AI for Oceans

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Learn how AI and machine learning can be used to address world problems.

Week 1 AI for Oceans

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 Lesson 1: AI for Oceans

In this lesson, learners of all ages get an introductory experience with coding and computer science
in a safe, supportive environment. First, students classify objects as either "fish" or "not fish" to
attempt to remove trash from the ocean. Then, students will need to expand their training data set
to include other sea creatures that belong in the water. In the second part of the activity, students
will choose their own labels to apply to images of randomly generated fish. This training data is used
for a machine learning model that should then be able to label new images on its own.

 1 AI Machine Learning - Video

 2-4 Train an AI to Clean the Ocean

2 3 4

 5 AI: Training Data & Bias - Video

 6 Using Training Data

 7 AI: Impact on Society - Video

 8 Teach AI a New Word

Lesson 1: AI for Oceans
45 minutes

Overview Objectives
In this lesson, learners of all ages get an introductory Students will be able to:
experience with coding and computer science in a safe,
supportive environment. First, students classify objects as Discuss the role artificial
either "fish" or "not fish" to attempt to remove trash from intelligence plays in their lives.
the ocean. Then, students will need to expand their training Reason about how human bias
data set to include other sea creatures that belong in the plays a role in machine learning.
water. In the second part of the activity, students will Train and test a machine learning
choose their own labels to apply to images of randomly model.
generated fish. This training data is used for a machine
learning model that should then be able to label new
images on its own. Preparation
Purpose One Week Before Your Hour
This tutorial is designed to quickly introduce students to
machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence. Students
of Code
will explore how training data is used to enable a machine Review the Hour of Code Educator
learning model to classify new data. Students should have Guide in order to begin to plan
a positive experience during the tutorial and more
importantly should be motivated to keep learning your Hour of Code event.
computer science. Register your Hour of Code event.
Review and complete the online
tutorial yourself.
Agenda Be sure to test it first before asking
Warm Up (5 minutes) your students to complete it. Check
Build Excitement! your technology and decide if you
need to troubleshoot anything in
Activity (40 minutes) advance of your Hour of Code.
AI For Oceans
Celebrate and Keep Going! One Day Before Your Hour
Extended Learning of Code
Digging into the Information View
Example 1: Training based on one trait (body Each student who completes the
shape) activity should receive a certificate.
Example 2: Using the Information view to improve Print one certificate for each
the model student in advance to make this
easier at the end of your Hour of
Code.
 Links
Heads Up! Please make a copy of
any documents you plan to share
with students.

For the students

AI: Impact on Society - Video
(Download)
AI: Machine Learning - Video
(Download)
AI: Training Data & Bias - Video
(Download)
Vocabulary
Machine Learning - How
computers recognize patterns and
make decisions without being
explicitly programmed

Teaching Guide
Warm Up (5 minutes)
Build Excitement!
Motivate: Explain to students the goals of today's activity. They are going to start using a new tool that will
let them train a real machine learning model, a form of artificial intelligence.
General Support: As a teacher your role is primarily to support students as they make their way through
the tutorial. Here are a few tips that should help students regardless of the level they're working on.
Checking Correctness: This tutorial will not tell students whether they completed the level correctly. It
is possible to skip through the different parts of the activity quickly. Encourage students to watch the
videos, read the instructions, and try different things along the way. At any time, they can share their
findings with you or a classmate.
Collaborate with Neighbors: Encourage students to check in with a neighbor to discuss what they are
experiencing. Since this tutorial includes videos and students may be wearing headphones it can get
easy to "go into a bubble". Help break those barriers by actively pairing students.
Read the Instructions: The instructions usually provide helpful information about what is happening
behind the scenes.
Go back and try different things: If students finish quickly, encourage them to go back to "Train More".
In the last part of the activity, students can also go back and choose a "New Word". More training data
tends to make the machine learning model more accurate and consistent. Students can also learn by
purposefully training their model incorrectly, or not training it at all. Video: AI: Machine Learning The
first level of this activity is a video that gives important context around artificial intelligence and
machine learning. Watch it as a class and debrief afterwards to help students build connections to the
content.
  1 AI Machine Learning - Video

