Six African Children tell us how they use AI to learn and pick career paths

Happy Children's Day!

To celebrate Children's Day, we interviewed 10 children between the ages of 7 and 16 to learn about their prospective careers and how they use AI in their daily lives. While some of the responses were excluded due to incoherence, the remaining interviews provided valuable insights. It's important to consider the voices of all children, even those whose ideas might not be fully formed yet. 

This can help us identify any misconceptions they may have about AI and future careers, and shed light on how children are already interacting with artificial intelligence in their everyday lives.

Folakemi | Female | 10 | Nigeria

What do you want to become in the future?
I want to become an artist in future because I love drawing anytime I’m bored.

How do you think AI works?
I think AI works with the use of…intelligence and high technology.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
Watching TV and playing games.

How has AI helped you in learning or your career decision?
It can break learning into smaller steps. Sometimes when I want to draw something, I use my grandmum’s phone to ask AI for steps on how to draw.

Alfred | Male | 14 | Ghana

What do you want to become in the future?
I want to be an inventor in the future.

How do you think AI works?
By using algorithms (sets of instructions) and data to enable machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving and perception.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
I use AI to learn new things and to create images by describing how I want the person or image to look.

What’s your preferred AI tool?
Meta AI (Llama 3) 

How has AI helped you in learning or your career?
It has given me the chance to explore different interests. I get to learn about famous inventors and inventions, their journey and how they solved so many problems. It has also helped improve my understanding of being an inventor and develop skills such as creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking.

Inonge* | Female | 14 | Zambia

What do you want to become in the future and why?
I want to become an obstetrician and gynaecologist because I want future births to be safer and for more women to survive childbirth. 

How do you think AI works?
Errm. AI works for everything, you ask it questions, and it gives you answers. Sometimes I think it’s a person who sits behind and answers the question but then I think that’s a lot of work for one person. So I think it’s a robot.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
I don’t use AI for anything except when I’m bored, I can just text AI.

What’s your preferred AI tool?
WhatsApp AI. It’s nice to text it because it’s so dumb.

How has AI helped you in learning or your career decision?
It gives a step-by-step explanation of concepts and how to perform a task or gives answers.

Valerie | Female | 16 | Nigeria

What do you want to become in the future and why?
I want to become an entrepreneur and a digital creator. The reason is that in Nigeria today businesses have become a good means of having a social circle or network mostly and a good source of income.

How do you think AI works?
I’m not quite sure. But I know it’s a software application that can do different things you want it to. And there is an AI for almost everything to make life easier.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
AI is really good it helps me in doing lots of tasks like my day-to-day assignments in school. It helps elaborate and explain more on the particular area I tell it to. It helps with my designs, videos and social media content as well. This makes it look and read better.  

What’s your preferred AI tool?
Chat GPT, Canva, CapCut.

How has AI helped you in learning or your career decision?
I use it a lot to write my assignments. It prepares questions for my tests and exams for my WAEC so I don’t have limited knowledge of what my teachers teach at school alone. Everybody uses AI today to work and create content. And it will make it easier for me to edit my content and start a business when I want.

Camilla | Female | 13 | Ghana 

What do you want to become in the future?
I want to be a detective in the future because I want to spot malicious citizens in the nation just like the popular Sherlock Holmes who uses clues and observation to solve riddles. I’d love to get to the bottom of crimes that are committed or about to be committed. 

How do you think AI works?
AI in my knowledge works through the use of algorithms and data.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
I use AI to edit pictures, for example, AI helps me to edit pictures by tapping on the erase button and cleaning any item on the photo that I don’t want to be.

What’s your preferred AI tool?
ChatGPT

How has AI helped you in learning or your career?
It has helped me understand topics that I struggle with because it breaks it down. It has also helped me learn about the qualifications I need to become a detective. 

Mulenga* | Male | 15 | Zambia

What do you want to become in the future?
I want to study many things. First, I want to study psychology because I want to understand the human mind, how it works, and how it can be used to improve society and help other people overcome their mental challenges. I want to study biomedical science because I want to develop the cure for many diseases. I also want to study political science because I think it’s a cool topic and I love it.

Wait am I supposed to be speaking formally? Anyway you’d know what to do, you’d do text-to-speech or rather speech-to-text, yes.

How do you think AI works?
AI works by feeding it with readily available information and then it produces an output based on the input that it is given. So AI is only as good and accurate as its input and maker.

How do you use AI in your everyday life?
I do not use AI frequently because I think AI is not good for the human mind, creativity and human society at large.

What’s your preferred AI tool?
I think the best AI out there is ChatGPT. Meta AI is bad.

How has AI made learning easier?
Since AI produces output based on input and its main source of input is the internet, it gives concise summaries on topics that are difficult to understand. If you’re given concise summaries of difficult concepts then learning will become easier. 

Has AI impacted your career decision?
Yes. First, I wanted to do something computer science-related but then I changed my mind because I realised I should pursue a career that’s unlikely to be usurped by AI and AI tools.

*Name has been changed for privacy reasons.