Every administrator, teacher, and student should know how to use AI and how AI works because when you understand the underlying fundamentals, you will be better able to use AI safely, effectively, and responsibly.
—Pat Yongpradit, lead of Teach.AI
When I was a kid, one of my favorite bits of television was the catchy, animated series of public service announcements, called Schoolhouse Rock—shorts like “I’m Just a Bill”—which I still remember four decades later, in this case about how a bill makes (or does not make) its way through Congress and ultimately to the president, either to be vetoed or to become law.1
The cartoon was so iconic, a member of Congress once spoke about it. Dave Chappelle, Saturday Night Live, and Family Guy all made jokes about it. And many of us really did learn some basic civics there. (Another that sticks out in my mind was “Conjunction Junction,” about grammar; still others taught history, math, and other subjects.)
We need AI education that is just as catchy, focusing on what chatbots can and can’t do (“I’m Just a Bot”), when to fact-check, how to use AI effectively, how to look out for bias, something about how it all works, and what our legal rights are, if we are harmed by AI.
AI literacy is also something we should be teaching in elementary schools, too, with more advanced curricula in middle school, high school, and colleges—and for older adults too, who are perhaps most likely to be taken in by AI-produced scams. Some individual schools may do a little of this, and of course people are already starting to share newsletters, blog posts, and other media with friends and coworkers on an ad-hoc basis. But if we are all to live in a world steeped in AI, we need to be systematic about AI literacy. Everyone needs to have a basic understanding of what it can and cannot do, and we have to support that as a society.
Realistically, part of the challenge here is that some of this training might itself change as AI develops further. But we can’t let that stop us. We need AI literacy every bit as much as we need media literacy, math literacy, and training in critical thinking.
Congress should support AI literacy, with adequate funding. The good news is that, as I was drafting this, two members of Congress, Representatives Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Larry Bucshon, MD (R-IN), introduced an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy Act.2 It’s meant to amend the Digital Equity Act and codify AI literacy as a component of digital literacy. Their goal is to outline a set of literacy skills around AI, to promote them, and to make sure that they are taught in schools and colleges, available through libraries and on the web and elsewhere.
Fantastic! Now let us hope for the best, with a reminder from Schoolhouse Rock about what’s next:
I’m just a bill, yes I’m only a bill
And I got as far as Capitol Hill
. . .
Whether they should let me be a law
How I hope and pray that they will.