Robots and AI: the difference and the limits
People often mix up robot and AI, but they are not the same thing. A robot is a machine with a body that does jobs such as lifting or painting. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer program that looks at a lot of information, finds patterns in it and uses them to make a choice or a guess. A robot can use AI, but a map program or a translation program is AI without a body. Both are advanced, but they have limits. They do not feel emotions as people do, they work well only on the tasks they were made for, and they can be wrong when their information is wrong or incomplete. That is why humans must check important results. When you read an information text, find the main idea first, then underline the facts that support it. Your book has a text on robots and AI on page 42: read it after this lesson and find two limits that it mentions. Here we practise with our own text.
| Robot | AI | |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | a machine with a body | a computer program |
| What does it do? | moves and does physical tasks | finds patterns and makes choices |
| Example | a factory machine that lifts boxes | a map program that finds the fastest road |
| Limit | needs people to design, control and check it | needs people and good information |
A robot is a machine with a body. It does jobs such as lifting boxes in a factory or painting car doors. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is different: it is a computer program that finds patterns in large amounts of information and uses them to make a choice or a guess. A robot can use AI, but many kinds of AI have no body at all. For example, a map program that finds the fastest road is AI, but it is not a robot. Both are very advanced today, yet they have limits. They cannot feel emotions as people do, and they only work well on the tasks they were designed for. Humans must still check their work, because an AI program can make mistakes if the information it learned from is wrong. This is why people and machines work best as a team.
Robot or AI? Write six examples on cards: a machine that lifts boxes, a program that suggests a route, a translation program, a toy car you push, a machine that paints car doors, a program that recognises spoken words. Sort them into robot, AI, both, or neither. Explain your choices to a grown-up.