At one point in the first episode of Westworld — HBO’s new sci-fi Western set in a theme park populated by robots who exist for the perverse entertainment of the wealthy human visitors to the park — the park’s head writer complains to his boss about the latest updates to the “hosts,” as they’re called. “Ford and Bernard keep making the things more lifelike,” he said. “But does anyone truly want that?”
Well, yes and no. For as long as humans have considered the fantastic possibilities of artificial intelligence, we’ve feared the consequences of what might happen if that AI became too intelligent, too human. (Mars enthusiast and Tesla CEO Elon Musk neatly encompasses both sides of the coin, developing self-driving cars while tweeting that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”)
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
