The shape of the lesson
By the end of the lesson, learners can
- What counts as AI?: An ordinary program follows rules a programmer wrote for every case.
- Impact on people and jobs: Social and economic impacts are linked, but examiners reward answers that keep them clearly separate and give a specific example of each.
- Impact on the planet: AI runs in large data centres.
- AI: a computer system doing tasks that normally need human intelligence, often by learning from data.
- Social: health, safety, accessibility, bias, privacy, deepfakes, accountability.
- Economic: productivity, costs, new jobs and lost jobs, retraining, who gains the wealth.
- Environmental: energy, water, hardware and e-waste, against efficiency savings; give both sides and a judgement.
One picture every idea returns to
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer system to carry out tasks that would normally need human intelligence, such as learning from data, reasoning, recognising images and speech, and understanding language. AI is used in medicine, transport, finance, customer service and many other areas. Its impact must be judged in three ways: social (effects on people and society), economic (effects on jobs, businesses and wealth) and environmental (effects on energy, resources and the planet). Most impacts have both benefits and drawbacks.
Forty-five minutes, phase by phase
| Time | Phase | What happens in the room | Grouping |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 min | Hook: predict | Open with the question in the title, Machines that learn.. Artificial intelligence now diagnoses illness, drives cars, translates languages and writes text. Put the figure on the board: it is the one picture every idea in the lesson returns to. | Whole class, then pairs |
| 5 to 13 min | Teach and check: What counts as AI? | An ordinary program follows rules a programmer wrote for every case. | Whole class, then pairs |
| 13 to 21 min | Teach and check: Impact on people and jobs | Social and economic impacts are linked, but examiners reward answers that keep them clearly separate and give a specific example of each. Model the worked example A hiring tool on the board, one line at a time. Your turn: Give one economic benefit and one economic drawback of a supermarket replacing checkout staff with AI-powered cameras that charge customers automatically. | Pairs |
| 21 to 30 min | Teach and check: Impact on the planet | AI runs in large data centres. Model the worked example Discuss question on the board, one line at a time. | Connect-Extend-Challenge |
| 30 to 36 min | Check | The four Stage 1 questions from the student lesson, answered on mini whiteboards or by show of fingers. Re-teach the one most get wrong. | Individual, then whole class |
| 36 to 43 min | Plenary | The exam-style questions from Stage 2, one at a time: thirty seconds alone, then a random call. The feedback lines in the key give the examiner's wording. | Individual, random call |
| 43 to 45 min | Exit and homework | Set the worksheet below (6 questions, 20 marks). Learners self-assess against the objectives before they leave. | Individual |
Protect the parts that carry the learning
The sequence carries about fifty minutes of material, so the lab is driven by one student while the class predicts rather than explored freely. Times are a guide.
Protected: the check at 30 minutes. It is the only individual read on whether the key idea landed, and it is not cut.
Cut first if the build overruns: the last check in Impact on the planet, never the check or the plenary.
In a 60 minute block: run worksheet questions 1 to 3 in class as a Rally Coach set and model both the hardest worked example and its check live.
Connect-Extend-Challenge
After the new idea, each student writes three lines: how it connects to what they knew, how it extends their thinking, and what still challenges them. Pairs compare, then the challenges become the plenary.
The full structure, with its variations and the other twelve, is on the cooperative-learning page.
What to head off, and how
| Trap learners fall into | Teaching move that pre-empts it |
|---|---|
| Not every computer system is AI. | A program that only follows fixed IF statements written by a programmer is not learning. Describe AI as doing tasks that normally need human intelligence, often by learning from data. |
| "AI is bad for the environment because it uses electricity" is a one-mark answer. | Say what uses the energy (training, data centres, cooling), and balance it against the savings AI can make. |
The impact of artificial intelligence: worksheet
6 questions, 20 marks. Written in the style of the papers; no past paper question is reproduced.
State what is meant by artificial intelligence.
Identify three applications of artificial intelligence.
A city introduces self-driving taxis that use AI. Explain two social impacts of this change.
A bank replaces many of its customer service staff with an AI chatbot. Discuss the economic impact.
Discuss the environmental impact of the growing use of AI.
A loan company uses AI to decide whether to lend money to applicants. Explain why this raises ethical concerns.
Answer key and marking notes
- The ability of a computer system to carry out tasks that would normally need human intelligence ...
- ... such as learning from data, reasoning, recognising images or speech, or understanding language.
- Medical diagnosis from scans.
- Autonomous (self-driving) vehicles.
- Voice assistants, chatbots or translation (or face recognition, fraud detection, recommendation systems, robotics, expert systems).
- Safety: the AI does not get tired or distracted, so there may be fewer accidents ...
- ... but if it fails it may be unclear who is responsible for an accident.
