All AI? An elephant with three legs and an ice cream stand with enough ice cream for everyone

We promise to explain the headline further down in this report! But let us start from the beginning:

One thing is undisputed: AI has become an integral part of our everyday lives. To help primary school children prepare for using AI, the municipal library has been offering AI workshops for primary school pupils in cooperation with MCML since last year.

In mid-June, four exciting AI workshops took place at the Eching Municipal Library for all fourth-grade pupils of the primary school on Danziger Straße.

With great enthusiasm, clear examples, and interactive games, MCML Junior Member Ahmad Dawar Hakimi took the children on a journey into the world of artificial intelligence. In a playful and age-appropriate way, they learned which everyday objects use AI and which do not. They learned how AI learns, how voice assistants work, and how artificially generated images can be recognized.

Using numerous examples, the children were invited to guess: “AI or not?” They looked very closely and discovered, among other things, incorrect perspectives, a car with two logos on the radiator grille, and an elephant with three legs.

One highlight of the workshop was when the doctoral researcher presented a program for an ice cream stand that he had created especially for the AI workshop. The program was surprisingly good at predicting how much ice cream would be sold on a given day, depending on the weather, the day of the week, and the availability of people’s favorite flavor. In this way, the children learned how AI can help, for example, with better planning and with preventing food waste. Their own sales estimates were sometimes quite far off.

In addition to the many opportunities offered by AI, important topics such as data protection, safety, and the critical handling of information were also at the center of the workshop. Together, the group discussed why not everything an AI produces is automatically correct and why it remains important to question and verify content critically.

The children were interested and impressed, listened attentively for 60 minutes at a time, and took part with many thoughtful questions.

At the end, each class received an AI certificate, as well as an information sheet with tips for using artificial intelligence safely and responsibly.

A very heartfelt thank you to Alexandra Stang, Felicia Körner, and Ahmad Dawar Hakimi for making the workshops possible and for providing this forward-looking learning experience!