The Real Work of AI Education: Anu Höysniemi with AI Adventure - Safe Exploration & Building Skills - The Real Work Podcast

Hi, everybody. It's Jennifer. Today, we are welcoming Anu Hosniemi. She is the founder of AI Adventure, and this is a fast-growing company helping kids explore artificial intelligence safely, responsibly, and smartly. She brings over 15 years of experience in analytics, AI strategy and management consulting, and she has had roles in top-tier management consulting and as vice president at Fiskars. After witnessing how rapidly AI was transforming the world and how few quality resources existed for families, Anu launched AI Adventure to help kids explore AI safely and responsibly while building future-ready skills like curiosity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. She has in-person pilot programs in Wisconsin, which have drawn strong interest and excellent feedback from parents, kids, and partners, and she's expanding to nine new locations in January. I have learned so much from her, so let's welcome Anu. How are you, Anu? Thank you so much. Great to see you. All great. The sun is shining. Yes, it is beautiful today. Is it freezing there? It's very cold here. It is cold, but the sun is shining. The sun is shining today. Yes, I love it. So let's start with, tell me a little bit about your journey to get here, like kind of a walk me through your resume. Absolutely. So my background is I have a master's degree in business and then 10 years I worked in management consulting, helping companies to grow and improve their profitability. Years I worked in Fiskars, leading our analytics and strategy, and in that role I saw how fast AI is changing the world. And also at home at the same time I was so frustrated when my two kids only wanted to watch YouTube, and I decided it's time to do something about it. It's enough. Yes, yes. So how did you get started with this AI adventure? Like what was your first thing that you did? So we first started to build some fun things with my kids. So instead of watching YouTube, we for example made a really cute birthday video to grandma by using AI. Also we did a lot of like building and coding Lego, so we built something and then we coded them to do fun things. Also we have done a lot of like AI assisted learning, for example doing our own interactive math quizzes by using Google Gemini. And also now we are actually building our own AI game. Very, very fun. I did not know that you could do like math quizzes and things on AI, so how do you do that? Can you tell us a little bit about that? So of course many apps, many options to do it, but my favorite is Google Gemini. So you go to Google Gemini and there is this study mode, and then you can ask for example that hey create math quiz for third grader to practice multiplications. You can even specify that hey make it easy, make it hard, and then also the best thing is that then it will like proposes you easier or harder questions based on your answers. Oh like in real time? Well it first gives you like 10 questions and then if you depending on how many you get right, then it recommends would you like more harder questions, and that's kind of like why it's so engaging because they are just the right level. They are not too easy, not too hard, and that's why it's so motivating that the kids want to continue practicing them. Okay I love that. So I know many teachers are blocking AI because they think it is like cheating, but I think from what you're saying it sounds like this could be a really good classroom tool to use math games. It's so many like tools and so many opportunities how AI can be powerful for personalized learning and when you learn to use it the right way, it can really help you to learn not to cheat and that's why I strongly believe so many results out there that shows how personalized learning can prove powerful results and I've actually saw that firsthand with my own kids that how they got so excited and motivated to practice more because personalized learning is so engaging and their math scores went up a lot because of that personalized learning. Okay that's amazing because getting kids to study math is always a chore so I am definitely going to try that out. So we know AI is so incredibly powerful but it's also a little scary and you talk about teaching kids how to be safe so what are some things you want to share with us about like safety and like what to look out for before we get into like all of the good things? So we actually have so many risks with AI that you need to be extremely worried about. We actually have this safe AI rules that we discussed with kids and it's S is smart like shark so learn to use it smart for learning not for cheating. Then A is alert like alligator so then always protect your personal data, your privacy, learn what not to share online and then F is fact check like fox so AI only actually predicts face and pattern so that's why you need to understand that and learn what you can trust and what not to trust. And then last E ethical like elephant is that you still need to be honest and understand biases how to use AI responsibly. So we have fun games and we discuss some of those safe AI rules that kids learn to like protect themselves and understand what is smart use of AI. Okay what kind of games do you use with the kids? So we have for example we have built this AI detective by AI adventure and there are some fun examples some fun tasks that the kids get to like decide that hey is this the right thing to do is this modern responsible use and then when they play those games they learn that hey it's actually like this can be good learning tool this is extremely like dangerous. So for example this AI stuffed animal chatbots are increasing and growing. My recommendation is please do not use those stuffed animal chatbots because they can be very harmful for child development and you can develop attachment for them. I think it's so much better for kids to like run outside and be with actual real friends rather than like developing connections with those chatbots. So please stay away from them but like use AI for other good things. So is it a stuffed animal that you talk to or do you like hook it up to the computer? Like I don't it's actual stuffed animal