While key leaders in the tech industry raised concerns this week about the safety of artificial intelligence, a program in New Albany that helps children with special needs launched a new AI learning tool.
Lifetown Columbus said its life-size holographic “Super Buddy” will boost children’s confidence and self-worth while helping them learn life skills.
Mia is a little Black girl in a light pink jumper, maybe 10 years old. She stands a little less than five feet tall and has a red blanket tied haphazardly around her shoulders like a cape.
In almost all ways, she looks like any other little girl, but Mia is actually not a girl at all. Mia is an AI hologram that appears in a giant light box.
“I'm Mia, a Super Buddy. I may look like a hologram, but I'm really just a friend," Mia told onlookers at her unveiling Tuesday morning. "Someone who listens and helps children believe in themselves. But here's what surprises most people: I'm not the teacher, the children are.”
Mia is designed to ask kids questions about making good choices or handling a difficult situation.
"They pause, they think, and then they teach me. That’s called mirror learning," Mia explained.
Teaching life skills in a safe place
Mia was on display near the entrance to Lifetown Columbus, a colorful, indoor mock village where children with special needs can practice social and practical skills in a safe, quiet environment.
The village has a movie theatre, an art studio, an animal center, a salon, a deli, a medical center and more. On quieter days, children can ride adaptive bicycles around the track and practice traffic safety with the village's working signals.
"This is low stakes and it's also an environment that's very accepting and accommodating," said Lifetown Program Coordinator Angi Blinn.
Formed in 2008, Lifetown is 5,000-square foot village at the Lori Schottenstein Chabad Columbus on Dublin-Granville Road in New Albany. The program runs during the school year and is staffed almost entirely by volunteers. Last year, more than 5,500 students from kindergarten to 12th grade visited the village.
Blinn said children use the village to learn skills like budgeting, waiting in line, or time management.
“Here, if they're throwing a fit, we have a safe place for them to decompress. We have adults who know and care about how their brain is working and what they need to do to get it together, basically," Blinn said.
"I think there's a difference between the active learning versus the passive learning, so they themselves acting as a mentor, as a teacher to another friend."- Yue Li, interim director of the Discovery Center for Evaluation, Research, and Professional Learning at Miami University
AI designed to empower children
Mia, the Super Buddy, was created to help reinforce what kids have learned.
Chabad Columbus Rabbi Aria Coleman said the Super Buddy tool was created in honor of an Ohio State University student who died in 2023. The student had been studying to be a psychologist.
Thriteen-year-old Sasha Farrell of Columbus demonstrated Mia with the Super Buddy's first official conversation.
Sasha tapped the screen on Mia's massive box. "Hey Mia, how are you doing today?" Sasha asked.
After a pause, the box blinged in recognition of Sasha's words.
"Hi, welcome to Life Town, I'm Mia. What part of Life Town were you just in?" the Super Buddy asked.
"I was just in the library," Sasha said.
"Oh cool. So, I have this book report due Friday, and I keep saying I'll start tomorrow then I draw instead, and it never gets done," Mia said, speaking quickly and with a slightly unusual cadence. "How do you make yourself start?"
The short conversation went on, with Sasha explaining her strategy for starting a book report and Mia repeating back the information, adding in affirmations and thanks.
The exchange was not unlike talking to the AI at a Wendy's drive thru, except that Mia has a face. She blinks and shifts her weight. She casts a "shadow" in her box.
Sasha told WOSU that she practiced the conversation ahead of time, but she liked the Super Buddy’s answers.
"It was really cool and it actually looked like there was a human in a box," Sasha said.
"The goal here is, is to teach resilience, self-confidence, self-worth, and other very, very positive things."- Governor Mike DeWine
Engaging with AI
Ahead of the launch, Miami University researchers studied Whitehall 5th graders’ interactions with two earlier versions of Super Buddy.
The researchers found that the kids were significantly more engaged when they learned from the hologram than when they completed a worksheet. More than 70% of children in the study voluntarily wanted to continue working with Super Buddy, compared to about 30% who willingly did extra with the worksheets.
"It's a fun tool to use. Students really, really used it. Like, they actually really used it," said Yue Li, interim director of the Discovery Center for Evaluation, Research and Professional Learning at Miami University.
She added that there's a difference between active learning and passive learning.
"So they themselves (are) acting as a mentor, as a teacher to another friend," Li said.
Governor Mike DeWine praised the technology.
"The goal here is to teach resilience, self-confidence, self-worth and other very, very positive things," DeWine said.
He called it a “positive use of AI” and emphasized its safety, saying it’s controlled by humans setting clear boundaries.
Broad AI safety concerns
Later, while talking to members of the press, DeWine acknowledged the recent buzz about AI safety concerns amid several public cases of runaway AI. Leaders of some of the largest tech companies in the nation spent the week sounding alarm bells and calling for a slowdown in AI development.
"We need to control AI, and coming up with the best way to do it is important. It's in every country's interest," DeWine said.
Lifetown Event Coordinator Rochel Kaltman said the Super Buddy hologram operates in a closed system and will always be used with adult supervision.
She sees it as using AI for good.
"That AI SuperBuddy was created to really unleash superpowers inside of every single child. (It's important) that they know that they matter, that they have a voice and that they have something important to give to the world," Kaltman said.
