AI Impacts on Children & Society

This unit examines how AI shapes children’s learning, safety, rights, and future work environments by exploring bias, manipulation, surveillance, and emergent technologies such as lethal autonomous weapons and deepfakes. Students evaluate ethical and social implications and develop practical strategies for teaching AI literacy and protecting children and workers from harms.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze sources and impacts of algorithmic bias, nudging, and manipulation on children and educational environments using concrete examples and case studies
• Evaluate ethical, safety, and human-rights implications of autonomous systems (including lethal autonomous weapons), AI-enabled surveillance, human trafficking, and deepfakes in family and community contexts
• Demonstrate age-appropriate instructional strategies and materials to teach children about AI, foster creative skills, and build resilience to misinformation and manipulation
• Assess potential workforce effects of AI—including job displacement, surveillance at work, and the debate over human-only roles—and propose policy or practice recommendations to protect child and worker welfare