If you’ve just come over from part one, congratulations! You’re halfway done. Give yourself a big pat on the back. 🙂
The second half of Scouting America’s new Artificial Intelligence merit badge is where things get hands-on. Requirements 5 to 8 cover deepfakes, how to talk to AI so you get useful answers, building or teaching something with it, and what an AI career actually looks like.
In this article, I’ll walk through each of those requirements and share the prompting habits I use every day in my work. You’ll also get project ideas and a sample career interview to prepare with.
What do requirements 5 to 8 of the AI merit badge cover? Requirements 5 to 8 of the Artificial Intelligence merit badge cover explaining deepfakes and what to do if you’re affected, how AI learns and how to prompt it well, completing an AI project or teaching an AI lesson to other Scouts, and either researching an AI career or interviewing an AI or automation professional.
If you haven’t read Part 1 of my Artificial Intelligence merit badge guide yet, I’d start there, since a lot of this part builds on it. It covers the key terms, AI and automation basics, and ethics.
And if you’re jumping in here, my name’s Cole! I’m an Eagle Scout, and these days I help small business owners learn to use AI and automation in their work. I’ve been doing it for the last two years, so requirement 8 is basically my day job.
Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge Requirements 5-8 (Part 2)
- Deepfakes. Do the following and share what you learned with your counselor:
a. Explain what a deepfake is and how it can affect an individual.
b. Describe what actions to take if you or someone you know is impacted by a deepfake. - Developing AI Skills. Do the following and share what you learned with your counselor:
a. Discuss the learning process for AI and its limitations.
b. Identify five methods of how to effectively communicate with AI.
c. Explain the importance of prompt engineering when using AI to create better output.
d. Demonstrate three examples of writing clear instructions for a school-related task. - Practical Application. Do ONE of the following:
a. With your counselor’s approval, choose an artificial intelligence project based on your personal interest or a community need. Develop a plan outlining the project’s objectives, data requirements, and potential ethical considerations. Implement the project utilizing appropriate artificial intelligence tools, languages, or platforms. Share your project with your counselor. Discuss the steps you followed to create the project and your experience during the process.
b. With your counselor’s approval, design a short lesson plan on AI and teach it to your patrol of a group of Scouts. The lesson should include an AI-generated age-appropriate explanation of AI, examples of how AI is used in both everyday life as well as in the workplace, and an interactive demonstration of how Scouts could utilize AI to assist them with a school assignment, Scouting activity, or rank advancement. Share information on the development process and teaching experience with your counselor. - Career Exploration. Do ONE of the following:
a. Identify three career opportunities that would use skills and knowledge in artificial intelligence or automation. Pick one and research the training, education, certification requirements, experience, and expenses associated with entering the field. Research the prospects for employment, starting salary, advancement opportunities, and career goals associated with this career. Discuss what you learned with your counselor and whether you might be interested in this career.
b. Interview an artificial intelligence or automation professional. Learn about their day-to-day work, the challenges they face, and their vision for the future of artificial intelligence or automation. Inquire about training, education, certification requirements, experience, and expenses associated with entering the field. Share what you learned with your counselor.
Deepfakes
5a) Explain what a deepfake is and how it can affect an individual.
A deepfake is a fake video, photo or audio clip made with AI to look or sound like a real person doing or saying something they never did. They’ve already been used in politics, in scams, and to embarrass people with fake pictures.
For an individual, a deepfake can hurt your reputation, your friendships and how safe you feel, even though you did nothing wrong. It’s unfortunate, but fake AI videos of people are going to keep showing up.
That makes it even more important to know what to do, and to never be the one who makes or shares one. Being kind applies online too!
Voice Cloning Scams
Voice scams are one to know about now, because they’re aimed at families. Scammers can clone a voice and call pretending to be a loved one in trouble who needs money fast.
The Federal Trade Commission’s advice is simple, and worth sharing with your parents: “Don’t trust the voice. Call the person who supposedly contacted you and verify the story. Use a phone number you know is theirs.”
Parent Tip: One more idea on top of the FTC’s advice is agreeing on a family code word ahead of time, so an actual emergency call can be checked in seconds.
5b) Describe what actions to take if you or someone you know is impacted by a deepfake.
The first step, every time, is to tell a trusted adult. A parent, your Scoutmaster, or another adult you trust can help you figure out how serious it is and what to do next.
If you’re curious how Scouting keeps Scouts safe more broadly, my quick guide to Safe Scouting and youth protection covers the basics. (Scouting America now calls its youth protection training Safeguarding Youth.)
