On February 6, 2024, the students of a 12th grade class visited the IIIX. As part of their visit, the secondary school class specializing in computer science and technology took part in a workshop on the topic of AI. An important aim of the workshop was to promote young people's AI skills.
Our employees at IIIX, Katharina Anderer, Karl Fischer, Wladimir Hettmann and Thorsten Zylowski, gave the pupils an insight into how generative AI works. They learned what is behind large language models such as ChatGPT, how they are trained and how the content they reproduce is created.
In the interactive workshop, the participants were also able to try out the AI-based educational assistant OPRA (Occupation Path Recommendation Assistant), which is currently being developed at IIIX. OPRA advises young adults on career guidance. Recommendations are generated from existing educational data and real educational stages, which users receive from the educational assistant through so-called 'prompting'. The Gaia-X-compliant assistant uses self-hosted systems that comply with the GDPR. By working with the prototype, the participants gained exciting insights into the development process of an AI assistant.
The students provided valuable feedback on the use of OPRA and how the assistant can be further improved by the IIIX research group. By working together with the target group, many useful insights were gained regarding the further development of the assistant.
The two-hour workshop ended with a Q&A session in which, among other things, ethical aspects of using generative AI were discussed. Many students shared their own experiences of using generative AI, which contributed to a lively discussion. For example, the students asked critical questions about data processing and use. The use of ChatGPT in schools and universities was also discussed. IIIX employees recently published a study on the use of knowledge-based and generative AI-controlled pedagogical agents in the educational landscape.
The IIIX is constantly working with children and young people to awaken their interest in new technologies and research at universities and to strengthen their digital skills.
We were delighted with the visit from the FOS class and the students' interest in the topic of AI, as well as the numerous contributions and active participation.
To the homepage of the MERLOT project, in which the educational assistant OPRA is being developed