Hi guys! Marina Ventura here… your adventurer into the wonders of the world! I’m on a mission to explore one of the biggest adventures of the 21st century… the world of Artificial Intelligence and how it can benefit our future energy. Wanna come too? Excellent!

So what is Artificial Intelligence… or AI for short?

It might make you think of robots taking over the world! But AI is so much more… and changing fast. AI is like a smart computer brain. It learns from huge amounts of information that we call data, and uses what it learns to make decisions, solve problems and sometimes even be creative!

So I guess it’s a bit like how WE learn. When you were young, you didn’t know what a cat was, but after seeing a few cats, and maybe a few dogs too, you figured it out. AI systems do the same, just with millions of pictures, words, sounds and numbers!

Now… it’s quite likely you’ve already used some AI. Have you ever asked Alexa a question? Or seen a robot vacuum whizzing around like it owns the place?

AI is available to pretty much everyone today, not just on devices like vacuum cleaners and smart speakers, but in the palm of your hand on phones and tablets – it can solve puzzles, draw pictures, and even write stories!

And the positives aren’t just having fun. It can also help us learn, explore and create. It can make lessons more exciting, help you think more deeply, and even give you new ideas.

We need to be careful too. If we rely too much on AI for answers, we might forget to check if those answers are actually right. Sometimes, AI will get things wrong, even when it sounds very confident! And AI can’t help come up with all the answers when you’re sitting an exam or in a place where you can’t use your device or get a signal. Using our own brain is far more important!

AI systems also collect a lot of personal information, like where you live and what you like, so you need to make sure privacy is protected.

And that’s where ethics comes in. Ethics means making sure AI is fair, kind and honest, just like how we should treat each other. AI doesn’t have feelings like we do, so it needs special rules to help it make good choices, like making sure it doesn’t accidentally treat people unfairly because of things like their age, gender or skin colour… or making sure it’s always honest and doesn’t spread false information.

If AI makes a mistake, like a self-driving car that crashes or a robot that causes harm, we need to decide who’s responsible? That’s a really big question for scientists, governments and companies to work out. It’s tricky, but really important. After all, AI is going to be with us for a long time, and we want to make sure it helps everyone safely and fairly. That’s why scientists talk about something called… ALIGNMENT!

That’s making sure AI follows the same values that humans believe in – fairness, kindness and responsibility.

There’s another BIG challenge. And that’s energy! Each of these powerful supercomputers will be doing huge number of computations each second – and that needs a LOT of electricity. Big computer data centres slurp up huge amounts of power to keep AI systems learning and answering our questions.

So energy companies have a puzzle to solve too – how to make enough clean energy to power all these super-smart computers and everything else we need, without harming the planet. Although conveniently that’s where AI can help again, by making energy grids smarter, predicting when we’ll need more power, helping store renewable energy from wind and solar, and even finding ways to capture carbon from the air.

And if you’re wondering how AI learns all this stuff… well, it needs clever people to teach it! People who love coding, maths, science, solving puzzles, and who care about doing the right thing.

MARINA MISSION!

So now over to you! I want you to have a think about one way AI could help you and your family. It could be how get to school or make your journey better. Hmm… how about a flying school bus, or a smart jumper that tells you if you’re too hot or cold? Or maybe an AI-powered bike that learns when you’re getting tired, and pedals itself up hills!

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