AI for Kids

How a Puzzle-Loving Kid Became an Expert in AI and Robotics (Middle+)

• Dr. Randi Williams • Season 1 • Episode 18

Share episode

Send us a text

Happy National Coding Week!

In this week's episode we unlock the secrets of building adaptive, personalized robots with Dr. Randi Williams, a leading figure in AI and robotics, as she shares her journey from a math-obsessed child inspired by Jimmy Neutron to a pioneering expert aiming to make technology fairer and more inclusive.

Dr. Williams takes us behind the scenes of her work at the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), discussing the triumphs and challenges of creating robots that can truly engage with humans. You’ll hear how her early love for puzzles and creativity laid the foundation for a career that blends technical skill with artistic vision.

Through the lens of projects like PopBots, you’ll discover how even preschoolers can grasp foundational AI concepts and start innovating from an early age. Hear the inspiring story of a young learner who programmed a multilingual robot, and explore the engaging tools and platforms like MIT’s Playground that make learning AI fun and accessible.

Finally, we tackle the crucial issue of algorithmic bias and the importance of diverse data sets in AI training. We also discuss the role of social robots and the significance of designing inclusive technology that serves everyone. This episode underscores how creativity and a passion for learning can drive meaningful advancements in AI and robotics.

Resources for parents and kids:

Support the show

Help me become the #1 (number one) podcast and podcaster for AI for Kids.

Social Media & Contact:

Listen, rate, and subscribe! Stay updated with our latest episodes by subscribing to AI for Kids on your favorite podcast platform.

Like our content, subscribe or feel free to donate to our Patreon here: patreon.com/AiDigiTales

Amber Ivey:

Welcome to the AI for Kids podcast, where playtime, learning and creating collide bit by bit. Ever wonder how your phone recognizes your face. How does a game learn to get harder as you get better? This is AI. This podcast is designed for kids like you and your human parents, making the complex world of AI easy to understand and, most importantly, fun. So are you ready to unlock the mysteries of artificial intelligence? Subscribe and join us on AI for Kids. Hi everyone, welcome back to AI for Kids. Today we have an amazing guest and I'm so excited to be interviewing Dr Randi Williams, a recent graduate from the MIT Media Lab and an expert in using technology to uplift communities. Dr Williams, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what do you love the most about working with technology?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Oh my gosh, hi Amber, so great to be with you. Hi everyone, can you hear me Test, test. Oh yeah, so I'm Dr Randi Williams, as you heard, and what I do is I build AI and robots and I study how people react to those technologies, because I find it really fascinating A to build things.

Dr. Randi Williams:

I love building things, but also I'm like when people get to interact with something that you build, that is so exciting. And I started doing that. You know one of my first projects growing up, when I first learned how to program, since high school, when I learned how to make a game, I spent a lot of time making games and then finding people in my house to play the games that I made. Maybe you know torturing them a little bit, saying you know, come try this, come try this, but I would say that it really sparked my excitement about computer science. It sparked my creativity. Now I get to do it as my job.

Dr. Randi Williams:

So where I work is a nonprofit. It's called Algorithmic Justice League. Like you know, Justice League superheroes, or just AJL, and at AJL we're all about using art and research to build a more equitable, more inclusive future with AI. Now, right before that, I was actually a graduate student at MIT to build a more equitable, more inclusive future with AI. Now, right before that, I was actually a graduate student at MIT, so that's where I did all the robotics and AI work, and along the way, I've also worked at places like Microsoft and NASA and Lego and Scratch. So a big mix of technology, as well as doing the creative side. So, yeah, that's kind of who I am, and I'm really happy that I have a career that lets me do both of those things.

Amber Ivey:

Before we jump into the interview, I really want to dig back into when you were a child. What was your favorite thing to do when you were a kid, what was your favorite subject, and did you always love making things and learning about technology?

Dr. Randi Williams:

I will say that I did so. I was definitely a math person growing up and I really liked to do puzzles like Sudoku. I was always curious about how things worked and I like to take things apart and sometimes I could put them back together, but not always. But I also had lots of diverse interests. So I played sports all the way growing up. I played piano since the age of nine Actually Alicia Keys with her braids, you know, I was like I want to be just like that when I grow up.

