Creativity and AI: Thinking Like a Five-Year-Old

Hi everyone, my name is Liam Benjamin and I work for this company here. It's called Teach Me Quickly One More Time.

I've been a teacher for 22 years. That's probably actually improvement having the lights off this better. Don't fall asleep though because we'll hear you.

I'm aware that I am the only person standing between you and pizza right now so I will make this as entertaining as possible and we're really straining our eyes.

But yes, my name is Liam. I've been a teacher for 22 two years, and I thoroughly believe that teaching is a creative profession. And I often do lots of talks and presentations and bits and pieces to do with a creative mindset.

And I work with schools and companies also at the place. And I am here today to talk to you about creativity with an AI in mindset.

So don't worry, you don't need this. There's a QR codes letter, but I'm going to put this on YouTube. You won't be able to see me, but the presentation I'll be there.

I'm going to ask something of you today because I'm going to give you lots of things. I'm going to ask if you could give me something.

One thing that I love to do whenever I'm presenting or working with people is that I just want a song. So I've handed out some post -it notes in and around the room today. And I was wondering if I could collect a song from you.

Could be something that you're listening to this week that you love. Could be something that you played at at your wedding could be something that you always go to to cheer yourself up there's a post -it note if you haven't got a post -it note pop your hand in the air i can come around with one

what was really interesting was a lot of people were asking for pens which i love that we didn't bring a pen but we brought all of our devices with us today um and yeah we didn't do you want to wait perfect there you go um feel free to pop your name on them pop why you love that song on there and pop thank you very much Marcus yeah just spend a few seconds few minutes writing down a song that you love a song that you want to share with me and I will be adding it to our playlist as well songs are a really good

way of telling stories and I love collecting stories I'm an educator I I love making people write with pens. And I will be judging your handwriting. Yes, I don't know if it works, but good luck. I know, you're so good at typing now, aren't we?

Fantastic, thank you so much. Oh, Happy by Pharrell. Yeah, that's a good song, well done. Thank you very much. No pressure, it's fine. Not everyone's a music fan, that's okay.

You can pass them to the end of the aisle, I can crank them up later on, but thank you so much for participating oh the lightning seeds, that's a good I remember them, they're cool thank you so much

ooh, thank you Chris Stapleton gotta say, haven't, don't know I'll come back to that then, thanks Eric? I've heard of him, but not heard the music, yeah thank you very much, that is purely just to entertain me, if you've got a post note I will come round and collect those up, thank you

Mapping Education and the Arrival of AI

you pass them to me later it's a really a big shame that you can't see this gorgeous illustrative map that i have here this is the first um i love visualizing education as i say i've been doing this for a very long time and hands of any teachers in the room thank you very much professors teachers yeah different hats um there's a very beautiful

place on this side of the island called Standard City. So even if you are not an educator, a professor, a teacher, you would have been to Standard City. You would have zoomed, that's it, zoom in, well done, you would have made and spent some time at Standard City. That's where all most teachers live, churning out those standards, getting you reading, writing, maths before we send you on your merry way into the world.

I spent most of my teaching career on this side of the island, in the forest of free thought and the kingdom of play, because this young young lady over here, is usually my target audience. I teach five and six -year -olds normally. And for most of my years, I've been sailing up and down the river of creativity, experimenting with different things, trying different things, always getting into trouble for doing the wrong things in class.

And then suddenly, in the middle of this island of education, there was an eruption of AI. And everybody, no matter what age you were teaching, everybody felt this eruption of AI and I think that AI came out of this

combination of the age of entertainment that we live in where we love watching Netflix we love social media we're always scrolling we're always watching something and the sister age of entertainment is the age of efficiency we want things done now we want things quickly because if we do things quickly we've got more time for entertainment and so they're kind of you know married together we want our food to be delivered quickly we want cars to drive themselves we want it all and of course if we're being entertained then other companies can suggest things to us while we're being entertained so it's a new commodity it's a very powerful one and this age of entertainment and this age of efficiency is where i think ai is currently sitting in at the moment for some of us

Beyond Efficiency

and I see it as this tool of efficiency but I thought to myself I'll read this to you what do I want my students to know about AI I didn't want to introduce it to them as a tool of efficiency because sometimes I think that is where our mindset sits in this box of it's efficient it's going to do things for me it's going to help me achieve something but when I was asked to introduce introduce AI to five -year -olds.

I was like, well, I don't want to tell it that it can do their homework for them. I don't want to tell it that it can write the stories for them and do their maths. I don't want to tell them that. So we had a lot more fun.

