The Age of AI: What Kids Need to Learn

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So my view for a while has been say, starting in high school, obviously not in K, but to spend one-third of the whole curriculum, and I do mean a third, teaching people AI, and the other two-thirds should be.. reading, writing, and arithmetic, face-to-face with real strict testing, and basics, and all that is completely important. But if you don't know AI, in a sense, you know, within a few years, you won't know anything. ”

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We should learn more about how to properly use specific internet tools and stuff like that. But I feel like we should teach them more about AI safety [and] prompting. Like, prompting to specifically get what you want from AI, you have to be really, really descriptive with AI prompts and specific keywords.”

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Fundamentally the great question of AI is, ‘With this technology tool what new skills do I need to make it solve something urgent and powerful?’ We want kids practicing that all year long so they're gaining facility and skill. I want to be careful that we don't try to make it narrow like, ‘Write a good prompt,’ because AI is developing so quickly – change is the biggest part of it. You want kids constantly adapting to what the new tool can do.”

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Kids need to be educated about what [AI] is, what it's collecting, how it's being used. And then being smart with it, showing it that it can be wrong so they know when to question something and not just take it as it is.”

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AI literacy is really a critical life skill, especially understanding how the algorithms work and how they are shaping us. And it's critically important that we teach our children how these algorithms work. What are the incentives? What are the motivations? They are optimized for engagement and not truth. And so we really want children to understand that and to be taught that earlier because they are engaging with these algorithms at very young ages. ”

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One of the most important things you can learn about AI is definitely understanding how to recognize what is AI or recognize what AI takes from things, as well as recognizing the ethical uses of it. There's a lot of gray area around what's considered ethical and unethical about using AI.”

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You need to learn not only how to think critically and communicate and collaborate and be creative and problem solve generally, now you have to learn how to do these things in a context with AI. You have to learn how to specifically collaborate not just with other humans, but with AI. How do you think critically, not just generally, but specifically about AI outputs?”

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A class about the changing technologies would be good because we could learn things that might not necessarily apply when we're actually old. I kind of wish there were more classes about things changing. And being able to adapt to that because a lot of my classes have had the same material for a really long time, which is good for those subjects, but I feel like I need to be able to learn how to adapt to technology changes.”

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I think that – more than ever right now – [it] is really important for them to be able to understand that the process is just as important as the final product. It's teaching students how to ask the right things to get what you want. What do your [AI] prompts need to look like to get the information that's going to help you? You can't just say, “Improve this essay.” Like [instead] say, “How can I improve my topic sentences, or my reasoning or those kinds of things?”

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Maybe, like there should be a class to learn about AI and how to use it properly, and use it in an actual good way, instead of just asking it for stuff and getting it. Maybe teachers explaining more about how it affects your knowledge and like, if you use AI to complete work directly and not with your own thinking, how it affects your grades and in your future.”