As part of Muslim National School's Science Week offering 5th and 6th class got an important lesson on basics of AI together with ethics of AI from Dr Younus of University College Dublin (UCD). They got into nitty gritty details of how AI involves a process of making machines intelligent through repetition of patterns and mimics in some ways how a baby would learn to eventually distinguish between a cat from a dog or even learn new words.
In a very interactive manner students explored how AI is not new but has been present as something called machine learning from early 80s - they were quite fascinated to learn that YouTube, Netflix and Alexa all use AI. Most importantly Dr Younus explained to them that AI can never be better than the human brain specifically when it comes to creative explorations, and they all had a laugh when talking about how dumb the robot vacuum can be. Ethical and responsible use of AI was emphasised through taking a unique Islamic perspective on how the use of ChatGPT for work can be like lying and how it's extremely hated in Islam. Hopefully our young Muslim scientists gained a lot from this session and can now explain AI to their parents!!!