Now, it's a real shame because I've got some absolutely stunning examples of work here by some five -year -olds. This one says, AI is a machine and she can do lots of things do you know that's maxwell age five ai is a robot it has a laptop in its head sometimes it can do things wrong they know they know ai is something you can become that's a little bit neo matrix for my liking but i appreciate that and then this young

young child down here in the corner has drawn a robot with lots of arms coming out and hooking things on and doing stuff. I like that it was a she over here. I love that that's gendered.

And this slide here that you can't see. AI is a machine because machine can think very fast. AI is cool. AI can do lots of lovely pictures. Very true.

AI is a robot that helps people think more uniquely. Hands up if you think uniquely because of AI. Fantastic. Well, no one. Brilliant. Keep that mindset.

Now, on this slide, there was going to be a really powerful quote from Mary Poppins. In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap the The job's a game.

AI as a Tool for Creativity

And that is what I wanted to let my children go home with, the idea that AI can be a tool for creativity, that it can be something that is going to take your imagination, take your ideas, and make them happen. That was something that I wanted to leave with my class.

Designing Toys of the Future

So for one particular project, we were investigating toys. And we were exploring the history of toys, the toys their parents played with, the materials that toys were made from, and this whole lovely circle of life.

And then we started thinking about toys of the future. What did they want their children maybe to be playing with? What do we want children of tomorrow to be playing with?

And we could have easily popped that into AI and said, make a toy of the future. But being the teacher I was not going to make it that easy for them. So I gave them a writing task, that led to a drawing task, and they had to design their own toy of the future.

Now Now, this lovely example, I'm going to bring my laptop outside so you can have a browse there. But this lovely example is of a child who's drawn a picture of a toy. It's called the Egg Drop 2000. So futuristic. And she's designed it to incorporate the motions of a toy, of it carrying an egg in a basket, basically. Beautiful.

This one here, and there was a pun in here, but we can't get to that now because you can't see it. A puppy is soft.

So one of my key components when you're writing with children is that on this particular task, I really wanted to get them across the point where if they didn't give AI the exact information, it wasn't going to make the toy that they wanted. So when I've got children who are not using adjectives, who are not using the right words to describe quite what they want to be built, AI is not going to understand you.

Why have you spelt it like that? sorry can you go back and check that really making them go back and work for it basically cunning ploy and so this particular child I was like you've got three adjectives there spelled wrong love go go back and check that which she did but unfortunately for her and myself I didn't notice one small error in the

corner her toy here I don't know if you can see this it's called rainbow dad should have been called rainbow dog but because her G's and her D's were upside down, AI was just like, it's called Rainbow Dad, all right then, off we go.

Going back to the point we had at the beginning, AI makes mistakes, maybe it is dyslexic, absolutely. So, you know, Rainbow Dad, Rainbow Dog, it's a thin line.

Learning Through Clear Prompts and Mistakes

So for me, I like to think of AI as a tool for creativity rather than a tool of efficiency and that was the message that I really wanted to make sure that my children understood and what a better age to be teaching them that then what we've kind of been taught about AI at the moment so if we apply that tool to

Prompts That Spark Imagination

any way that we're working when it comes to AI I could give it a picture of Lego bricks and say I want to build this or I could give it like a bunch of Lego bricks and say what can I take from this what can I make from this so I wanted to give you some very cool alternatives to the prompts that we might be using.

I'll tell you my favourite as well. Instead of finish this, you could have re -imagine this. Instead of produce the final version, provoke my next version.

My favourite one, though, is make it quicker or make it stranger, which I like. Really bending the rules of what we kind of should be thinking or working towards.

Creativity in Education

I want to just bring in Sir Ken Robinson. He is somebody that I admire a lot. I use a lot in my work, my presentations.

He really believed that creativity and education are so entwined that actually we educate creativity out of children as they get older and older. And I think maybe some of us have felt like that, that our creativity isn't necessarily rewarded in certain places or spaces.

And Ken came up with some eight lovely core components about education. Only one of them was creativity. And generally throughout your experience of education, you would have come across one of those.

And I've attached them to a box, to a cube, the Ken cube, I call it. And whenever you place a problem or whenever you you place an idea or an imagination a spark of something in the center of that box and you can use those components around the edge to facilitate a little bit of imagination a little bit of creativity a little bit of thinking outside of the box ironically so if there's any one thing that i

can give you today one thing to take away from think more like a five -year -old please thank you Thank you very much. My name is Liam. Yeah, thank you.