🧠 AI and your family

🛡️ The five rules for using AI safely

These are taught in the free lesson “5 rules for using AI safely”. Pin them up where your child uses a device.

1. 1

   AI is a tool, not a friend

   It can be helpful and friendly-sounding, but it doesn't know or care about us the way people do. Real friends are people.

2. 2

   Keep private things private

   Never share an address, a school, a password, a photo of your face, or someone else's secrets. What you type may be stored.

3. 3

   Check the facts

   AI can sound very sure and still be wrong. Check important things in a trusted book or website, or ask a grown-up.

4. 4

   Tell a grown-up if something feels wrong

   If something is scary, confusing or upsetting, tell someone you trust. You will never be in trouble for telling.

5. 5

   Be honest about using it

   Use AI to help you learn, not to do your thinking for you. Say when you used it, and follow your teacher's rules.

🎓 What children learn

AI Explorers follows the five “big ideas” of AI education set out by AI4K12, a US teachers' and researchers' initiative.

• Big idea 1: Perception

  Computers use sensors, like cameras and microphones, to take in the world.

  Lessons: How AI sees and hears

• Big idea 2: Representation and reasoning

  Computers turn the world into numbers and look for patterns in them.

  Lessons: What is AI?, How AI sees and hears

• Big idea 3: Learning

  AI learns from examples, so the examples decide what it gets right and wrong.

  Lessons: Teach a robot, Too few examples, Garbage in, garbage out, Fair robots

• Big idea 4: Natural interaction

  We talk to AI in everyday language, so asking clearly makes a big difference.

  Lessons: Talking to a helper, Add the details, Good requests, good answers

• Big idea 5: Impact on society

  AI affects real people: fairness, privacy, honesty, trust and who is responsible.

  Lessons: 5 rules for using AI safely, AI can be wrong, Real or made by AI?, AI and your privacy, AI and honesty, AI and people, Fair robots

By age

Ages 5 to 7

• Tell machines that follow fixed rules from machines that learn
• Teach a toy robot with examples and see it get things right and wrong
• Learn the five safety rules in simple words

Ages 8 to 11

• Understand that AI learns patterns from examples, and can be wrong while sounding sure
• See how missing or wrong examples make a robot fail
• Spot clear and vague requests, and tricks like fake pictures

Ages 12 to 16

• See how unbalanced examples can make AI unfair to some groups
• Think about privacy, honesty and responsibility when using AI
• Connect it to real coding in our Advanced track (a chatbot, sentiment and nearest-neighbour lessons)

💬 Conversation starters

Talking together matters more than any lesson. Try one at dinner or on a walk.

• What do you think AI is? Where have you seen it today?
• How do you think a computer learns to tell a cat from a dog?
• If a robot only ever saw red apples, what might go wrong when it sees a green one?
• Can an AI be wrong even when it sounds sure? How would you check?
• What kinds of things should we never tell an AI, and why?
• Is an AI a friend? What's different about a real friend?
• Would it be fair for a computer to decide something about people using only some of them as examples?
• When is it fine to use AI for homework, and when isn't it?
• How could you tell if a picture or video might be fake?
• What's something you'd love an AI to help with? What should a person always do instead?

🔒 How AI Explorers keeps your child safe

• No real chatbot or AI model is used anywhere in AI Explorers. Everything runs inside your child's browser.
• The “helper” in the Prompt lab is clearly labelled as pretend. It is a simple program that only writes about a few fixed topics, and it never repeats anything a child types.
• The Train-a-Robot lab is a real, tiny learning method (nearest neighbour), so children see how AI genuinely works, using only dots on a grid.
• No camera, no microphone, no photo uploads, no accounts needed to play the free lessons.
• Nothing a child types or does is sent to us. Stars and progress stay in the browser on that device.
• Lessons say plainly that AI doesn't think or feel, that it makes mistakes, and that people are responsible for it.

📱 When your child uses AI tools elsewhere

• Many AI services set a minimum age, often 13 or older. Read the terms of any tool before your child uses it.
• Sit with younger children the first few times, and agree what is OK to ask.
• Turn on any safety or privacy settings, and use a nickname rather than a real name.
• Remind your child of the five rules: tool not friend, keep private things private, check facts, tell a grown-up, be honest.
• Talk about how it made them feel. If an answer was odd or upsetting, that's worth a chat, not a telling-off.