Once a trusted adult knows, the goal is to stop the fake from spreading and get it taken down, while keeping a record of where it showed up. The steps below go in order, and none of them is something you have to do alone.
| Step | What to do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tell a trusted adult | You shouldn’t have to handle this alone |
| 2 | Don’t share it further, even to ask “is this fake?” | Every share spreads it |
| 3 | With an adult’s help, write down links and usernames (and save screenshots only if it isn’t explicit) | Platforms, schools and police may need it |
| 4 | Report it on the app or site where it’s posted | Most major platforms have a way to report it |
| 5 | If it’s sexual or explicit, report it to the CyberTipline and the police | This is a crime, and it’s taken seriously |
If it’s sexual or explicit, don’t screenshot, download or forward it, even as evidence. NetSmartz, from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, says to “report it to law enforcement and to the CyberTipline.”
They put it plainly: “If nude or sexually explicit content of you is being shared or someone is threatening to share it, you can get help by reporting it to CyberTipline.org.” If someone is threatening you or asking for more pictures, don’t reply, and tell an adult right away.
Your school may want to know too, since they can put a stop to it among students.
Developing AI Skills
6a) Discuss the learning process for AI and its limitations.
For a clear picture of what’s going on inside a chatbot, watch AI: How Chatbots and Large Language Models Work (7:21). It’ll give you the right words for this part of your counselor conversation.
Before we continue on, finish this sentence in your head: “Peanut butter and…” Then consider: how did you know the next word was probably “jelly”? You’ve seen those words together so many times that your brain predicted it. Well, that’s pretty much what a chatbot does, just with far more text than any person could ever read!
The short version is that chatbots learn from enormous amounts of text, and at their core they’re predicting what should come next, one piece at a time. That’s why they’re so good at sounding right, and it’s also where their biggest limitations come from.
AI Gets Pulled Toward Your Prompt
The limitation I most wish people understood is that AI gets pulled toward whatever you put in the prompt. Every time it answers, it reads your whole conversation again, and it’ll anchor on anything you mention.
That’s true even if you tell it “don’t talk about X,” because just mentioning X puts it in the context. For example, ask “How do I study better?” and you’ll get a broad answer.
Ask “How do I study better? I think I’m bad at math,” and even if you tell it to consider every possibility, the answer will keep circling back to math. Bad inputs lead to bad outputs, and once something unhelpful gets into a long conversation, it’s hard to get it back out.
Scout Tip: When a long chat keeps circling back to something unhelpful, the best fix is usually to start a fresh one with better context from the beginning.
Generic In, Generic Out
The other big limitation is that generic AI output is pretty obvious, and it’s kind of cringe. If you don’t give it anything specific, you’ll get something that sounds like everyone else. 😛
6b) Identify five methods of how to effectively communicate with AI.
Talking to AI works a lot like talking to a brand new patrol member who’s super smart but knows nothing about you. The more you share and the more you guide the conversation, the better it can help, and these five habits make the biggest difference for me.
- Share as much context as you can. Who you are, what you’re working on, what you’re worried about, and what you’ve already tried.
- Ask it to write a better prompt for you. Give it your rough request and say “Make this a better prompt.” You’ll start to see how wording changes the results.
- Go back and forth. Treat the first answer as a draft, like my fridge recipes from Part 1. Ask it to make things easier, shorter, or different.
- Ask for options. “Give me five ideas” beats “give me an idea,” and you get to choose.
- Tell it to challenge you. Ask it to find the holes in your thinking instead of agreeing with you.
6c) Explain the importance of prompt engineering when using AI to create better output.
My best advice for writing a good prompt is to share everything you can think of, then ask the AI to improve your prompt. Once you see good prompts made from your own rough ones, you’ll start noticing how language can get a point across more effectively.
If you can map what a good input looks like and how it turns into a good output, you’ll get better at prompting fast. Read up on it, practice, notice what works and what doesn’t, and save your good prompts somewhere you can find them again.
AI is changing so quickly that some of today’s prompting tricks might matter less in the future. Clear thinking will keep mattering, though, because it’s what gets you a good result from AI.
It’s the same skill the Communication merit badge builds, just pointed at a computer instead of a person! That badge was a game-changer for me when it came to improving my confidence and public speaking abilities.
6d) Demonstrate three examples of writing clear instructions for a school-related task.
A clear instruction tells AI who you are, what you’re working on, and what kind of help you want right now. The difference is easiest to see side by side, so here’s an essay prompt done badly:
Write an essay.
