Participatory design of an AI workshop for educational institutions

For what future are we preparing our youth?

Generative artificial intelligences (AI) such as ChatGPT are on everyone's minds, but there is often a lack of critical awareness in dealing with these tools. Our experts Lukas Hess and Anna Boos, both researchers at the University of Zurich with a focus on digital inequality and AI and ethics respectively, see a clear discrepancy between the current state of research and the public hype. While the general public talks about abstract risks such as the extinction of humanity through artificial intelligence, concrete, more pressing issues such as systematic discrimination by automated systems receive little attention.

"We do not learn for school, but for life! That was already said in ancient Rome. But for what life? For what future should we prepare our children?" So says the website of the Dübendorf primary school. It was a pleasure for us to be asked by the school management to approach this question and to travel through the information jungle of the current AI debate.

Within a few weeks, thanks to this starting point, we were able to organise, develop and implement the workshop together with the Dübendorf school. The result is a participatory, critical classification that enables decision-makers to draw their own conclusions about how they would like to deal with such technologies in their respective contexts.

Personalised workshops through participation

The workshop format was developed in close cooperation with the professionals of the Dübendorf primary school and took into account their specific needs and wishes. The inclusion of basics such as "What is AI?" and "How do AI tools work?" enabled participants without prior knowledge to enter the topic directly. With simple examples, the basic functioning of these tools was explained and persistent myths were cleared up.

The participants were able to learn how to use more than 10 different tools in a playful way. Our experts provided additional in-depth information in order to be able to critically classify the acquired practical as well as theoretical knowledge.

The implementation with 24 managers from the Dübendorf school in the Impact Hub was very positively received and had a consistently high level of participation throughout the entire half-day format.

The involvement of people interested in AI from the Dübendorf primary school in leading the workshop made it possible to introduce local contact persons for future questions from employees in a low-threshold manner.

Here to Stay

The participatory design of the workshop revealed a significant insight: many people remain silent in discussions about AI for fear of ignorance or lack of expertise, although it is precisely now, in the phase of societal adaptation of these technologies, that active engagement needs to take place. Therefore, one of our goals was to provide participants with a basic understanding of generative AI - what it is, what it can do and, most importantly, what it cannot do. The format allowed participants to develop their own critical viewpoints and ask questions: What assumptions, expectations and fears are addressed when AI is warned about? And how do we actually define AI?

The success of this workshop format underlines the urgency and need for such events. Generative AI is already here and will continue to be present in the future. It is therefore of great importance that we critically engage with it now and actively participate in the discourse. Only if we deal with generative artificial intelligence today can we have a say in the future.