As AI is increasingly embedded in everyday life, AI literacy must keep pace – starting with the education of the next generation.
Most people will interact with artificial intelligence (AI) dozens of times a day without even noticing. From smartphone voice assistants and curated social media feeds to translation apps and ride-sharing services, AI is present in most parts of our lives.
To use these tools effectively and ethically, you must first understand them. That’s why Jake Renzella, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science & Engineering, believes we must ensure the next generation is AI literate.
What is AI literacy?
AI literacy isn’t about teaching children how to use AI or build AI systems – it’s about educating them to understand how AI functions and how to engage with it ethically.
“The next generation will go into the workforce and use AI to help them make decisions, some important decisions,” Jake said. “We want to make sure they’re equipped to navigate it ethically and appropriately.”
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s third law states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
"If we don’t keep up with AI literacy, digital literacy and critical thinking, we will see these systems as magical systems, and will therefore be subject to these systems,” Jake said.
“AI is very capable and can do great things for us as long as we know what we want to do with it and we’re in control.”
The first step to understanding AI is being able to identify it. Surveys asking children to identify AI in everyday life, using examples such as microwaves and social media, revealed a knowledge gap.
“Some children can identify where AI is, but broadly, they don’t do a very good job,” Jake said.
“But also, we must keep in mind that the definition of AI changes. What we called AI 10 years ago is not typically what we call AI today, so children don’t have a great innate grasp of what systems are AI and what aren’t.”
To develop this “innate grasp” of AI, you must understand the fundamentals of how these systems work.
“It’s a difficult problem because AI is advancing so rapidly that even researchers can have trouble keeping up with developments,” Jake said. “This means we must focus our literacy on the fundamentals that don’t change.”
Knowing the fundamentals of AI means you should be able to answer these questions:
- Do I understand how AI systems are trained?
- Do I know what AI data training might look like?
- Do I understand how bias can be demonstrated by these systems?
- Do I know who is training these systems and understand their alignment?
“I would say focus on these fundamentals, especially if you’re trying to talk about AI with your children,” Jake said.
Developing AI literacy
Jake leads a team working closely with the charity Day of AI Australia to develop tools to educate the next generation about AI.
“The charity, which provides a free AI literacy curriculum to schools around Australia, got in touch with us at the UNSW School of Computer Science & Engineering to fact check their content for an AI ethics course,” Jake said.
Over the past three years, the relationship between UNSW and the charity has developed, and last year the University submitted an application to Google’s philanthropic company for support to launch a full AI literacy course for school students using generative AI powered games.
The project launched with Win the Farm, a country-wide challenge that saw participating students develop and drive AI bots to spread information and misinformation to swing a pretend election based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
“Bots and AI-driven misinformation on social media is a significant problem – especially in democracies – and we see a massive increase in AI-generated content during elections,” Jake said.
“Win the Farm came from the idea that we could teach children to be aware of content on social media around elections by getting them to create bots to spread information [and misinformation] during a fake election set in the Animal Farm world.”
Around the country, students developed thousands of bots that generated AI content supporting either Napoleon the pig or the opposition candidate, Hetty the hen. The story arc was designed alongside a Netflix TV show writer for the two-week competition, and students were randomly assigned a candidate to support.
“They created bots using real large learning model systems [LLMs] to generate content that harms or supports the candidates,” Jake said. “We were able to show children how easy it is to produce misinformation and AI-driven content at scale, so hopefully there’s more critical thinking when it comes to their own social media use.”
Shaping AI’s future
An AI-literate generation will not simply use AI tools – they'll question them, shape them and decide how they are applied in the world around them.
By understanding how these systems are trained, where their limitations lie and how bias can emerge, young people will be better equipped to engage with these technologies critically and ethically rather than passively.
“Having AI literacy and fluency means this next generation will be the drivers of these technologies,” Jake said.
“When they understand how AI functions, they can decide exactly what they want to do with it and use it to drive new, creative uses that will support their future communities and industries.”
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