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Making objects speak ‒ AI Box for children - Civic Innovation Platform

Making objects speak ‒ AI Box for children

The Diakonie Rosenheim social welfare organisation and Birds on Mars GmbH company wish to facilitate early, age-appropriate and reflected use of AI. It involves an 'AI Box' being used at day care centres. Children hold an object in the box, tell a story about it and, in return, are told another child’s story about the object. This teaches them about AI early on and introduces them to this kind of adaptive system in a fun way.

Why are you a strong team?

We wish to give people, and in this case children, something to take with them and change society for the better, for idealistic and humanist reasons.

As a highly professional and interdisciplinary team, we not only can combine pedagogical and technological perspectives, we also have access to an extraordinary testing infrastructure.

We are simply extremely happy to work together.

Explain your idea in three sentences.

The AI box lets preschool children look into AI as a learning system in a way that is playful as well as safe and pedagogically sophisticated. The AI Box learns and recognises objects that the children show and add a story to via voice input, with other children then being able to access it. The AI application acts as a highly innovative link that supports creative storytelling, here in the form of social interaction.

What makes your idea special?

AI has previously not had a role in day care. For children of a preschool age, there has previously not been any age-appropriate introduction to the topic. Using the AI Box, children learn to use AI actively and see it as a tool. By attaching stories to objects that are significant to them, children are also exposed to a new realm of creative possibilities which can be shared socially. Furthermore, there is no commercial interest in the data.

What are the next steps?

Our next steps are:

  1. creating a milestone and expense road map with tasks divided by competency
  2. researching the technological requirements and performing an initial feasibility study
  3. adjusting and developing the pedagogical concept in line with technical realities
  4. iterating, developing and, where possible, initial testing
  5. writing the grant application

Contact the project team