How Does AI Learn? Exploring the Mind of a Machine 🧠🤖

Episode 11

Apr 02, 2025

Hello Creators of Tomorrow!

Have you ever wondered how AI learns? Does it go to school like us? Does it read books, take tests, or raise its hand in class? Not exactly! In this week’s episode of AI and the Kid, Emily and Alex explore how AI systems learn new things—and how that learning is kind of like how kids learn, too!

Listen to the Podcast!

Find AI and the Kid wherever you listen to podcasts.

🔍 What We Explore in This Episode

How AI learns using something called machine learning
The different types of AI learning (like supervised and reinforcement learning)
Why pattern recognition is so important
What critical thinking is and how it grows as we do

⚽ Robots That Learn to Play Soccer?!

One of the coolest things we talked about in this episode is how robots are learning to play soccer! Yep—real, AI-powered robots that run, kick, and even make game-time decisions.

Researchers at Google DeepMind created a special kind of AI that uses reinforcement learning. This means the robots learn by trying, failing, and trying again.

At first, they just ran around and bumped into each other (kind of like when I played soccer for the first time 😄). But over time, they started to figure it out:

How to pass the ball to their teammates
How to block goals
And even how to make a plan to score!

It was like their own version of soccer practice—except instead of a coach, they had AI guiding their learning.

This shows that AI can learn new skills by doing something over and over again, just like we do! But even though they can learn cool tricks, they still don’t know what soccer means or feel the excitement of scoring a goal. That’s something only humans can do ❤️

🧪 Beyond the Podcast: Try This at Home!

Want to explore how AI learns using games and creativity? Try these fun activities that help you think like a machine—and like a scientist!

🧩 AI Pattern Challenge

AI learns by spotting patterns—just like your brain does when you solve puzzles or play memory games! Here’s how to try it yourself:

What you need:

Blocks, beads, LEGO bricks, or colored markers
A friend or family member to challenge

What to do:

Create a repeating pattern using colors, shapes, or objects. For example: red, blue, blue, red, blue, blue…
Show your pattern to someone and ask, “What comes next?”
Try making it harder: add a twist, change directions, or leave a gap in the middle.
Swap roles and let them create a pattern for YOU to guess!

This is how AI learns to predict what comes next—like guessing the next word in a sentence or the next number in a sequence!

📸 Train Your Own AI (with Paper!)

AI needs to be trained with labeled data—just like how you might teach someone to tell the difference between cats and dogs. You can do this with a fun drawing game!

What you need:

Paper and markers or crayons
A friend or family member

What to do:

Draw 5–10 simple pictures of animals—some cats, some dogs.
Show them to your "AI student" and say, “This is a cat,” or “This is a dog.”
Then draw a mystery animal and ask, “What do you think this is?”
If they get it right, great! If not, give them a few more examples and try again.

This is how supervised learning works—AI learns from examples we give it, just like you did in this game.

🕵️ Critical Thinking Detective Game

AI is great at solving problems, but you have something even more powerful: a curious brain! Use it to become a truth detective.

Play this game anytime you hear or see something interesting—like on the news, in a video, or even from a friend.

Ask these questions:
🔍 Is this true?
🔍 Where did this information come from?
🔍 Could there be another answer?

Extra Challenge: Try looking up the fact in a book, asking a grown-up, or checking with more than one source.

This helps you practice critical thinking, which is one of the most important skills for growing up in a world with AI!

🤖 Explore More with Gear

Want to discuss the episode more? Try out our custom chatbot, Gear. Gear can answer all your questions or help you explore the topics from this episode more.