Introducing Variational Autoencoders to High School Students

Zhuoyue Lyu, Safinah Ali, Cynthia Breazeal

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are a compelling way to introduce K-12 students to AI education using an artistic medium, and hence have drawn attention from K-12 AI educators. Previous Creative AI curricula mainly focus on Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) while paying less attention to Autoregressive Models, Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), or other generative models, which have since become common in the field of generative AI. VAEs' latent-space structure and interpolation ability could effectively ground the interdisciplinary learning of AI, creative arts, and philosophy. Thus, we designed a lesson to teach high school students about VAEs. We developed a web-based game and used Plato's cave, a philosophical metaphor, to introduce how VAEs work. We used a Google Colab notebook for students to re-train VAEs with their hand-written digits to consolidate their understandings. Finally, we guided the exploration of creative VAE tools such as SketchRNN and MusicVAE to draw the connection between what they learned and real-world applications. This paper describes the lesson design and shares insights from the pilot studies with 22 students. We found that our approach was effective in teaching students about a novel AI concept.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationIAAI-22, EAAI-22, AAAI-22 Special Programs and Special Track, Student Papers and Demonstrations
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Pages12801-12809
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)1577358767, 9781577358763
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 30 2022
Event36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2022 - Virtual, Online
Duration: Feb 22 2022Mar 1 2022

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2022
Volume36

Conference

Conference36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2022
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/22/223/1/22

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence

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