Y08W02WR What Artificial Intelligence Is

Part 1

How to Write

Informative – Informative report

An informative report presents organised information on a specific topic for a defined audience. It is written for readers who need clear, factual knowledge they can rely on. The tone is precise and impersonal — the writer’s role is to explain accurately, not to offer personal views.

  • Ideas & content: Select the most relevant facts for your topic and audience. Prioritise information that builds understanding, and leave out what does not serve the report’s purpose.
  • Structure & cohesion: Divide your report into clear paragraphs, each with a distinct focus. Open each paragraph with a topic sentence and use connecting words to link ideas across sections.
  • Voice & audience: Write in third person and maintain a consistently factual tone. Avoid personal opinions or casual phrasing — sound like someone who has researched carefully.
  • Language choices: Use precise, subject-specific vocabulary. Write in the present tense for facts and past tense for historical events. Vary sentence length to maintain readability.
  • Conventions: Spell all technical terms accurately. Use commas, colons and full stops correctly to present information clearly.

Common pitfalls: Including facts without connecting them to your purpose — each sentence should build the reader’s understanding, not just add detail. Losing paragraph structure — keep each paragraph focused on one clear idea.

Part 2

Your Task Plan for Today

The brief

Question: Write a three-paragraph informative piece explaining what artificial intelligence is, how it works at a basic level and where it is already being used. Select the most relevant material from the notes, organise your explanation clearly and write entirely in your own words. Not everything in the notes needs to be included.

Stimulus: A Year 8 technology class is producing an explainer series on emerging technologies that are already shaping everyday life. Your audience is a Year 8 student who is familiar with AI tools but has little understanding of how they actually work. The notes below contain more information than you can use. Read through them carefully and select what is most useful.

- Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as recognising images, understanding language, making decisions and generating text.
- AI systems learn from large amounts of data rather than being explicitly programmed with rules for every situation.
- Machine learning is a type of AI in which a system improves its performance by processing data and identifying patterns.
- Deep learning is a type of machine learning that uses structures loosely inspired by the human brain, called neural networks.
- Large language models (LLMs) are AI systems trained on vast amounts of text - they can generate human-like writing, answer questions and translate languages.
- Examples of widely used AI include recommendation systems on streaming and social media platforms, voice assistants, navigation apps and spam filters.
- AI is used in healthcare to analyse medical images, detect diseases and assist in drug discovery.
- Self-driving vehicle technology relies heavily on AI to process sensor data and make driving decisions.
- AI systems can exhibit bias if the data they are trained on reflects historical inequalities or lacks diversity.
- Generative AI tools can produce text, images, music and video from simple written prompts.
- The computing power required to train large AI models is significant and energy-intensive.
- AI is increasingly used in hiring processes, raising concerns about fairness and transparency.
- AI systems do not truly understand language or ideas - they identify and reproduce patterns in data.
- Some researchers raise concerns about AI being used to generate misinformation, deepfakes and disinformation campaigns.
- The question of how AI should be regulated is being actively debated by governments around the world.
- AI tools are already used in many secondary school classrooms for language learning, essay feedback and maths tutoring.
- Artificial general intelligence (AGI) - a hypothetical system with the ability to perform any intellectual task a human can - does not yet exist.
- China, the United States and the European Union are all developing national AI strategies.
- AI systems can perform some tasks far more quickly and accurately than humans.
- Experts disagree significantly about the long-term risks and benefits of advanced AI development.

Task Analysis: This task asks you to select and organise information from a list into a clear, accessible explanation for a Year 8 audience. Your job is not to include everything, but to choose the most relevant facts and explain them in your own words. A strong response defines AI clearly, explains how it works, and grounds the explanation in real examples.

Quick Plan

Plan your three paragraphs before writing:

  • Paragraph 1: What AI is and how it works at a basic level
  • Paragraph 2: Real-world examples already affecting Year 8 life
  • Paragraph 3: Why understanding AI matters
  • Decide which facts to prioritise and which to leave out.

Define the key concept

Open by explaining what AI is in clear language. Do not assume your reader has prior knowledge. Define the concept fully before exploring how it works or what it does.

Selection and relevance

You have more information than you can use. Select the facts that are most relevant and interesting to a Year 8 reader. Prioritise examples they recognise — recommendation systems, voice assistants, AI in school.

Paragraph focus

Each paragraph develops one main idea. Use a clear topic sentence and support it with selected facts. Avoid mixing multiple ideas in one paragraph — that confuses the reader.

Tone & voice

Write for a Year 8 reader with no specialist knowledge. Use clear, accessible language. Explain technical terms as you go rather than assuming the reader knows them.

Ending technique

Close on a note of significance — why does understanding AI matter, or what questions does it raise?