“AI will be in all of our lives, so we need to learn and understand what it means before we grow up.”

– Call to Action from Members of Children’s Parliament, aged 8 to 12

Over the last three years (2022-2025), we have been working with our partners at the Scottish AI Alliance (SAIA) and The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) to learn about the impacts of AI on children and their rights through the project Exploring Children’s Rights and AI. Working with more than 140 children from across Scotland, we explored how they interact with AI, what they think the possibilities and risks are for the use of AI in Scotland, and how they can become meaningfully involved in AI development and policy. 

As this project nears its end, we are excited to be launching two learning resources: an eLearning resource for adults working with AI, and a teaching pack for primary schools.

Why Children’s Rights Matter in AI: A resource for professionals
This short course provides an introduction to children’s human rights and helps professionals to explore why children’s rights are relevant when they are making decisions about AI development, regulation and use. The resource includes reflective exercises to help consider changes that adults can make to ensure children’s rights are upheld in their work and workplaces.

Children’s Rights and AI Teaching Pack
Our teaching pack consists of 6 full lesson plans with slides and printable resources for teachers and educators to explore children’s rights and AI with children. The activities in the resource pack have been designed, tested and edited with the support of both children and teachers. The themes that the resources focus on were developed by the children who took part in the project and are a direct outcome of one of their key calls to action, that AI should be in the curriculum.  
This resource pack includes 6 lesson plans with clear learning objectives for children in P5 to P7 including:

• Easy-to-follow and ready to use lesson plans on understanding and exploring AI in relation to children’s lived experience and their human rights  
• Real-life scenarios to explore fairness, safety and privacy
• Animated explainer videos created by children for children  
• Tools for critical thinking, discussion and creativity
• Extensive notes to guide teachers through the AI topic content

“Such a great resource.”
– Karen, Primary School Teacher, Dundee

Both resources can be found via the project website here: childrensparliament.org.uk/exploring-childrens-rights-and-ai/

Animated explainer videos on Ai – created for children, by children – can be found here  youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9oSX4FZBlPVEKGzNh-gOfW8U5iYrsF0Q

We are delighted by the support from the Scottish AI Alliance and the Alan Turing Institute to help make this happen.