that has the chatbot inside. That's kind of spooky. I don't I don't really that just sounds weird just saying it out loud. Okay so we will avoid the chatbot stuffed animals. And even chatbots in general like using for companionship as a friend that's not good use of AI. Oh I've heard about this but I didn't quite understand that so basically it's using AI as a friend is the kind of danger. Okay I get it. So I love that you're talking about like making sure your kids go outside and making sure they they work together and they have real friends. Can we do that with AI or is that a separate thing? No absolutely. So it's AI like I think the most important thing is that like hey like use AI as a tool and never use it as a friend or companionship when you use it as a tool it can be actually like very helpful. So for example like one time we like the kids used AI to like hey give me ideas to make outdoor scavenger hunt or like give us some fun fun ideas like what we could do as an or where we could go for outdoor adventure as family. So you can actually like use AI as a tool to get some fun ideas for outdoor games or outdoor like adventures or anything like that. Oh that is clever. So that's really interesting. So the kids get to be really creative then in using the AI tools to come up with even more fun and creative things. Okay so it sounds like kids well I know they are kids are just way more creative than we are as adults. I think it's just kind of innate in them. So what are some things that maybe adults weren't doing that they can be doing with AI to kind of make their lives better? Because I basically just ask AI questions and then it answers me. So what can we do? So I have used AI a lot to automate all manual work. So for example if I need to convert any files to any calendar management anything like that. Earlier I spent hours typing it manually now it all happens automatically in in seconds. And also another example what we had recently in our house like our water heater broke down. I took a picture of the model put it in chat GPT and it helped me to fix it. So I was able to fix it in seconds. So it's also a great like technical helper. So many like in everyday life how it can actually like help you to save time and make your life easier. So then I can spend more time with the kids go for fun outdoor adventure when I don't need to spend time like manually typing things. I can automate those and then do fun things to really be there. I love that. So I'm gonna tell everyone that I took a part of your class and you taught me how to put my calendars that look ugly and it takes hours to put everything into your family calendar. And literally you taught me how to do that in seconds and I just did it for next year's calendar. So it's already in my 2026 calendar. I am thrilled with that. So we want you to tell people the steps to do that because I thought that was brilliant. So let's start there. How do we do that? How do you add this to your calendar? So I'll do a practical example. So this works for any hobbies anything where you need to do a lot of events into your calendar. So for example our school has 33 school out days every year. So earlier like typing those 33 school days into your calendar manually takes some time. So then what you can do is that you can upload a picture of the calendar and then you can chat to BT and then you can prompt that hey for school turn school out days into ICS calendar file and make calendar event from 83 to say no school days. And then click and you get the ICS calendar file and then you can just click and import that and that takes less than a minute and everything is automatically in your calendar. Yeah it is beautiful everyone. If you don't know where to start with AI start with that one and you are going to be hooked. I love it. Okay now I'm intrigued by the water heater. I love to fix things myself. So what did you take a picture of the whole water heater or the part that was broken like so what do you do? So there was this like I took a picture of the like that shows the model number and error code. So I took a picture of that water heater model and error code and then it showed that like we actually have a lot of floods in our area. So then then chat to BT told that okay because it has like humidity that's why it stopped working. So make sure that it's like make sure it's safe to restart. Then it told me that okay seven times you need to say low high low high to fix that and I did seven times like low high low high and it worked like 30 seconds and it was fixed. I would never ever figured out this like seven time low high on my own but that's like it works for any like technical things like any like if you need any excel help if you need any computer help how do I do this how do I fix this it's just like so powerful. Amazing and think of all the money that you saved by not having to hire someone to come in and fix that let alone if you would have had to replace the whole thing the cost for that. So okay absolutely absolutely amazing. All right so I want to talk a little bit more about like collaboration with with AI. How do we encourage kids to kind of get off of their screens that are just using for like YouTube like you were saying or just stop having the long chats like you know online like what can they do together in person to work together on AI? So for example in December we have this AI adventure scavenger hunt Christmas edition okay so then they work together as a team to solve some exciting problems and like they learn with that they actually learn the logic how AI works and they learn to understand for example that hey AI only predicts based on patterns and that will help when they learn that then they better understand that hey why I need to always fact check and why I should never use it as a friend because it's only like predicting based on patterns so then it can like then they learn like hey what is appropriate use of AI and what is like not appropriate so we have some really fun fun games problem solving teamwork together so we'll that's like that's kind of like one I love that I think that's so that's so much fun because kids are so interested in this and I do think that everyone learns I'm going to say differently in a group because I think that AI