Reimagining the Future of AI Literacy
With this next generation, how children learn to conquer tasks using new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will be a defining challenge and milestone for humanity. Supratim Pait, a Ph.D. researcher at the Technology Square Research Building (TSRB), is stepping up to pioneer research that helps discover innovative methods and techniques that teach children how to navigate these advanced tools. Pait is teaching AI literacy to children in Metro-Atlanta and answering powerful questions like: What happens when you give kids the tools to reshape their communities with AI? What happens when you let them perform their ideal future?
Pait is a painter, designer, researcher, and educator who uses puppets and AI to help children aged 9-12 reimagine improved civic futures for their communities. His early background in Computer Science evolved into digital design roles at companies such as IBM. Pait now works as a grad student in the Digital Media Department at Georgia Tech. Additionally, Pait is a researcher with the Future Feelings Lab, under the supervision of Professor Noura Howell. Pait is focused on blending art, performance, ethics, and community-based technology design. Pait’s stand-out project is “Play Futures.” This study uses a blend of AI image generation and puppet making to reimagine the future of local community lots, such as Piedmont Park, the Fernbank Museum, and the Clarkston Library. The children reflect on the experience and usefulness of these advanced technologies and improve civic spaces through engagement, play, and performance.
Pait has a strong ethos when teaching children about these emerging technologies. “Our goal is not to teach them how AI works, but what AI is,” he says. With this motivation, Pait embeds critical thinking into technological education. This emphasizes the need to move beyond traditional computational thinking. In this study, participatory design emerges as a tool to bridge the gap, offering an avenue to engage quickly and critically with these new technologies. “It’s like a train that they can choose to go on, or not,” Pait explains. Pait intends to expose children to these new technologies and have them decide if they want to use them to solve problems in their everyday lives.
Decatur Makers hosted the “Play Futures” project. The children split into teams and chose a public space to redesign. Between Piedmont Park, Fernbank Museum, and Clarkston Library, the children used their imaginations to improve these places. They visualized their dream versions of the spaces using ChatGPT and Dali-E image generation. They used Dali-E to create the imagery of their ideal spaces and ChatGPT to write scripts, pitching the pros and cons of the proposed improvements. Then the puppets come in. The children create puppets to act out performances of civic debate. Each puppet represents a different opinion about these AI-enhanced redesigns.
The children’s reflections noted that they enjoyed the speed and creativity of AI but critiqued it for “lacking soul.” Many AI-written scripts were revised entirely, showing the children’s skepticism of chatbots. With this, the performances evolved and became platforms for critical reflection, and not just for entertainment. “The children reflected on what AI gave them versus what they wanted,” Pait explains.
Themes for Pait’s research for past and future projects heavily emphasize AI literacy, especially in underserved and rapidly digitizing communities like rural India. Pait’s research discusses concerns about “exposure vs literacy.” Many populations have access to AI and large language models, but there is little ethical framework. “Kids in India might have access to the internet and AI, but they have little literacy knowledge about its uses or ethics” Pait’s next step is a research project he calls “Community Futures,” where he plans to tap into themes like culture, environment, and infrastructure, to help children in underserved communities become more literate in utilizing AI tools.
Pait’s future includes educating more schools and communities and emphasizing AI’s ethical, cultural, and civic implications. In a world obsessed with speed and scale, Pait’s work reminds us that the future can be slow, small, playful, and deeply human.