Give our children a licence to think: What AI literacy should look like

WE DO not let teenagers drive without a licence. Even though many can drive a car, driving is consequential enough to require structured preparation: knowledge of risks, demonstration of competence and graduated exposure.

The same logic ought to apply to artificial intelligence.

A chatbot in the hands of a child is not a calculator. It is a powerful machine that can, after only a short period of unstructured use, measurably impair the child’s ability to solve problems and reduce its willingness to persist with a difficult task. That is consequential and hence, warrants a structured response.