How it works / Thread 1
The AI Loop: Learn, Spot, Guess, Check
How pupils understand what AI actually does. Every year group returns to it, so knowledge builds into a secure schema rather than a collection of separate facts.
- 1LearnIt is given lots of examples (data), chosen by people.
- 2SpotIt finds patterns in those examples.
- 3GuessIt uses the patterns to make a prediction: a label, a next word, a video, a picture.
- 4CheckIt cannot check itself against the real world. People must.
| Step | What the AI does | How the idea grows |
|---|---|---|
| Learn | It is given lots of examples (data), chosen by people. | Year 1: it learns from lots of examples. Year 5: training data, test data, permission and fairness. |
| Spot | It finds patterns in those examples. | Year 1: spotting a secret sorting rule. Year 4: patterns in words. Year 5: rules versus learning. |
| Guess | It uses the patterns to make a prediction: a label, a next word, a video, a picture. | Year 1: it makes a guess. Year 4: next word prediction and how sure it is. Year 6: generated images, text and voices. |
| Check | It cannot check itself against the real world. People must. | Every year: Check is always the human's job, and that is where IDEAL comes in. |
Pupils meet the AI Loop in Year 1, The Mystery Rule.