Dr. Randi Williams:

So how did I bring all of this together? Well, you know, I love building things, I love exploring how they work, but I also give myself a chance to express my creative side and my artistic side, and so building robots was my way to do that, because my robots we'll talk about this later they're super cute, they're so cute and that makes them easier for people to engage with and to want to get to know them. And really, I think you know that kind of well-roundedness that helps with problem solving and you know just being passionate about learning new things I absolutely love that.

Amber Ivey:

I love that you bring in both like the math brain and creative side, because sometimes you feel like there aren't a lot of careers that allow you to do both. You've taken a STEM, math focused career and brought in creativity, and I absolutely love that. If you could build an AI tool, what would it do and why?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Well, that's such a big question. I've built a lot of AI tools to solve different problems, oh yeah, but there's a show that I watched growing up called Jimmy Neutron. Oh yeah, but there's a show that I watched growing up called Jimmy Neutron, mm hmm, super tiny guy with huge orange hair and he had a robot dog named Goddard, and Goddard's job was to just hang out with Jimmy, go on all the adventures, help him adapt to different situations and solve different problems, and this actually reflects a lot of what we see today with AI. People are building AI companions that can help lots of problems. Maybe they can offer care to people, tell them jokes if they're feeling sad, or help them do chores if they don't wanna do their chores or need help with their chores, and in my robotics lab we actually think about doing that.

Dr. Randi Williams:

We try and build robots that are specifically meant to help people. But what I think we really need? Robots anyone can build, and then it's like your personal, just for you. Maybe it's a dog, maybe it's a cat, but you know, it could be anything you could imagine and it's yours. In AI, we call that personalization, which is when you have a robot that really understands you and can adapt to your preferences and to your wants and to your needs. But then that second part, being able to solve different problems. That's called generalizability. So you have to make a machine that can learn to take on new tasks and solve them alongside of you. These are two big problems in AI, but I think that as we learn more and more, we're going to get closer to the super personalized, perfect companion. Goddard the robot dog, like robots.

Amber Ivey:

I'm actually very excited about that and I like the idea of being able to create your own robot and being able to personalize it to who you are as a person Like. That idea is great. I do want a robot that cleans for me and cooks for me, like tomorrow. So whenever you figure that out, sign me up. Let me be the person in line for sure. Right, as soon as possible. You also grew up in a place called Prince Georgia County. How did your community inspire your love for engineering and social change?

Dr. Randi Williams:

My family is actually from Baltimore, but you know Prince George's County, we love to claim DC and so my family. They came up to Baltimore as part of the great migration and just this long history of having people who are educators and community organizers. In fact, my great grandma's, a lifelong educator in Baltimore, has a street named after her.

Amber Ivey:

Rosie Keene Amazing. My family also came up during the Great Migration.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yeah, huge sense of responsibility that I think both of those communities offer. That if you have a talent, then give it to your community, be in community with others and share what you have, accept help from other people. It actually reminds me of my favorite quote, which is from Michelle Obama, which says you know, you need to have three people in your life A someone ahead of you who is like showing you the way and clearing paths. B someone beside you who can walk along with you and take those journeys. And then, c someone who you're pulling up, someone that you're offering mentorship to, you're reaching back for others and pulling them along. And so that was something that I was not only told, but that I really got to live. So many people, my teachers especially, invested in me and that just inspired why I want to do robots that help other people, because I'm thinking about my community.

Amber Ivey:

Can you tell us about one of your favorite projects where you got to do this? Yes, can you tell us about one of your favorite projects where you got to do this.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yes, so now we get to talk about the Keet Robots, which I'm so excited about. So there's this project that I worked on called PopBots, like P-O-P bots, and the whole point of this project was to teach preschoolers about AI, so that when people told me that they thought AI was too hard and complicated, I could say nope, I've taught some four year olds about it, so you can learn it too. It's important to break down barriers to learning about AI, and there's also this fascinating thing happens.

Dr. Randi Williams:

When I started the project the coolest AI out there was Alexa. If you think about it, you know. Imagine when I was a kid In order to search the internet, I had to know how to read, write, type, and then I get to the internet. But all of a sudden there were these four-year-olds who were like, oh, I can search the internet, watch this. Hey, alexa, what's the weather, where's the clothes? And I was just like this is fascinating. How can they do this? How is your life different if you grow up with just the full internet at your hands, literally at the command of your voice?

