AI and Civic Engagement:
75+ Cross-Curricular Activities to Empower Your Students

Additional Resources (Google Docs): 

• Revised and Updated Questions for Evaluating GenAI Responses.

• Cross-Curricular Connections for the Book's Learning Plans.

• When To and When NOT to Use AI-Generated Media. Torrey Trust (July 2025).

The future of artificial intelligence is a “choice between a future of unparalleled possibility and a future of unimaginable peril” declared researchers Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar (2023, p. 18) in The Coming Wave, a book written before the public release of the first version of the GenAI tool ChatGPT in November 2022. 

What GenAI can do is almost beyond comprehension. Suleyman and Bhaskar said: “a single AI program can write as much text as all of humanity” (2023, p. 120). GenAI technologies can be “the greatest force amplifier in history . . . the greatest accelerant of human progress imaginable,” but they can also enable great harms from “wars and accidents to random terror groups, authoritarian governments, overreaching corporations, plain thefts and willful sabotage” (Suleyman & Bhaskar, 2023, p. 224).

For educators, GenAI-generated change is happening in two opposing directions simultaneously. On the one hand, GenAI is functioning as an always-available assistant for educators, and a learning companion for students, that can expand the scope of what people think, write, design, invent, and create. At the same time, as GenAI generates harmful misinformation, cultural racial and gender biases, and fake and false information; and it threatens to strip away human agency in learning and obscure how people understand the world around them – all while using enormous amounts of energy to power its huge data processing platforms.

It is our belief that active learning, civic engagement, and critical digital and media literacy can be propelled forward by GenAI technologies – when used critically and creatively by teachers and by students with teacher guidance and support. GenAI can be used in building dynamic learning environments where students generate knowledge for themselves using digital tools, establishing a foundation for civic engagement and the readiness to learn about and act upon educational and public policy issues that matter to all of us.