AI programming by children using Snap! block programming in a developing country

The development of human civilization today can’t be separated from the Artificial Intelligence. To prepare for this, early education on Artificial intel-ligent should be done. Some activities have been done to support students making AI programs, for example Google AIY, Machine Learning for Kids website, the Wolfram Language, and the eCraft2Learn project. One of the new block pro-gramming languages Snap! has been extended to provide an easy-to-use interface that provides AI cloud services as well as other AI functions. However, there is little research about AI programming learning for children in developing coun-tries. This paper presents how the learning of AI programming using Snap! pro-gramming in Indonesia. The learning process was evaluated with 40 Senior High Schools and Vocational students. 84% students had some basic programming ex-perience but others had none. 70% students who had basic programming experi-ence felt that AI programming using Snap! was easy to understand, yet the stu-dents with no programming experience found it difficult. Even though mostly the students can answer the evaluation question about how AI works and all the stu-dents were keen on creating AI programs using Snap!. We concluded that Snap! programing worked to introduce AI to children and has encouraged children to explore AI programming. However, some improvements are required to improve the learning process of AI programing using Snap! in developing country. The improvements are presented in this paper as the result of this research