Dr. Randi Williams:

So I was studying those two things. One, what happens when you give a four-year-old this powerful technology? And two, those two things. One, what happens when you give a four-year-old this powerful technology? And two, can we help those four-year-olds actually learn about the technology and build it themselves? So over the course of two months, I got to teach more than a hundred students and their teachers about different kinds of AI. I taught them about how AI can learn as it interacts with you through playing a game rock paper scissors. I taught them about how AI can make predictions.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Let's say that you're at a grocery store and you want to teach a robot to help you pick the best foods. Well, first you have to teach it something about the foods, and then you don't want to teach it every food. That'll take forever. So after you teach it a few foods, then it could guess. It's like oh, you told me that blueberries are delicious. Bananas are like blueberries because they're both fruits, so bananas are also delicious. Should I get some bananas for you? And these kinds of lessons, you know, worked really well for preschoolers.

Dr. Randi Williams:

But what was even cooler was they got to build their own robots. So imagine this the robot face and brain was a cell phone, literally the thing out of your pocket, and then the robot body was Lego. That's actually so cool. That's how the Lego thing came about. Yeah, because I was thinking robots are so cool, but a lot of them are really expensive, so how do I make it easier for anyone to be able to do this? So I built this robot with a cell phone face and brain and has cameras and microphones, all the things you need, and then this Lego body.

Amber Ivey:

I love that. Why do you think it's so important for kids to learn about AI and how can it help them with their future?

Dr. Randi Williams:

So after I worked with PopBots and teaching preschoolers, I was like, well, I want this to go everywhere, because there's this common argument which I agree with, which is that AI is the future and it's just increasingly used in more and more and more ways in the world, and so I think it's important for everyone to just learn a little bit so that they can be like ahead of what's happening, they can be informed and make good decisions. Whether you're buying it or building it or using it, you know you got to know what's going on that could lead to. You know career opportunities, jobs. You also learn about problem solving, but I'd say the best reason for this is because you want people to know how to think creatively, and you want people to know how to be innovative and to take a technology around them, like a cell phone robot, and then build something that they think is cool. I had one preschooler who knew three different languages and he taught his robot to speak multiple different languages and then it had like three heads Creative, innovative. I think that's so important. I literally built things that I wish I had when I was younger With the project, with tens of thousands of people.

Dr. Randi Williams:

One of the best things about it was that it was totally free, so you can go online to playgroundraisemitedu that's a lot of words, but we'll type it out for you and then you'll be able to use machine learning in your Scratch projects. So that was what we wanted people to be able to do to literally have the building blocks of AI and to be able to create whatever they want. You can make your computer talk to you and listen to you and recognize your face, all with the idea being that there's a project idea that you might have, or a game you want to play, or an idea that you want to explore, and so we want it to be as easy as possible for people to do that.

Amber Ivey:

That is so cool and it's so cool. You also use Scratch, because I know a lot of young people do use Scratch and that technology. Is that something you recommend kids start at when they're thinking about AI and like if folks are thinking about, oh, I want a pop bot, how do I do that myself, like where should I go? Of course I'm going to drop the link in the show notes. That is a great question.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Of course, definitely start with Playground. Go to the show notes, check out Playground. You could tell your teacher about Day of AI, which, if you've heard of Hour of Code, it's similar to that, but essentially it's classroom lessons that your teacher can do and, of course, they're all free, and this was put together by MIT researchers who said we want more people to explore AI. They don't have to know how to program, but there are different hands-on things that they can do.

Dr. Randi Williams:

One of the activities which I always talk about, always recommend, is to go and try and break AI, because it's so interesting the ways that it thinks differently than we think. So you can log on to your favorite chat bot it could be Alexa, it could be on your phone, it could be chat GPT and try and figure out how to ask questions in a way where it gives you an answer you don't expect. A long time ago, this was called the Turing test and this was how computer scientists, alan Turing being one of them, wanted to test whether an artificial intelligence was sufficiently intelligent or not by trying to ask tricky questions and get it to answer in ways that sounded less and less human. So you can run your own Turing test with your favorite chatbot, and that'll help you understand a little bit more about what's going on inside.

Dr. Randi Williams:

And then there are other resources, yeah, that are increasingly coming out.

Amber Ivey:

I never thought about the idea of having kids run their own Turing test or trying to figure out. If you can convince someone that AI is close to human, pushing it to its boundaries, test it to see how human it can sound. Would you mind playing a little game with me called Tech Trivia? Yeah, I'm going to start with the first question True or false? Ai needs humans' help to make decisions. True or false?

