Machines Don’t Think. Kids Do | The AI Literacy Series (Ep. 2)

Do machines think? Try asking a child.

Children are natural philosophers of AI. They draw librarians inside speakers, ask what the robot “wants,” and poke at the cracks in classifiers until bias spills out. They remind us that anthropomorphism is not a mistake – it’s the starting point.

In this second episode of the AI Literacy Series, I sit down again with Stefania Druga – researcher, educator, and my co-author on this project – to explore how kids help us see AI more clearly than most experts.

*We’ll explore:*

- Why words like think, know, imagine matter more than we admit.

- How kids move from magical thinking to system thinking.

- The “Big Three” AI families – classifiers, diffusion models, transformers – explained in ways families can test at home + more!

- How transfer learning works for humans, connecting toy models to civic-scale consequences.

- Six advanced family activities that make bias, prediction, and agency visible.

AI literacy is not just technical instruction – it’s cultural negotiation. And sometimes the best teachers are sitting right at the dinner table.

📌 You can find all mentioned resources & activities here: https://www.turingpost.com/p/ailiteracy2

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