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Lesson :
Thinking machines
Year 12 – Computing systems
 Starter activity

Words matter

Define ‘artificial’. Think, write, pair, share Use your

examples: flavour, flower, hair, heart, lake, light, worksheet to write down your answers
materials and discuss them in pairs.

Provide synonyms for ‘intelligent’.

synonym – a different word with the same meaning

When would you call a person, an animal,

or a machine ‘intelligent’?
 Starter activity

Words matter

Define ‘artificial’. Created by humans, usually as a copy of

examples: flavour, flower, hair, heart, lake, light, or substitute for something natural
materials
 Starter activity

Words matter

Define ‘artificial’ Created by humans, usually as a copy of

examples: flavour, flower, hair, heart, lake, light, or substitute for something natural
materials

Provide synonyms for ‘intelligent’ astute, clever, creative, imaginative,

ingenious, insightful, inventive,
knowledgeable, perceptive, rational,
smart, thinking
 Starter activity

Words matter

Define ‘artificial’ Created by humans, usually as a copy of

examples: flavour, flower, hair, heart, lake, light, or substitute for something natural
materials

Provide synonyms for ‘intelligent’ astute, clever, creative, imaginative,

ingenious, insightful, inventive,
knowledgeable, perceptive, rational,
smart, thinking

When would you call a person, an animal,

or a machine ‘intelligent’?
 Objectives

Lesson 5: Thinking machines

In this lesson, you will:

● Define artificial intelligence and machine learning
● Explore examples of where they are being applied
● Teach a machine how to recognise different types of images
● Discuss moral issues associated with these technologies
 Activity 1

Defining artificial intelligence

Question . There is no single, agreed

What is artificial intelligence? definition for artificial intelligence.

● Because words like ‘intelligence’ and ‘thought’

Answer . (suggestion) are very difficult to pin down

Any machine that performs tasks that ● Because a machine considered ‘intelligent’ now
typically require intelligence in humans will probably be commonplace in a few years
 Activity 1

Artificial intelligence: what it is not (yet)

We are years away from achieving the The legendary HAL 9000
computer, from the film
kind of general AI portrayed in books and 2001: A Space Odyssey
films.

At present, artificial intelligence research

mostly focuses on individual aspects of
intelligent behaviour.
 Activity 2

Can a machine do this?

Task Progress so far

Checkers was solved in 2007: computers play perfectly.
Play board games Deep Blue by IBM beat the top human player in chess in 1996.
checkers, chess, Go
Humans haven’t beaten a top chess program since 2005.
AlphaGo by DeepMind beat the top human player in Go in 2017.

Prove mathematical propositions Automated provers have deduced thousands of known or new
propositions and also discovered shorter proofs.

Planning and scheduling Computers are used extensively in manufacturing, crew

scheduling, self-driving vehicles, and space exploration.

Questions . Do these tasks require ‘thinking’ by humans?

Do you think computers can perform these tasks well?
 Activity 2

Can a machine do this?

AI has by now succeeded in doing ❠ Donald Knuth, author of The Art of Computer
Programming, in 1981
essentially everything that requires
‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of
what people and animals do ‘without
thinking’ – that, somehow, is much harder!

Can a machine do this?
Task
Identify objects in images
Identify words in sound
Generate speech from text
Handle and manipulate objects
Walk
Activity 2
Progress so far
Accuracy has jumped from 50% to 90% since 2011
Major advances since 2009
Error rates have dropped to around 5%
Comparable to professional transcribers
Major advances in 2016
Now almost indistinguishable from a real human voice
Robotic arms that pick up objects constantly improving
Mostly in research phase as of 2020
Two- and four-legged robots constantly improving
Mostly in research phase as of 2020

The AI effect
Every time we figure out a piece of it, it
stops being magical; we say, ‘Oh, that’s
just a computation.’
Once something becomes useful enough
and common enough it’s not labelled AI
anymore.
AI is whatever hasn’t been done yet.
Activity 2
❠ Rodney Brooks, director of MIT Artificial
Intelligence Lab, from a 2002 Wired magazine
article
❠ Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of
Humanity Institute at Oxford University,
from a 2006 article at cnn.com
❠ Douglas Hofstadter, in his 1979 book Gödel,
Escher, Bach
 Activity 2

The AI effect
 Activity 2

The AI effect
 Activity 2

Can a machine do this?

