Scotland's first teacher of artificial intelligence has been appointed at Mearns Castle High School in Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire. Former principal teacher of biology Jamie Laycock has taken up the role, which is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK.
School embraces AI rather than ignoring it
Staff at the school decided that instead of pretending AI does not exist, they would provide students with AI literacy lessons to help both pupils and staff come to grips with the new technology. The message underpinning the new council job is: "We can't just hope AI goes away."
The move comes after a report by the University of Edinburgh found that Scottish schools have been underprepared for the rapid rise in AI. Some pupils have used the software for their homework while others use it as an exam revision aid.
Teaching scepticism and human skills
One of the goals of the lessons is to teach young people to be sceptical of any AI output and give them the skills to be able to question it, challenge it and use it responsibly.
Speaking with BBC Scotland, Mr Laycock said: "When a young person is using it, they need to be aware that this is a machine that they are interacting with and for it not to impact on their own ability to think and critically evaluate things."
He added: "We are going to be really focused on those human skills, it is not just about AI. It is about how you think or how you should be thinking in this day and age of AI."
Early lessons focus on deepfakes and hallucination
Early lessons for students have been based around spotting deepfakes - images, video or audio created by AI software that almost perfectly mimic real people. What some pupils thought would be an easy task - deciphering which images were real and which were AI generated - turned out a lot tougher than expected.
Other things the AI literacy lessons will focus on include "hallucination" - when AI software confidently presents information as true even though it has just been completely made up. Mr Laycock said: "I think hallucination is actually a really bad word, but it basically makes stuff up. For a young person, if you don't have what we call 'foundational knowledge' it might be hard for you to figure out whether something is a hallucination or whether it's genuine."
Other potential dangers of AI which the lessons will cover include "anthropomorphisation" - where people treat chatbots with human-like qualities as if they are trusted friends or experts because they sound human - and how AI software can contain biases depending on the information it has been fed.
Lessons for all pupils and staff support
All first and second year pupils at Mearns Castle High School will receive the dedicated AI literacy lessons, while older pupils will be taught about AI through personal and social education (PSE) classes. An elective class is also to be made available for senior pupils.
For staff, Mr Laycock will be on hand to help his colleagues' understanding of the technology and to create new teaching materials for other schools.
