Shark AI uses fossil shark teeth to get middle school kids interested in paleontology and computer vision
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Christine Wusylko, University of Florida and Pavlo Antonenko, University of Florida
(THE CONVERSATION) Most kids have a natural curiosity about sharks − especially their sharp and abundant teeth. Our team had the idea to use the appeal of this charismatic apex predator to teach how scientists use artificial intelligence.
We are researchers in AI literacy and STEM education who helped create a series of lessons that use fossil shark teeth to demonstrate the power and pitfalls of AI.
The curriculum guides middle school students and teachers through building and evaluating computer vision models that can reliably classify fossil shark teeth. Computer vision is a type of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms and a lot of image data to classify and identify objects. It’s the same technology that enables Google Lens to identify plant species in photographs or self-driving cars to recognize people, cars and bicycles.
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