Exploratorium

Steve and I have always loved science museums and have visited many. The Exploratorium has always been our all-time favorite! It was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, a physicist who became a high school science teacher and then a college physics professor. With a passion for helping students learn through hands-on experiments, along with a grant from the National Science Foundation, he created the Library of Experiments - one hundred classic experiments that are still used in classrooms today. These became the first exhibits at the Exploratorium, which opened in 1969 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Now the Exploratorium is housed in a large building at Pier 15 on the Embarcadero. Though it’s considered to be a museum, it’s really a huge learning laboratory with over 1,000 interactive exhibits about science, tecnology and the arts. We focused on a new collection of exhibits called Adventures in AI (Artificial Intelligence), especially fitting and timely since San Francisco is the epicenter of the AI Boom. It was a fun and engaging way for visitors of all ages to learn more about how AI came about and how it works. It spotlighted hopes and fears about AI and prompted us to think about how it is already changing our world and the ways it may shape our future.

Visual Channels - Deconstruct the way we see the world

AI uses convolutional neural network to process images, recognizing and integrating edges, color, faces, and motion

Common Sense

AI is powerful but can have surprising shortcomings, sometimes stumped by tasks that we consider to be “common sense”

Visitors' thoughts, hopes, and worries about AI

Putting GPUs in perspective

GPUs are the graphical processing units that perform the massive mathematical computations that enable machine learning

Simple Rules, Complex Results

Control a flock of birds in motion by turning knobs to vary Grouping, Separation, and Alignment

The Deviation Game

Try to outsmart AI by drawing something that the humans recognize but the AI bot does not

Can you think like a computer? Find out by playing Guess the Animal. We found this to be surprisingly tricky!