Dr. Randi Williams:

tricky, but I'm gonna say true, most of the time ai can't do a lot of things by itself ding, ding, ding ding.

Amber Ivey:

You got it right. Yes, ai still needs human, whether it's training algorithm or what have you. We're not at the point of api or any of oh yeah, terminator and beyond. But question number two what do we call it when AI unfairly favors one group of people over another?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Tricky one, but I'm going to say that's called algorithmic bias.

Amber Ivey:

Got it right again and can you explain it a little bit more in depth Because, like this, is a space where you work in heavily. Can you share in a way that a kid would understand what that means even further than the question?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yes, of course. So algorithmic bias.

Amber Ivey:

They weren't algorithms before, so I do want to give you that. So we have an A for algorithm.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Awesome.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Okay, I was going to say that's so helpful If you already know algorithms, and that's a good start. So imagine a computer system. But then it does this thing called bias. Usually we say that only humans can be biased right, and that's like if you say, oh, girls are better at math than boys, that's technically a bias, because you don't know how all girls and all boys perform at math. Or if you have a bias where you're like, oh, only people who speak three different languages can be good at roboticists, that is also a bias. We see these biases all around us in society. So think very carefully. Are you aware of some biases that others may have? That you may have Because computers really need people to be able to do things? They actually can pick up and reflect that same bias that humans display.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Super important example of this I mentioned that I worked at Algorithmic Justice League and the sort of origin story of our nonprofit is that the founder, dr Joy, was doing a computer project. She's also a computer scientist. So she wanted to build a mirror that could recognize her face and then overlay a lion if she needed courage, or overlay Serena Williams if she needed to feel powerful. It's called the Aspire Mirror. That helped her see what she wired to when she looked at it. But she had this problem because the facial recognition system it couldn't find her face. It kept saying there's no face in this. She's like, okay, that's weird.

Dr. Randi Williams:

And then it was Halloween, so she had a white mask and she put that on and they were like, ah, yes, face. And she took the mask off and it was like no face. And what was happening behind the scenes was Dr Joy is also a woman with a darker skin tone like mine, and so literally the algorithm had the bias that it couldn't see darker skin tones and from there Dr Joy was able to doa whole research project and point it out to big companies and point it out to governments and say, hey, this is a big issue. Algorithms can have the same bias that humans do. And if you're wondering how that happened, it's because there weren't enough faces that looked like mine and Dr Joyce inside of the code that was used to create that algorithm and so we needed to do better, because algorithms can learn the same kinds of discrimination that people have sometimes.

Amber Ivey:

Oops now we know On her book cover she has a picture of a white mask. I didn't know the meaning behind that, so thank you for sharing the meaning behind that and we'll also drop the book in the show notes. I think it's called Unmasking Bias or Unmasking AI.

Dr. Randi Williams:

AI yeah, great job.

Amber Ivey:

Yeah, you got it, I know, but I couldn't remember exactly. Yeah, you got it, I know, but I couldn't remember exactly.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yeah, definitely. In addition to trying the programming things like, there are books Unmasking AI, being one, there's a documentary about AJL on Netflix. It's called Coded Bias. So there's many ways to learn more about AI, even reading and watching TV.

Amber Ivey:

Thank you for that, and I'll definitely drop all those in the show notes for folks who are interested in learning more, because if you're thinking about AI, we have to think about AI bias. One more question and then we'll go back to our interview. Are you ready? Okay, true or false AI?

Dr. Randi Williams:

has feelings like humans. Oh, this is so tricky too. I'm going to say false only because it doesn't have to be like. What do you think? Am I right or wrong?

Amber Ivey:

We don't know what is happening in that machine Right now. We know it's not like a human, so we also agree that that's false. If you disagree, I would love to hear additional thoughts as well.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yeah, well, I'd also love to hear you send in your thoughts about whether AI feels like humans. But one thing that's really interesting, so I mentioned that I worked in a robotics lab at MIT. It's called the Personal Robots Group and we literally built social robots, as in robots that can understand emotions and that can reflect emotions, and it turns out that's really powerful because when we talk, we do all these things like we nod and we smile and we go ah, and technology reflects those same social cues when it looks sad or when it makes fart sounds. That was very popular with the preschoolers. That actually helps us understand it better. So those things are important, even if it's a little different than how we would do it.

