A vacuum because it creatively takes action based on the schedule it decides.