is such a good tool like you were saying for that personalized learning but then I think we kind of learn different things when we collaborate this is a question I usually ask later but I'm going to ask it right now who have you learned from who have been some of your best mentors and what have you learned from them that maybe you're applying to your new venture here with the AI world I've been so lucky to have so many different mentors for example from one mentor I really learned a lot about people leadership and other men and other mentor has been like the most brilliant strategy thinking I've ever seen a third member has been really like powerful getting things done implementing and I think it's I've been I'm very grateful that I've learned so many great things and I have and if they can like lessons from all of them and I'm hoping that now to bring it all together to make this business successful well you're definitely sharing your gifts with the world with this so I love that taking your last answer a little like step further where you said like AI learns like your patterns and will it be better able to give you what you want so like let's say that I always want the same format of something like will it learn that I want that format or do I have to tell it every time I seriously don't know the answer like what do we do how do we do that so you can actually for example chat GPT you can personalize so you can say it to be like I want you to be critical or I want you to be friendly so you can in the settings like personalize it also also you can build custom GPTs for different purposes so you can have for example like one custom GPT you use for social media and other custom GPT use for like it's hobby so you can build different custom GPTs and also of course like depending on the settings like it will learn about you but then also I have to also give you advice so you also want to protect your privacy and you want to make sure that you are not sharing your data for future model development so make sure that setting is off but you can still personalize it for you and it will still save your history so it will then learn from you but that's amazing okay um do I need a paid account or can I just use the general one that's a question so uh what I get quite often so get started with the free one but then uh the paid version that's kind of like at least for me where the big time savings come because that enables to like convert files that enables like create different type of files so I have paid and I think it saves me so much time that it's definitely worth the money well worth the money because it's a save so much time but if you have never used before like get started with free okay that's great tell me about AI a little bit more tell me like what are some tools that people can get started with that they've never tried this of course the challenge is that it's so many tools out there and if you start exploring all those hundred tools coming out every day you'll get overwhelmed so my my advice is start with one tool chatgpd is probably like easiest and the best all around perplexity for research because it shows you the sources really well so that's a really powerful tool for for research recommend trying that I also like I mentioned earlier google gemini express study mode and integration with with google is also really nice also if you need one to create for example pictures materials presentation videos then canva is pretty nice for that so I think those are my four favorites to get started with I just learned from my daughter that canva was AI and I did not know this I was very pleased to hear that they were actually using canva in her school for a an English activity and I thought that was super creative the teacher what can teachers think about in terms of AI to kind of encourage their students to use it kind of in a you know safe and responsible way what can they do the teachers out there it's a thing where AI can be very powerful it can help personalized learning is one thing and also another thing what I've found really exciting what I've seen really exciting that the also like when they do some fun things with technology they also actually practice spelling reading writing things that they wouldn't otherwise want to practice but then they when they get to like for example do quiz or build even build their own quiz they actually do a lot of writing yeah they otherwise wouldn't be so exciting for for them so that's another fun thing and also then of course like it's so many things like how you can use AI for good so for example my daughter used canva to edit her gymnastics fundraising video and raised a lot of money for that because the video was so nicely edited so I love that we are again this is because of you we are really encouraging my daughter to use AI more and more and I just love all of these ideas for getting your kids to use it and I also love the idea of there is this learning that's happening and this practicing because you're using your writing skills you're using sort of your creativity and your problem solving so kind of everything all at once so I think if you're on your website you talk about like problem solving critical thinking and I can't remember the last thing curiosity okay so tell me a little bit about like how you get kids to do this a little bit more do you have some more tips for parents on what they can be doing with their kids yes so we have like some fun games for example this like AI detective where the kids like spot learn the spot is it like fake or true and then why not there actually has been like it's very worrying how much these deep fakes have increased so for example it's very easy to like fake caller ID showing mom calling and then it's mom's voice cloned saying like hey I need money or something like something like very scaring and that's why for example you can have a like secret family code so like when you have practiced these kind of things that how to like learn to like spot deep fake through practical examples that will then help it to become like much better at critical thinking when they learn how it's easy to fake things and then they can be more aware and like stay safe online because unfortunately all this like online deep fakes are becoming so