Amber Ivey:

One other thing that I love about the work that you do is you focus on creating something called inclusive AI. Can you explain what that means and why it's important?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yes, inclusive AI. That's all about designing a system that works for everyone fairly, regardless of their background or abilities or what they're coming to the table with. So why does inclusive AI matter? Actually, it matters for everything that you build, every kind of technology. Did you know that when cars first came out, there were a lot of car accidents with women and children, where the women and children would get really hurt, and it was because the seat belts weren't designed with women and children in mind? They were only guy engineers, you know with. They're like yeah, we'll put it like at this height and at this width and it'll work for everyone, and then it just didn't work for this entire group of people. So to make it more inclusive, they realized we need to have people who are testing this, who have different body sizes, who are different ages, people who are in wheelchairs, people who may or may not sit in the seat the way that you would expect. By doing that, you can prevent algorithmic bias and ensure that the technology is fair and accessible to multiple different people.

Amber Ivey:

That is wild. I think I've heard about the seatbelt, but I didn't realize that part of it or similar stories. But it's interesting when you're talking about the AI piece, but continue.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Well, I was thinking like now I should give an example that's relevant to AI.

Amber Ivey:

Go for it.

Dr. Randi Williams:

I think I'm going to go with the one that's almost like the seatbelt thing, but a little bit different. When smart speakers first came out, they were really bad with well, they're still pretty bad with children voices I know that by experience. But they're really bad with women voices too, because they were tested again by people with deep, low voices and then just Alexa and Siri just couldn't hear you. So again they realized okay, when we collect data and we're using our data to give our smart speaker examples of what a voice sounds like, we have to have a wide range of voices in there. We have to have different accents. Still working on that.

Dr. Randi Williams:

We have to have people from different parts of different places, like you know English, scottish English, baltimore English.

Amber Ivey:

you know that is a thing, folks. That's how they make it inclusive. That is so cool. I did not realize that. I've heard things around like what it means to notice like complexions of skin, but I didn't think about even the pitch of the voice that an AI, if it wasn't trained on that, pitch my voice a little bit deeper, so I didn't have any problems. But for people who have a higher pitch voice, right, they may not have been heard by that because they weren't trained on that.

Dr. Randi Williams:

That is so interesting.

Amber Ivey:

I want to talk to you a little bit more about how do you think about using AI and robotics to help communities and make a positive impact?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Well, I got to do a lot of work teaching teachers to teach AI, and that just brought me much closer to all of the things that teachers have to worry about, and this is during 2020. So teachers have extra things to worry about 2020 and beyond. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Such as you know, they work really hard. You have so many students, you have to grade the work, you have to personalize your lessons to what they want. You want to spark creativity, respond to different students' needs, and so I started thinking about well, could you have a robot that helps with some of those tasks, and what should that robot do? Because there's a lot of so. This is not inclusive AI.

Amber Ivey:

Okay.

Dr. Randi Williams:

A lot of people will say I was a student once. I know exactly what teachers need, so let me build the thing. So, rather than do that, I ask teachers what do you need? You're the expert on your students and how they learn. What could you use in the classroom that would help you? And then I sort of built that through Okay, what's actually possible to build? Because not everything's possible. So I was teaching AI, right, so it was a robot that would argue with you. One student wanted to build a robot that would deliver food around their house, so it could drive and deliver food and say here are your chips and then drive away.

Amber Ivey:

Again another robot I need.

Dr. Randi Williams:

And I would always ask students okay, this seems like a cool idea, what are some of the ways that could go wrong? And they would say there are no ways it could go wrong. It's perfect. The skill that teachers really wanted their students to practice was critical thinking. How do you sort of problem solve and say what are the things that aren't immediately obvious that could come up and how do I take steps to get there? So we built a robot that could argue with them oh, okay, well, your robot delivers snacks, but what if it means that you don't get enough exercise because you're not getting up and getting your snacks anymore? Or it delivers snacks, but what if you get a soda and it spills on the robot? And then what? And what that did was it made people much more creative because they were like oh.

Dr. Randi Williams:

I shouldn't just build a robot. I should build a robot with a cup holder that's waterproof or soda proof, so that it'll be able to be more flexible inside of different scenarios. That was really, really important for them as their engineering seat to be able to think through how I might design this even better, because we don't always get the perfect solution the first time. And that was really helpful for teachers, because they couldn't have 30 different conversations with all of the students.

