An Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Middle School Students
With all the bad news emanating from MIT Media Lab in the last few weeks it is good to have something positive to report. MIT have released ‘An Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Middle School Students’ created by Blakeley H. Payne with support from the MIT Media Lab Personal Robots Group, directed by Cynthia Breazeal under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. This license allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon these materials non-commercially as long as you include acknowledgement to the creators. Derivative works should include acknowledgement but do not have to be licensed as CC-BY-NC.
Details of the curriculum can be found in a Google docs document which they say includes a set of activities, teacher guides, assessments, materials, and more to assist educators in teaching about the ethics of artificial intelligence. These activities were developed at the MIT Media Lab to meet a growing need for children to understand artificial intelligence, its impact on society, and how they might shape the future of AI.
The curriculum was designed and tested for middle school students (approximately grades 5th-8th). Most activities are unplugged and only require the materials included in this document, although unplugged modifications are suggested for the activities which require computer access.
Pontydysgu are partners in a new project working with vocational teachers and trainers around the imapct of AI in their work. Although this curriculum was designed for middle school stdents a quick look suggests much of it can be amended for our users.