AI Education for America’s Youth

While AI was already a broadly discussed topic among most industries before, November 30, 2022, marked a pivotal moment.

“ChatGPT comes out and everything flips over on its head, because now you have, slowly but surely, every single teacher and administrator intersecting with this,” Kotran said. Within a couple of months, AI startups and businesses began saturating the market.

Through its free and available resources, aiEDU offers educators curriculums on AI literacy. “We design it so that a school leader or local organization could go to our website and they would have everything they need to get started,” Kotran stated. 

The nonprofit has received funding from various industry leaders, including OpenAI, Nvidia, Salesforce, Google.org and Microsoft, but one consistent supporter from its inception has been prominent defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. 

“Booz Allen Hamilton knew where the country was headed,” Kotran said, noting the company’s early investment in AI capabilities. “They had insight into our vision of the future of education, the future of work.”

For Booz Allen Hamilton, AI is seen as a horizontal skill, said Jinnyn Jacob, who currently leads the company’s TechXplore initiative, which trains 1 million students on AI. Additionally, she leads the company’s global philanthropic partnerships.

“It’s not just a tech skill, this is really a life skill and it’s shaping everything,” she told SIGNAL Media in an interview. Even more so, AI skills are at the edge of national security decision-making, Jacob stated.

The passive use of AI capabilities is not enough, she continued, noting a rising trend in students’ use of AI with a lack of critical thinking and true understanding of its potential. “For us, a lot of that is empowering students with skills, but it’s also helping young people to actually know how to ask the right questions. Can they challenge bias? Do they know how to protect data? Can they spot misinformation? And can they use AI in a way that can reinforce human judgment and relationships, and not replace them, which we find is a spot of concern,” Jacob said.

Investment in AI literacy is therefore paramount in creating the next thoughtful and responsible leaders, she added. 

Echoing Kotran’s and Jacob’s statements, Vinci also stressed the importance of critical thinking. Taking it a step further, Vinci encourages kids to think like spies. 

“Some of these skills are the skills of philosophers,” he said, noting parallels with intelligence analysts’ skill sets. “The number one thing in philosophy is essentially to question everything and everyone, and we don’t do this in the education system right now. I think most children are taught to accept the truth as what the teacher says, and there’s a balance here.” 

While the notion of respect toward educators should not be lost, students should be encouraged to question information they receive. Schools are beginning to embrace this, he said, with students being taught to cross-check information across online resources.

“Another one is triangulating information,” Vinci said, highlighting a core intelligence analyst skill set of never trusting a source. The method uses multiple data sources to gather information on a single topic.

Additionally, Vinci noted the significance of operational testing to verify information. “Test yourself and your own biases, and especially in a world where your biases can be very innate … you may not realize you’re getting them, especially if you’re being educated by an AI [tool],” he said. 

The issue is equally, if not more important, for students within military communities, an area that Booz Allen Hamilton is also focused on. 

“We’re realizing that they have their own unique challenge sets. They are more often targeted … for things like phishing attempts,” Jacob explained. Empowering those communities to ensure there is knowledge of concepts like deepfakes and AI-powered disinformation is critical. While the company does work on enhancing tech skills, ethics and security are also of significance, Jacob noted.