Amber Ivey:

That's such a cool idea the idea of creating even for other things, of creating an AI that is able to go back and forth with you, and one thing we always talk about here is problem solving. So thank you for like giving an example where parents and teachers are concerned that AI is going to stop things like creativity and problem solving, but that's a way you can use AI to help with problem solving and help with the issue of, like you said, a teacher can't answer 30 to a hundred questions per child, but this AI can actually speed that up and the teacher can focus where the teacher needs to to help further that problem solving. I absolutely love that. Great examples. I'm learning so much today, folks, even I am learning.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Can I throw out a problem solving challenge?

Amber Ivey:

Yeah, go for it. Please, let's do it.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Okay. So at first we were all really happy with the robot, but then we realized that it had one big limitation. Ai has algorithmic bias, things like ChatGPT, which is what we build it on top of. They learn from Wikipedia and Quora and Reddit. So, even though it knew a lot, it didn't know everything. And for some of the students we were working with, there was a group of students who were from rural Georgia and they were like I mean, it's kind of helpful, but I really wish that it were more aware of like what my life is like and could help me argue with that. So that's my problem solving challenge how would you make something like that that helps you be more creative but also gets over the limitation of AI, which is that it doesn't know?

Amber Ivey:

everything about everyone. Listen to the challenge that Dr Williams just gave you. How can you actually make that AI better? The way we have it set up right now in our podcast. You and your parents can text us the answer and feel free to leave an email there as well or share some of those things on this show, so definitely don't mind doing that. I actually love that, Dr Williams, Thank you for that Awesome I can't wait to find out what people come up with.

Amber Ivey:

Me too. Speaking of this idea of a challenge to kids, they may be asking Dr Williams, I don't know how to start. How do I start learning about AI so that I can answer the question for your challenge? What do you tell them to do next?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Okay, there are many ways that I get started with new challenges. One I talk to people who, I think, know something about it. So if you're going after the challenge that I talked about, maybe there's a teacher you can ask. If you just want to learn more about AI in general, do you know anyone in your life who knows a lot about AI? Or are there other podcast episodes that you can listen to so that you can learn more and then have a bunch of questions and then work through some of those questions with people that you do know? Those are two things that I would recommend, because there's a lot out there about ai. I also sometimes just try things and play around and get it wrong a lot. So if you were to try the ai playground, the scratch block thing, we have a couple of tutorials that can get you started. But maybe just try something. Maybe say, I really just want a robot that can say hello in my name and I will figure that out. Once I figured that out, I'll move to the next challenge.

Dr. Randi Williams:

The last thing I would recommend is create something, ideally with other people, but create something that you think is missing. So, for example, you go and read a book like Unmasking AI and you're like well, this is great, but I don't think anyone in my class would read this book. It needs to be simpler. It needs to talk about AI that we have today. Well, I think that's a challenge for you to go and create that thing. So that's kind of a mixture of advice and some possible next steps. There's a lot more where you can go learn, where you can try things, where you can try and create new things, and that sort of gets you on your way to learning more about AI and technology.

Amber Ivey:

I love that because I think kids are at a place where they haven't lost that creativity and sometimes, as you get older, you use it. So I feel like they're well positioned to take those challenges and actually go after them, and I'm really excited to see what comes in to our text messages. So, kids, make sure you work with your parents to look in the show notes and you'll be able to text us directly your answers. I want to do another segment to learn more about you. It's called Two Truths and a Dream. Okay, you'll tell us two true facts about your life and one dream job or experience you had as a kid. We'll guess, as well as the kids at home, which one is the dream. Are you ready? I'm ready, are you ready? Okay, go for it. All right, I'm gonna try to guess Kids.

Dr. Randi Williams:

As usual, I'm gonna use context clues and try to walk through this out loud, and, and try to walk through this out loud, and you should be doing the same thing. All right, let's begin. One of the ways that I love thinking about robots is by doing robots that dance, because I'm a dancer. I've built more than 100 robots in my entire lifetime, and my favorite kinds of robots are robots that know how to fly, and the way that I learned that was by working on drones when I was at NASA.

