Principles of AI Overview

Principles of AI is an introduction for high school students, with no coding or extra math required. You will open the machine, work with it, and question it. You learn how AI systems learn from data, how to use them without handing over your thinking, and how to judge what they do in the world.

The course is built like an engineering class: short guided Activities build skills, Projects apply them to something real, and one open-ended Problem at the end asks you to serve a real client and defend your choices.

In person, 60 minutes a day, five days a week, for 11 weeks (55 periods). Every unit has the same shape, and the guidance fades as you go:

Every unit tells the same story: a client walks in with a real question about AI. Units 1 and 2 are practice for answering it, and the Problem in Unit 3 is where you do. The last day of each project and the final check are no-device, so you find out what you can explain on your own.

You will use AI in this class, and so did the person who built this site. The skill is knowing what to hand off and what to keep.

• Use it where an assignment allows it, and check what it gives you.
• Keep an AI Use Log: what you asked, what you checked, and how it went.
• Use the Prompt Playbook for patterns that work and ways to catch mistakes.
• If you turn in something you can't explain, it is treated as plagiarism.

• No coding experience and no math beyond what you already have.
• A school device with a web browser on most days. Your teacher will tell you about any accounts.
• Curiosity, and a willingness to question a confident machine.