Children meet artificial intelligence long before anyone explains it to them. A speaker answers a question. A tablet guesses the next word. A car beeps when something is behind it. By the time the subject reaches a classroom, a child has been living beside it for years with no vocabulary for any of it.
These explanations hand over the vocabulary early, and they are careful about one thing in particular: nothing here tells a child that a computer thinks, understands, or wants anything. That is the most common shortcut in children material about AI, and it is the one that costs the most to undo later.
A computer can look at lots of examples and start to notice what they have in common.
Artificial intelligence is a computer that got very good at noticing what things have in common. Show it enough examples and it starts guessing what comes next.
A robot is a machine that does a job, and somebody had to teach it how.
A robot is a machine built to do a job, and somebody had to teach it how. It is not the same thing as artificial intelligence, and the difference is easy to explain.
A smart helper can only use the instructions, tools, and doors that are open in the room.
Two helpers can know the same things and still do very different work. Give one the instructions, the tools, and the keys. Give the other an empty toolbox. Then see what happens.