 Teaching Tip 

You can share these stories with your class to help them see how AI will impact the future.
Food Waste Is a Serious Problem. AI Is Trying to Solve It
AI tech can identify genetic disorders from a person's face
How an AI Startup Designed a Drug Candidate in Just 46 Days
MIT AI tool can predict breast cancer up to 5 years early
The Army steps up its pace on self-driving cars
San Francisco says it will use AI to reduce bias when charging people with crimes
AI is helping scholars restore ancient Greek texts on stone tablets

Quick Share-out: Where have you seen or experienced artificial intelligence in your lives? Examples from
the video include:
email filters
auto-complete text
video recommendation systems
voice recognition
translation apps
digital assistants
image recognition
Prompt: Based on what you saw in the video, what is machine learning?
Discuss: Beginning in small groups then moving to whole class, students share their responses. The goal
here is to get students acquainted with the world of artificial intelligence, reflect on the prevalence of
artificial intelligence in our lives and think broadly about potential future innovations.
Say: Machine learning refers to a computer that can recognize patterns and make decisions without being
explicitly programmed. In this activity you’re going to supply the data to train your own machine learning
model. Imagine an ocean that contains creatures like fish, but also contains trash dumped by humans.
What if we could train a computer to tell the difference and then use that technology to help clean the
ocean?

Activity (40 minutes)

AI For Oceans
 Content Corner 

Every image in this part of the tutorial is fed into a neural network that has been pre-trained on a huge
set of data called ImageNet. The database contains over 14 million hand-annotated images. ImageNet
contains more than 20,000 categories with a typical category, such as "balloon" or "strawberry",
consisting of several hundred images. When A.I. is scanning new images and making its own predictions
in the tutorial, it is actually comparing the possible categories for the new image with the patterns it
found in the training dataset.
Levels 2-4 - Train AI to Clean the Ocean
Students can work through levels 2-4 on their own or with a partner. To program A.I., use the buttons to
label an image as either "fish" or "not fish". Each image and label becomes part of the data used to train A.I.
to do it on its own. Once trained, A.I. will attempt to label 100 new images on its own, then present a
selection that it determined have the highest probability of being "fish" based on its training. Students who
consistently label things correctly should see an ocean full of different types of sea creatures, without
much (or any) other objects.

 2-4 Train an AI to Clean the Ocean

2 3 4

Level 5 - Training Data & Bias

Quick Share-out: How well did A.I. do? How do you think it decided what to include in the ocean?

 5 AI: Training Data & Bias - Video

Prompt: How do you think your training data influenced the results that A.I. produced?
Discuss: In small groups, students share their responses. Circulate the room and listen to student ideas.
This can be followed with full class discussion, or students can jump right back into the tutorial. The goal is
to get students to reflect on their experience so far. It is important at this point that they realize the
labeling they are doing is actually programming the computer. The examples they show A.I. are the
"training data".

Levels 6 - Using Training Data

In the second half of the activity, students will teach A.I. about a word of their choosing by showing it
examples of that type of fish. As before, A.I. doesn't start with any training data about these labels. Even
though the words in this level are fairly objective, it's possible that students will end up with different results
based on their training data. Some students may even intentionally train A.I. incorrectly to see what
happens. If students are reflecting on how machine learning works, it should be encouraged!

 6 Using Training Data

 Content Corner 

The fish in this tutorial are randomly generated based on some pre-defined components, including
mouths, tails, eyes, scales, and fins, with a randomly chosen body color, shape, and size. Rather than
looking at the actual image data, A.I. is now looking for patterns in these components based on how the
student classifies each fish. It will be more likely to label a fish the same way the student would have if it
has matching traits.

Level 7 - Impacts on Society

Say: Artificial intelligence systems learn from the data we give it, but that data could be opinion-based or
biased.

 7 AI: Impact on Society - Video

Say: Think back to the examples of artificial intelligence we discussed at the beginning. Think of a time
where machine learning might have gotten something wrong in the real world? (For example, voice
recognition fails to understand you.)
Prompt: How could biased data result in problems for artificial intelligence? What are ways to address this?
Discuss: Beginning in small groups then moving to whole class, students share their responses. The goal of
this discussion is to bring students back to the context of artificial intelligence in the real world.
Say: Some ways to address bias are to use a larger or more inclusive set of training data. In the final part
of the activity you’re going to teach A.I. a word that could be interpreted in different ways.

