The Royal Society has recently recommended that, given its importance to society, Machine Learning needs to be incorporated in to the school curriculum. In this blog series we will explore some simple ways to introduce Machine Learning in to existing teaching across all key stages.

Machine Learning Technology is already a part of all of our lives. It is making decisions both for us and about us. It is the technology behind:

• Facial recognition
• Targeted advertising
• Voice recognition
• SPAM filters
• Machine translation
• Detecting credit card fraud
• Virtual Personal Assistants
• Self-driving cars
•  … and lots more.

To fully understand the opportunities and consequences of the machine learning filled future, everyone needs to be able to …

• Understand the basics of how machine learning works.
• Develop applications by training a machine learning engine.
• Use machine learning applications.
• Understand the Ethical and Societal Issues.

This education needs to start in school from primary onwards. There are many ways it can be embedded in the curriculum, both while supporting other subjects and explicitly learning about machine learning.

In this blog series we will be providing some ideas, activities and resources for use in lessons to go deeper. Many are contained in our free booklet “Artificial Intelligence: but where is the intelligence?”.

Coming next “What is Machine Learning” or jump ahead here