How Smart is AI? – Real projects to build real understanding
Part of the Education specialist track
Chat GPT is all the rage in schools, and everyone is talking about AI, but how do we give students a real understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations? In this talk I’ll demo how you can get students coding their own projects that explore (free) GPT technologies, integrating their own data sources, and contemplating when AI is the right solution.
This talk is designed for teachers, students, or anyone new to AI to get a better understanding of what “AI” is, to see the broad range of technologies “AI” can includes, and to demystify all pieces of terminology like GPT, LLMs, and more!
I’ll demo a light-weight project that you can use to get students leveraging GPT technology through their own code creations. We’ll then add some of our own data to give it specialised knowledge in a technique known as “RAG” (Retrieval Augmented Generation). Through the process of testing out this project we’ll then explore the moments where students can see behind the curtain of what tools like ChatGPT are actually doing, where they fall down and aren’t as “smart” as they seem, and how and when to use AI responsibly.
This talk will specifically highlight an open-source option for playing with AI in Python so you can get your class coding on these tools for free.
Renee Noble spends her time bringing together tech, teaching, and community in as many ways as possible.
As a Cloud Developer Advocate on the Python Advocacy team at Microsoft, she spends her time teaching the community through global events, creating Python learning resources, and local workshops for students and professionals. Renee is also the CEO and Co-Founder or Tech Inclusion, best known for Girls’ Programming Network workshops that run around Australia. On top of this, Rene started her own Business, ConnectEd Code, bringing tech education opportunities to schools
Well known for her work in tech education and the advancement of women, Renee was most recently awarded as Champion of Change 2023 by Women in Digital.