Today's AI has a history of ambitious claims, progress and setbacks. Build a checked timeline and use it to ask better questions about the next big promise.
Video · 3:02Activity time is additionalStudent course
Your next moves
Make the lesson yours.
Before watching, write your first answer: If the people who built AI are worried, what should the rest of us do?
Watch the story. Pause when a choice or claim needs checking.
Open the Think First activity below and complete it before any AI use.
Revise your answer in your own words. Explain what you changed and why.
Your activity / Right here
Bring a notebook. Begin below.
The activity is included on this page. Work on paper or in your own document; keep your first attempt and the evidence you checked.
Warm-up: Dr. Q's Question
If the people who built AI are worried, what should the rest of us do?
My first answer: ________________________________________________
Mike's Mix-Up: The Nobel Prize That Never Happened
Made-Up Example.
Go back to Mike's poster. Here is what he did:
1. He asked a chatbot for "a cool fact" and did not ask for a source.
2. He trusted the fact because it contained real names and a real prize.
3. He wrote it in permanent marker before checking anything.
4. When Dr. Q asked, his only evidence was "The AI said it."
5. He checked the official Nobel Prize website and found the truth.
What went wrong? Talk it through with a partner, then write your answers.
• Which two true pieces did the AI blend into one false fact?
• Why did the fact feel so believable?
• Why was the official Nobel Prize website a good source to check?
• What could Mike have typed at the start to make checking easier?
• What rule should Mike follow before anything goes on the poster?
Think First: My Timeline From Memory
No devices. Pen and paper. About 15 minutes.
1. Draw a long line across a page. Write 1950 at the left end and this year at the right end.
2. From memory, add every AI event you can think of. Movies and games count if you label them as fiction.
3. Next to each event, write S if you are sure or G if you are guessing.
4. Circle the one event you feel most sure about.
5. After you read this chapter, check your timeline in a different color. Mark each event: Correct, Wrong date, or Wrong fact.
Count how many of your S marks turned out wrong. That number is your confidence gap. Keep it in mind the next time something feels obviously true.
Pause & reflect
What changed in your thinking?
Write one sentence in your notebook. Name what you checked, what you chose, or what you want to explore next.
Read the video transcript
Read along, pause, or return to an idea. This transcript follows the selected lesson video.
Welcome back.
I'm Carla, an AI avatar.
This week we travel through seventy-six years of AI
history in about three minutes.
But first, Dr. Q has a question.
If the people who built AI are worried,
what should the rest of us do?
Mike asked a chatbot for a fun fact for his class timeline.
It said Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for the network behind ChatGPT.
Mike wrote it in permanent marker.
Walk me through exactly where you got that.
Mike checked the official Nobel Prize website.
Hinton did win in 2024, but in physics,
shared with John Hopfield.
Chemistry went to David Baker, Demis Hassabis,
and John Jumper.
The chatbot blended two true facts into one false one.
Here is the real story, fast.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked, "Can machines think?"
In 1955, four researchers proposed a summer study of
"artificial intelligence" at Dartmouth for 1956.
In 1958, a five-ton computer learned to tell left from
right on punch cards, and a newspaper called it the embryo
of a computer designed to read and grow wiser.
In the mid-1960s, a program called ELIZA made people feel
understood, even though it understood nothing.
Its creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, was surprised by how many
people treated that simple program as if it had feelings.
The pull has a name: the ELIZA effect.
Remember it whenever a chatbot sounds kind.
Then came the AI winters, years when big promises went
unmet and interest and money dried up.
In 1986, a paper showed how networks can learn by
shrinking their errors.
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue beat the world chess champion.
Then neural networks came back: sorting over a million
images in 2012, AlphaGo in 2016,
the Transformer in 2017, and ChatGPT on November 30, 2022.
In 2023, Hinton stepped down from Google.
He said, "I have suddenly switched my views on whether
these things are going to be more intelligent than us."
He was one of many.
Hinton and the leaders of OpenAI,
Google DeepMind, and Anthropic signed a one-sentence
statement saying that reducing the risk of extinction from
AI should be a global priority.
And in 2024, Hinton shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with
John Hopfield.
So what should the rest of us do?
History gives us four clues.
Expect hype.
Take warnings seriously without panic.
Learn how AI works.
And stay in charge of your part.
This week, you will draw an AI timeline from memory,
then audit five AI facts against real sources.
Grab a pen.
Before you use an AI tool
Follow your course or institution's rules. Use an instructor-approved tool that permits your age, and meet any required consent conditions. Keep names, contact details, school records, and other private information out of prompts. Use fictional examples when you can.
Learning without an AI account
Follow the demonstration, pause before each answer, and do the reasoning on paper. Discuss what you would ask, how you would check it, and which decisions would remain yours.
About the characters and voices
This course uses AI-created characters and synthetic voices. Carla is an AI avatar. They help tell the story; they are not real students sharing testimonials.
Designed for high-school and community-college learners. Choose examples from your classes, work, and everyday life. Keep your completed work in your course portfolio.
