should AI literacy be a required class, and what would it cover? I’m on a curriculum committee and this question came up. the arguments for are obvious. the arguments against, and the question of what the content even is, are harder.
the content question is the hard one. AI literacy means different things to a computer scientist, a historian, a nurse, and a graphic designer. a single required course would either be so broad it’s useless or so narrow it’s irrelevant to most students. the stronger argument is discipline-specific integration rather than a standalone course.
the half-life problem: a course designed now around specific tools will be outdated in two years. any required course needs to focus on durable concepts, how these systems work, what they can and can’t do, how to evaluate their outputs, not on specific tool use which changes constantly.
the ethical dimension is the one most likely to have lasting relevance. not ‘how to use ChatGPT’ but ‘what does it mean to use these tools in a society, what are the tradeoffs, who bears the costs.’ that’s the content that doesn’t expire with the next model release.