Wise Tales of Young Minds Story 7

Story 7 — The Machine That Learned Slowly

The tablet lay on the table, quiet and bright.

Riya sat cross-legged on the floor, tapping the screen gently with her finger. Pictures appeared and disappeared. Some were animals. Some were shapes. Some were songs she already knew.

After a while, the tablet showed something new.

A song Riya liked.

She looked up.
“I didn’t ask for that,” she said.

Her father looked over from the window. “But you listened to it yesterday, didn’t you?”

Riya nodded.

🧩 A thinking pause

“How did it remember?” she asked.
“It doesn’t have a brain.”

Her father sat beside her.

“It doesn’t think like you,” he said. “It learns differently.”

Riya frowned.

“Learning is learning,” she said. “You listen. You try. You make mistakes.”

Her father smiled. “Exactly.”

He opened the settings and showed her something simple — a small list of choices.

“This machine watches patterns,” he said. “Not faces. Not feelings. Patterns.”

Riya tapped a different song. Then another. Then skipped one quickly.

The tablet paused for a moment.

Later, when Riya returned, the screen showed fewer skipped songs and more of the ones she finished.

Riya’s eyes widened.

🧩 Another thinking pause

“So it learned from my choices?” she asked.

“Yes,” her father said. “But slowly.”

Riya thought about this.

She remembered learning to ride her bicycle.
The first fall.
The wobble.
The balance.

“Does it fall?” she asked.

Her father laughed softly. “In its own way.”

That evening, Riya tried something new.

She played a song she didn’t like — and listened till the end.

The next time, the tablet offered it again.

Riya giggled.
“It made a mistake!”

“Yes,” her father said. “Because it doesn’t know. It only guesses.”

Riya leaned back against the sofa.

“So it needs help,” she said.
“Like I did.”

Before sleeping, Riya turned off the tablet and placed it neatly on the table.

She looked at it one last time.

It wasn’t smart like people.
It wasn’t curious like her.

But it was learning — one small step at a time.

And Riya realized something important.

Being intelligent didn’t mean never being wrong.

Sometimes, it meant learning because you were.

Continue to story 8 / Back to Story 6