A good prompt:
I’m trying to write an essay about [topic]. These are the main topics I want to cover. These are the things I’m concerned about, and these are the things I’m still trying to think through. What do you think the best arc is for this essay? Give me all the components, and additional things to consider. After we finish this stage, we can start to structure it together, but right now, let’s get the thinking clear.
Notice that the good prompt asks AI to help you think through the essay rather than write it. The same idea works for studying and projects too, so here are two more examples to try out.
| School task | Bad prompt | Better prompt |
|---|---|---|
| Studying for a test | “Quiz me on biology.” | “My test is on cell structure. Here are my notes. Quiz me one question at a time, tell me when I’m wrong and why, and focus more on what I miss.” |
| A science project | “Give me a science fair idea.” | “I’m in [grade], I like [interests], and I have about [time] and a small budget. Give me five project ideas I could finish, and for each one tell me the hardest part.” |
Try all three with an actual AI tool before you meet with your counselor, and bring along what it gave you.
Practical Application
7a) With your counselor’s approval, choose an artificial intelligence project based on your personal interest or a community need. Develop a plan outlining the project’s objectives, data requirements, and potential ethical considerations. Implement the project utilizing appropriate artificial intelligence tools, languages, or platforms. Share your project with your counselor. Discuss the steps you followed to create the project and your experience during the process.
If you’ve never coded, I’d start with a custom GPT that acts as your second brain. You dump your ideas into it and check in on it over time, and it captures what you tell it and gives you advice.
Then you can hand it different jobs. If you’re trying to get healthier and more fit, it can help you track that. If you want better grades, it can make a schedule for you, give you study tips, and hold you accountable to it. Here’s a great example to get started (6:10)
If you already code, go for something bigger, like building a website or a game with AI helping you write it. The Programming merit badge is a great companion if you want to learn the coding side properly.
And if you’re stuck, ask AI! Say something like, “What should I build? Give me some ideas based on things I’m interested in that you could help me with,” then pick from the list and converse back and forth to decide on your project. 🙂
Troop Project Ideas
Your troop is a great place to find a project, because you already know what it needs, you know who’d use your project, and you’ve got a Scoutmaster who’ll probably love to help test it. These are a few troop-flavored ideas I’d love to see a Scout build!
| Project | What it does | Who it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting planner | Suggests meeting plans and activities based on what the troop has coming up | Patrol leaders and the senior patrol leader (SPL) |
| Troop second brain | Stores how the troop does things, so knowledge doesn’t disappear when someone ages out | The whole troop |
| Merit badge companion | Knows the merit badges and suggests what to earn next based on your interests | Any Scout |
Counselor Check: For 7a, the requirement asks for a plan first, covering your objectives, what data you’ll need, and the ethical risks. Your counselor has to approve it before you start, so bring the plan to them early.
7b) With your counselor’s approval, design a short lesson plan on AI and teach it to your patrol of a group of Scouts. The lesson should include an AI-generated age-appropriate explanation of AI, examples of how AI is used in both everyday life as well as in the workplace, and an interactive demonstration of how Scouts could utilize AI to assist them with a school assignment, Scouting activity, or rank advancement. Share information on the development process and teaching experience with your counselor.
If you like teaching, this option is a lot of fun. Instructor was one of my favorite troop leadership positions, and this requirement is basically a mini version of that job!
If I were teaching this to a patrol, the demo I’d run to make them go “whoa” is making an instructional AI avatar video. With a tool like HeyGen, you can create a video of an AI presenter walking through a training on a subject.
It isn’t always the right tool, but when you can pull in diagrams from articles, it’s a really helpful way to share information, and viewers can speed it up to get through it faster. HeyGen’s terms require users to be 18 or older, though, so you’d need an adult to run it with you.
A good lesson starts with what your patrol already knows and builds from there, just like a good merit badge class. The requirement asks for three pieces, and together they take your patrol from “what is AI?” to trying it themselves.
- An AI-generated explanation of AI that fits your audience’s age
- Examples of AI in everyday life and in the workplace
- A hands-on demo of using AI for a school assignment, a Scouting activity, or rank advancement
The bad-prompt versus good-prompt comparison from requirement 6 makes a great interactive demo! 🙂
Career Exploration
8a) Identify three career opportunities that would use skills and knowledge in artificial intelligence or automation. Pick one and research the training, education, certification requirements, experience, and expenses associated with entering the field. Research the prospects for employment, starting salary, advancement opportunities, and career goals associated with this career. Discuss what you learned with your counselor and whether you might be interested in this career.
The best free place to start is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook for computer and information technology jobs. It covers careers like computer and information research scientists, software developers, and database administrators and architects.