- Access: people who cannot drive, such as disabled or elderly people, can travel more independently ...
- ... (or privacy: cameras record people and places continuously, so there is less privacy).
- Benefit: lower wage costs, so higher profit or lower fees.
- Benefit: the chatbot answers customers 24 hours a day and handles many at once.
- Drawback: staff lose their jobs and may need retraining for new roles.
- Drawback: high cost to develop, train and maintain the chatbot; new jobs are created in AI and support, but fewer than are lost.
- Training and running AI models in data centres uses large amounts of electricity, increasing carbon emissions if it comes from fossil fuels.
- Data centres use water for cooling, and specialist hardware uses rare materials and creates e-waste.
- AI can reduce energy use elsewhere, for example efficient heating, route planning or balancing renewable energy on the grid.
- Reasoned judgement, e.g. the overall impact depends on the energy source and on whether the savings exceed the energy used.
- If the AI is trained on past data containing bias, it may unfairly reject some groups.
- Applicants may not be told why they were rejected, as the AI's reasoning can be hard to explain (lack of transparency).
- It is unclear who is accountable for a wrong decision, and the company collects a lot of personal data (privacy).
6 multiple-choice questions on this lesson
From the topic question bank. Assign them in the app for a marked score in your gradebook, or run the topic as a class game.
Which statement best describes artificial intelligence (AI)?
- AThe ability of a computer system to carry out tasks that normally need human intelligence, often by learning from data
- BAny computer program that follows IF statements written by a programmer
- CA computer that has the same feelings and awareness as a human being
- DA very fast processor that can carry out more instructions per second than a human
A bank uses AI to learn each customer's normal spending pattern and flag unusual transactions. Which application of AI is this?
- AFraud detection
- BA recommendation system
- CNatural language processing
- DAn autonomous vehicle
Which is an economic impact of AI, rather than a social or environmental one?
- ARoutine jobs such as data entry may be lost, while new jobs are created in AI development
- BAI trained on unfair data may make biased decisions about who gets a loan
- CData centres running AI use large amounts of electricity and water for cooling
- DFace recognition cameras reduce people's privacy in public places
Which is a positive environmental impact of using AI?
- AControlling a city's traffic lights so there is less stop-start driving and lower fuel use
- BTraining a large model on thousands of processors for several weeks
- CReplacing hardware often with newer specialist chips that need rare metals
- DCooling data centres with large amounts of water
A company trains an AI system to sort job applications, using the applications of people it hired over the last ten years. Most of those hired were men. What is the most likely social impact?
- AThe AI learns the same preference and rejects equally good applicants from other groups more often, hiding the bias inside the system
- BThe AI removes all bias, because a computer cannot hold opinions about people
- CThe AI refuses to make any decisions, because the training data is unbalanced
- DThe AI hires more women, because it detects that too few were hired in the past
A student writes: "AI is bad for the environment because it uses electricity." Which version would gain the most credit in a discussion?
- ATraining models and running data centres uses a lot of energy and water, but AI can save energy elsewhere, so the overall impact depends on the energy source and the savings
- BAI uses electricity, and electricity is always produced by burning fossil fuels, so AI is always harmful
- CAI has no environmental impact, because software does not use any physical resources
- DAI is harmful because it causes job losses in power stations, which damages the economy
Quiz key
AI systems carry out tasks such as learning, reasoning and recognising speech or images that would normally need a human. A program that only follows fixed rules written for every case is not learning. AI does not need feelings or awareness. Processing speed alone does not make a system intelligent.
Learning normal behaviour and flagging unusual transactions is fraud detection. Recommendation systems suggest products based on similar users. Natural language processing understands or produces human language. Autonomous vehicles make driving decisions from sensor data.
Job losses and new jobs are economic effects. Biased decisions and loss of privacy are social impacts on people and fairness. Energy and water use are environmental impacts.
Smoother traffic flow cuts fuel use and emissions, a benefit to the environment. Training large models uses a great deal of electricity, frequent hardware replacement adds to electronic waste and mining, and cooling uses water: all three are negative environmental impacts.
The AI copies the patterns in past decisions, so a past preference becomes an automatic, hard-to-see bias that discriminates unfairly. A computer has no opinions, but it learns biased patterns from biased data. It does not refuse to work when data is unbalanced. It has no goal of correcting past unfairness unless it is designed to.
The best answer says what uses the energy, balances it against the savings AI can make, and reaches a reasoned conclusion. Electricity is not always from fossil fuels. Software runs on hardware that needs energy, water and materials. Job losses are an economic impact, not an environmental one.
Slides for this lesson
A projectable deck for every pack is on the way. Until then, present the student lesson full screen: its sections, figure and lab tabs follow the same order as the plan above.