Level 8 - Teach A.I. a New Word

Here, as before, students will use training data to teach A.I. to recognize different types of fish. The words
in this list are intentionally more subjective than what students have seen so far. Encourage students to
decide for themselves what makes a fish look "angry" or "fun". Two students may choose the same label
and get a very different set of results based on which fish traits were their focus. Encourage students to
discuss their findings with each other or go back and choose new words. Each student will rely on their
own opinions to train A.I. which means that A.I. will learn with the same biases held by the students. As
students begin to see the role their opinion is playing, ask them to reflect on whether this is good or bad,
and how it might be addressed.
Open question: What is a problem you care about that artificial intelligence could help to solve?

 8 Teach AI a New Word

Celebrate and Keep Going!

Print certificates for students to celebrate their achievement.
At the end of the lesson encourage students to head to Code.org/learn where they can get ideas for more
ways to keep their adventure with computer science going.

 Teaching Tip 

Professional Learning Opportunity

Are you interested in teaching your students more about AI? Consider engaging in our self-paced
professional learning module, Preparing to Teach AI and Machine Learning! This module will give you
all the tools, skills, and knowledge you need to teach your students our AI and Machine Learning unit.

Extended Learning
Help Classify Animals at Mountain Zebra National Park
Snapshot Safari has placed hundreds of hidden cameras across southern Africa, capturing millions of
images of beautiful and rare animals. Students can help protect the endangered Cape Mountain Zebra by
classifying the different animals in these images. You can read about the project here or click below to give
it a try!
Snapshot Mountain Zebra - Zooniverse

Digging into the Information View

On the final results screen, a visualization of A.I.'s machine learning model can be viewed by clicking
.

Example 1: Training based on one trait (body shape)

As an example, let's look at a student who is training A.I. to recognize "circular" fish by only selecting fish
with by looking at a single trait:

"Circular" body shapes:

After about 30 sets of training data, we can see that A.I. is able to classify the fish perfectly. It has
successfully recognized a pattern: All of the fish the student selected had one of the same two body
shapes.
"Circular" fish - training: 30

By clicking on the information button, we can see An individual fish can be inspected by clicking it.
that A.I. is very confident that "body" is the most The information here shows that for this fish, A.I.
important component overall in the fish it has determined that its body shape was a positive
determined are "circular". indicator that this was a "circular" fish.
 "Not circular" fish - training: 30

By toggling the view, we can also analyze the

fist A.I. determined are "not circular". Green
bars pointing to the right represent a signal
that the trait is "circular". Red bars pointing left
signal that it's "not circular". A.I. decides how to
classify each fish by weighing *all of the
components, even those that aren't shown in
the list.*

What about the other traits?

You may have noticed that the other traits such as color seem to matter to A.I. even though the student
was just focusing on body shape. Besides the obvious fact that A.I. can't literally read our minds, there is
another reason A.I. might draw some of the wrong conclusions.
The fish in this tutorial are generated randomly. The fish the student labeled as "circular" happened to
randomly have some of the same colors. If the set of training data didn't include fish that are green with
round bodies, A.I. will be less confident about classifying one as "circular" even if that's what the student
intended.

Example 2: Using the Information view to improve the model

Adding more training data not only changes the results, but the data shown in the Info view. Sometimes the
results graph shown can make it clearer why the results don't match expectations.
Let's consider a student who wants to train A.I. to recognize "angry" fish. They want to accomplish this by
selecting any fish with eyebrows that point inwards and frowning mouths. They will label a fish as "angry" if
it has a combination of these traits:

"Angry" eyes: "Angry" mouths:

Can A.I. figure out what the student is doing without being explicitly programmed? It depends on how
much training data the student provides and the quality of data in the set.
"Angry" fish - training: 30 "Angry" fish - training: 200
"Angry" fish - training: 30 "Angry" fish - training: 200
Here we can see that A.I. picked up right away on
the "eyes" being the most important trait, but
closely followed by "color", not "mouth". There
are a few purple fish in the left image that have
mouths that are different from what the student
was targeting. Perhaps many of the "angry" fish Improved results after additional training.
the student initially selected were purple? One
way to improve the model would be to continue
training, making sure to keep going until several
purple "not angry" fish have been correctly
labeled.

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