Amber Ivey:

Hmm, these are hard. Okay, kids, I'm gonna say them back and just want to make sure I got them right. Dr Williams, the first is you're really interested in robots that love to dance because you like to dance, yes. The second one is you've built hundreds of robots in your lifetime, which is wild to me, but also it could happen. Is that the second one? Is that right? That's the second one? Yes, lots of robots. And then the third one is that you love robots that learn to fly, because you worked on drones while at NASA.

Amber Ivey:

So the first one, surrounding the whole idea of you like dancing robots because you like to dance I'm looking at her energy. She has a lot of energy. She's really fun and exciting. So I imagine that that could be true, but I don't want to say it's true just yet, so I'm going to put that aside. The second one, around building 100 robots I also think that's true, but there may be something in there where you've built more or slightly less. So that may be a numbers thing, kids, because remember she talked about like all those robots she worked with all those kids. It was a whole bunch of kids in that program. So that's one where I'm like that may be the dream, in just like using a numbers in a different way Could be wrong.

Amber Ivey:

Third is her favorite robots are flying robots. Because she worked on drones at NASA. I imagine that could also be true. So I'm struggling with this one because that could also be a technicality and I'm wondering. I haven't looked into NASA in a very long time, so I don't know how much drone work they've done. I also know some of their space stuff was kind of like not working as much, so I imagine they would have to do things like drones or other things or use drones. Okay, kids, I know I'm like going around on this. Hopefully you have an answer.

Dr. Randi Williams:

I'm going to stick to my original thought and I'm going to say the dream is hundreds of robots.

Amber Ivey:

You are incorrect. I have built more than a hundred robots. Do you have a second guess?

Dr. Randi Williams:

Okay, walk us through, like, tell us about the experience of each one and let me know which one's the dream. Okay, so, starting with the first one, I actually have not built robots that can dance yet, really, yeah, and I was trying to be tricky, so I built robots that can draw.

Amber Ivey:

Ah, okay, okay.

Dr. Randi Williams:

And that's like on its way to dancing. I was trying to make a robot that could dance bachata with me.

Amber Ivey:

Oh, that's so cool. It didn't work, but you do like to dance, I imagine I do like to dance. I do like to dance.

Dr. Randi Williams:

I say I got that right. The vibe was here. I built more than 100 robots for the first day of AI because I thought it was a really good idea to hand build 100 robots to really inspire some kids to learn about AI. I did not do that again. Now you can buy the robots offline. Shout out to the most amazing UROPS for helping me do that. It was like 10 of us all night. It was a task. Yeah, teamwork and the robots that can fly. But actually I did not work on a single space robot. I only worked on drones while I was at NASA.

Amber Ivey:

That is so cool. I love your career, I love the work that you've done and it's just so cool to talk to you about this Before we head out. Do you have any advice for kids who want to use technology to help their communities, or just any advice in general that you want to make sure you leave behind?

Dr. Randi Williams:

If you would love to use your amazing skills to help your community, then I would highly recommend you learn a new skill and teach it to someone else, because it turns out that you really really know something when you can teach someone else. Even better if you can teach it to a preschooler, I think that that has helped me a lot, because when I teach other people things, they ask questions that I don't have answers to, and so I get to learn more and I get to go off the excitement that they have. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to learn something, find someone who you want to teach that thing to, maybe a parent that's sitting nearby you and wants to learn about AI with you or from you.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Maybe you go and teach a class about it. I think that your teacher would really appreciate that. Maybe you go and teach a friend. There's so many people who I think could benefit. One of my favorite projects I built an AI storybook and then I tried to make a version of it with my dad. Medium results, y'all. But it was a big learning experience for both of us.

Dr. Randi Williams:

Yeah, that's my recommendation Learn something, teach someone else, pass it on. I believe that National Coding Week is coming up, so go and get your opportunity to learn how to program. That's where I started, and never let anyone tell you you can't have both technology and art. You can have both, and it's a lot of fun.

Amber Ivey:

That is the perfect way to end. Today. You can have both. I truly appreciated that. Thank you so much for joining us today, dr Williams, and thank you to all the listeners for tuning in again. Don't forget to subscribe to AI for Kids. Stay curious and do that challenge that she mentioned earlier. Thank you for joining us as we explore the fascinating world of artificial intelligence. Don't keep this adventure to yourself. Download it, share it with your friends and let everyone else in on the fun. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. See you next time on AI for Kids.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Amber Ivey (AI)

Host