For each career, it lists the training, pay and job outlook, which covers a lot of what 8a asks for. For starting pay and certifications, ask your counselor or someone working in the field.
8b) Interview an artificial intelligence or automation professional. Learn about their day-to-day work, the challenges they face, and their vision for the future of artificial intelligence or automation. Inquire about training, education, certification requirements, experience, and expenses associated with entering the field. Share what you learned with your counselor.
To find someone to interview, ask your parents, the adults in your troop, or a local business that uses a lot of technology. Whoever it is, go in with your questions written down. A good interview feels like a conversation, and covering these topics will give you plenty to share with your counselor afterward.
- Their day-to-day work
- The challenges they face
- Their vision for the future of AI or automation
- The training, education and certifications you’d need
- The experience and expenses of getting into the field
To help you prepare, here’s how I’d answer a few of those myself.
What Does Your Day-To-Day Look Like?
I have clients in Australia and the U.S., so I start my mornings on work for my Australian clients. Then I try to tackle my most important task, whether that’s developing a tool for a webinar or setting up automation for a business’s operations.
A lot of my work is tracking how well my clients’ marketing is working and setting up the tools behind it. That part isn’t AI, but I still use AI to help me with it.
One of my clients runs a large events company and gets hundreds of emails a day, so I built an AI agent that helps guide him through them. I’m also teaching him how to use AI in his everyday work tools. So my days are a mix of calls, projects, and a lot of talking with people!
What’s The Hardest Part?
The hardest part nobody sees from the outside is the balancing act, which means staying educated in a field that changes this fast, finding new clients, and serving the clients I already have, all at once.
The great thing is that the better I get at AI, the better I get at my job and everything else, because AI helps me be more efficient. It’s a positive feedback loop!
Where Do You Think AI Is Going?
In the next five to ten years, I think AI will connect to our tools much more effectively, and people will be able to spin up custom software and interfaces for the way they work best. The days of hard-coded buttons on a lot of tools might be numbered.
I think everyone will have an AI agent. You might just say to your phone, “Can I get a ride?” and after you confirm, an Uber shows up. It’ll tell you someone messaged you, you’ll say a couple of words, and it’ll format and send a reply.
Your tools will remember what you’ve told them, so you won’t have to re-explain anything. That’s kind of crazy to think about, and the implications are huge. Here’s a big question to discuss with your counselor: what happens to jobs if most knowledge work can be automated? Nobody knows for sure yet.
Here’s a good video on exactly that question. Ethics & AI: Privacy & the Future of Work (3:27) will give you more to talk about than “robots will take our jobs.” 😀
How Should A Scout Prepare?
This is the answer you should care about most. Build things that are useful and that get other people’s attention. Work on your communication and public speaking, and don’t let AI replace you. Use it as a partner to make better work than you could before.
Then rack up proof. Collect wins, credentials and things you can point to when someone wants to know if you’re capable.
In high school, I took eight AP classes, more than half of them independently, just by reading the test review booklets, taking practice tests, and then passing the final AP exam. I think that helped me stand out in college apps. When I was going after a marketing job, I took ten certifications in technical topics like Google Analytics, HubSpot and SQL. Anything that’s hard to get and hard to fake is a strong signal.
Becoming an Eagle Scout is one of the best of those signals, especially if you can talk well about your project, it helps a big cause, and you coordinated a lot of people. If you’re still picking a project, my list of Eagle Scout project ideas is a good place to start.
My guide on listing Eagle Scout on your resume shows how to talk about it once it’s done. I put the leadership and communication skills I learned as a Scout on my own resume, and it helped me land multiple jobs. The earlier you start racking up wins, the more doors they’ll open for you!
Congrats on Finishing the Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge!
Just like your Scout handbook, a pocketknife or a camera, AI is a tool that can help you put something into the world that wasn’t there before. Use it as a partner to refine what you’re already thinking, but don’t outsource all of it.
You still need to put in the work, because what you learn doing it is the whole point. If you let AI do every assignment in a class, you miss out on everything that class was trying to give you. One of the biggest indicators of your character is how hard you’re willing to work when you’re not being forced to.
That’s why I think Scouting is the perfect complement to an AI-driven world. It gets you outdoors, using your hands and building friendships, which is something a screen can’t do. Combine the two, and I think you’ll be wildly successful!
Great work finishing both parts of my guide, and best of luck earning your Artificial Intelligence merit badge! If you’re looking for your next badge, check out my difficulty rankings for every Eagle-required merit badge. 🦅