This image of a microchip clean room is an example of the type of image students investigate to learn more about “what AI is made of.”
What is AI made of?
This activity called “What is AI made of?” where the aim is for students to change the way they ask questions about technology to help us have deeper, and more critical reflections about them. “What is it made of” provides an interesting complement to questions such as “who benefits?” and “who is harmed?”
Using the PowerPoint slides on the button below, students will investigate a set of images (e.g. copper miners, an active ethernet cable, a data center/ screenshots of an X post from Andrew Tate, Python code for scraping data from websites like X, a picture of data labellers in the Philippines, code for neural learning etc.). The aim is to examine the whole sociomaterial spectrum, even including an image of sharks and another of orangutans, who all are implicated in ‘making AI’. There are alternatives for how to use the cards and ways to modify the activity for different grade levels.
By the end of the activity, students should be able to better visibilize the real ‘cost’ of AI and break the image that AI is a robot or magical sparkle somewhere in a digital fantasy land parallel but separate to our own.
This activity was inspired by the work of people such as Kate Crawford's with her book and website Anatomy of AI.
More about the author
Dr. Reed developed this lesson and agreed to host it on the Civics of Tech website. The activity was developed with funding from the Audencia Foundation.
Heidi Reed
This activity was developed by Heidi Reed. Heidi Reed is a socio-legal scholar exploring the business and society relationship. With a PhD in Applied Social Science from the Hong Kong Polytechnic and a JD in Law from Indiana University, her research draws on a multidisciplinary background in law, psychology, and anthropology. Her legal education encompasses American, international, and Chinese law through collaborations with The Hong Kong University. Her work focuses on the ethical dilemmas and value conflicts inherent in corporate responses to societal challenges. Prior to academia, she worked with human rights organizations across the U.S., Asia, and Africa.