much more common and they need to be there and ready to protect themselves I love the emphasis on critical thinking because I think oftentimes in schools we we learn facts and figures and how to do things but I sometimes think that critical thinking piece is not taught as much as I personally would like so I never thought about it that this is such a good tool for critical thinking and also I still love that it's such a great tool for her curiosity and for being creative I think that that's like such a misunderstood benefit of AI so so many good things but I do want to just touch on tell me a little bit more about this like code word if something happens I need a little bit more information on that but I don't want to scare people so tell me so for example let's say that like you have your daughter calling clinging on the phone and it says something like I'm in danger send me money and then you really like start to doubt that like is this fake because it can show your daughter's name as ID so then it can feel so real and the like voice sounds absolutely real so then you have a like secret code word with the family then you can like check that hey you can say for example that code word and then like ask the code word and then if your daughter knows that then you know it's real so that's like one example how to like learn to like know if it's really you or somebody else okay that is that is such a great tip I I love that um okay so where are you teaching your classes right now and what are you doing in your classes so right now we are in Milwaukee area and we are expanding into new locations providing more opportunities in person we have a few different classes right now so for example in in December we have this uh AI adventure scavenger hunt Christmas edition where the kids get to like solve different problems and work together as a team to learn how AI works and how to like how to use it safely and responsibly and how to spot these deep fakes also we have this uh discover AI safe fun and smart start that's all focused a lot of on like safety and learning to protect yourself online and learning what is good use of AI then we have also this built and innovate with AI where the kids get to create and build their own things for example games stories on app with AI so we have a lot of really fun programs I love it and then you also have stuff for parents too so for parents I'm providing some free AI tips so how they can use AI to save time so then they have more time to be with their kids when they can automate all the like manual things so that's the one thing and also I'm sharing so some tips that hey how to protect and stay safe and also some practical tips that hey what are good things you can do together with AI for example like this quizzes learning mode we discussed earlier and so sharing some fun inspirational ideas what you can do together use AI. Okay your stuff is so amazing I have shared it with so many people and everyone around the world needs this information I think your business is really going to just expand beyond your imagination because I've shared this with so many people and everyone loves the tips because so many people want to know more for themselves for their kids and you just don't even know where to start so before we close out I want to learn a little bit more about where we can find you but before that we talked so much about hard work and and what it takes to succeed but I really believe that there's this huge generosity piece and kindness that gets us to where we are so do you have any stories about an act of kindness or generosity that has changed your career or gotten you here today? I love this question it's like I strongly believe in generosity and kindness and that's why I'm also committed working in with non-profits and also providing technology education for low-income families who otherwise cannot afford this because I really think this can solve the root cause for many problems and for example help people getting jobs so this is very important topic for me I think for me personally I'm so grateful for many of my ex-managers who have given me opportunities at work and promotions and sometimes like they have believed me more than I've believed in myself and I may not sometimes not have had the like deepest knowledge but they still have believed in me and given me the opportunity which I'm still very grateful for them. I love that I can see why they believe in you because you are like moving mountains with all of this I love it so we know that you have aiadventure.com where people can go can you tell me a little bit more about what you're offering so people can find you if they're looking for all of your information Yes so of course our like the most important thing is this in-person classes but we are offering so if you like to bring AI adventure to your community please reach out then in addition to that I'm sharing some free tips for parents how to use AI how to stay safe and then also some fun activities for kids how to use AI or safe AI rules or virtues and some fun activities for other kids. Okay so I'm gonna put all of your contact information everything for Anu in the description and in the show notes so if you're looking to contact her and telling you I learned so much in our little 15-minute lesson I can't even imagine what people will learn in an hour with you so definitely reach out to her bring her to your community check out AI adventure for all of the free resources again I know I keep saying this I've sent this to so many people and everyone loves it so you must check out AI adventure Anu this has been so much fun anything else that I've missed that we need to talk about Thank you so much for having me it's amazing to work with you and I hope that I can inspire a few more families to educate how to use AI safely and responsibly while inspiring these future ready skills like problem solving critical thinking and curiosity. Yes oh my gosh I love it and I think for sure we're going to have you back on again because there is so much more that we can talk about but check out AI adventure for more and thank you all for being here share this with your friends so that more people can learn about Anu and AI adventure thanks everyone have a great day thank you so much