Task Progress so far

Hold a conversation Holding an open-ended conversation with a human is considered

a benchmark for AI (the Turing test)
No chatbot has really achieved that goal as of 2020

Translate between languages Major advance by Google in 2016

Systems produce useful output, but still an open problem
Understand and answer questions Watson by IBM beat the top human players on Jeopardy! in 2011
It is capable of providing evidence to justify its answers

Drive a car
Highly complex problem
Major breakthroughs since 2005
Diagnosing medical images
Cases of performance comparable to human experts reported
since 2012
 Activity 2

Can a machine do this?

Most of the recent advances in artificial

intelligence are due to breakthroughs in
machine learning.
 Activity 3

The story so far

Identify objects in images

Goal: Create a machine that performs a
specific task. Identify words in sound

Generate speech from text

Method: Program the machine to perform
Handle and manipulate objects
the task.
Provide the machine with explicit instructions. Walk

Hold a conversation
For some tasks, providing explicit
Translate between languages
instructions is far too complicated.
Understand and answer questions
 Activity 3

Machine learning

Goal: Create a machine that performs a Goal: Create a machine that performs a
specific task. specific task.

Method: Program the machine to perform Method: Teach the machine to perform
the task. the task.
Provide the machine with explicit instructions. How can this be achieved?

Tip: Think about how humans are taught.

 Activity 3

Machine learning

Goal: Create a machine that performs a

specific task.

Method: Teach the machine to perform

the task.
Provide the machine with examples
Program the machine to learn from examples

This is called ‘supervised learning’.

Training examples to teach a machine how to
recognise ducks

Machine learning
Training examples to teach a machine how to play
noughts and crosses: a win results in positive
feedback, a loss in negative
Activity 3
Goal: Create a machine that performs a
specific task.
Method: Teach the machine to perform
the task.
Provide the machine with feedback
Program the machine to learn from feedback
This is called ‘reinforcement learning’.
 Activity 3

Machine learning

Programming computers to learn from ❠ Some Studies In Machine Learning Using the
Game of Checkers
experience should eventually eliminate the Arthur Samuel (1959)
need for much of this detailed
programming effort.

Machine learning does not eliminate programming.

It replaces the problem of programming a machine to
perform a task with two separate problems:
programming the machine to learn, and providing it
with the necessary training
 Activity 3

Machine learning

Instead of trying to produce a programme ❠ Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Alan Turing (1950)
to simulate the adult mind, why not rather
try to produce one which simulates the
child’s?
If this were then subjected to an
appropriate course of education one would
Machine learning does not eliminate programming.
obtain the adult brain.
It replaces the problem of programming a machine to
perform a task with two separate problems:
We have thus divided our problem into
programming the machine to learn, and providing it
two parts: the child-programme and the with the necessary training
education process.
 Activity 4

Be the teacher

Teach your computer to tell the difference

between apples and oranges, using Google
Teachable Machine.
Follow the instructions in your worksheet.
 Plenary

Thinking beyond ‘coolness’

Applications of AI Moral considerations

Self-driving cars Who is responsible in an accident? (Accountability)

Medical diagnosis How can decisions be explained? (Transparency)

Banking How can we guarantee that machine training does not lead to
Detecting fraud discrimination? (Bias)
Approving loan & mortgage applications How can decisions be explained? (Transparency)

Automation How will humans handle lower demand for labour?

Performing tasks instead of humans How will the benefits of AI be fairly distributed?
 Summary

In this lesson, you... Next lesson, you will...

Defined artificial intelligence and Take a quiz, to assess learning

machine learning
Explore the implications of sharing
Explored examples of where they are programs, and learn about free and open
being applied source software
Taught a machine how to recognise
different types of images
Discussed moral issues associated with
these technologies