Artificial Intelligence is one of Scouting America’s two newest merit badges, alongside Cybersecurity. Because of it’s newness, there isn’t even a pamphlet for the Artificial Intelligence badge yet! Instead, the official requirements page points Scouts to the Scoutly chatbot, which is a pretty fitting way to kick off an AI badge. But what does this badge actually ask you to do, and how can AI help you learn it along the way?
In this article, I’ll walk through requirements 1 to 4 and share how I use AI in my own work every day. You’ll also get the definitions, examples, timelines and videos you need to finish the first half of the badge.
What is the Artificial Intelligence merit badge? The Artificial Intelligence merit badge is a Scouting America badge that teaches Scouts how AI and automation work, where they show up in everyday life, the ethics of using them, how to spot deepfakes, and how to write clear prompts. Scouts finish by building an AI project or teaching a lesson, and by exploring an AI career.
By the way, my name’s Cole! I’m the guy behind ScoutSmarts, and I’m an Eagle Scout. These days, I help small business owners learn to use AI and automation, so they can get on top of their work and grow their business by amplifying the things they do best.
I’ve been doing that for the last two years, so this is one badge where my day job and my Scouting background line up perfectly. I’m really excited to share it with you! 🙂
If you read the ScoutSmarts Scribe, you know I use AI to help run ScoutSmarts, and that I read and moderate every word myself. There’s just not enough time for me to handle every part of the site on my own, and without AI, a lot of Scouts would have nothing keeping them on track. I think doing something, even if it’s imperfect at times, is better than doing nothing at all. What works for me is letting AI help while a human vets everything it puts out.
Before we get started, if you have other Eagle-required merit badges to earn, I’d recommend checking out my Difficulty Rankings to Every Eagle-required Badge. There, you’ll also find the links to my other merit badge guides, as well as a description and summary of each badge’s requirements.
Also, remember that ScoutSmarts is meant to be your starting point for merit badge research. Put these ideas in your own words, dig further into the topics that grab you, and I promise you’ll gain much more from every merit badge you earn!
Take your time to read through the official requirements below before diving into answering each question. Now, without further ado, let’s get you started on earning your Artificial Intelligence merit badge!
What Are The Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge Requirements?
- Key Concepts. Define the following terms and share the meaning of each with your counselor: artificial intelligence (AI), artificial intelligence agents, automation, basic programming, bots, data, databases, digital workers, general AI, machine learning (ML), narrow AI, superintelligent AI, tasks, triggers, workflows, and variables.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Basics. Do the following and share what you learned with your counselor:
a. Identify ten examples of how AI is currently used in everyday life.
b. Identify five examples of how AI is currently used in the workplace.
c. Identify five examples of how AI can be used at school or in support of your education.
d. Meet with your counselor and play ten rounds of the “AI or Not?” game to determine if the presented scenario utilizes AI. Discuss your answers.
e. Create a timeline with five key milestones in the development of artificial intelligence. - Automation Basics. Do the following and share what you learned with your counselor:
a. Identify ten examples of how automation is currently used in everyday life.
b. Identify five examples of how automation is currently used in the workplace.
c. Identify five examples of how automation can be used at school or in support of your education.
d. Explain how automation performs repetitive tasks without human intervention and how it reduces human error and optimizes resources.
e. Create a timeline with five significant milestones in automation development. - Ethics in AI. Do the following and share what you learned with your counselor:
a. Research ethical concerns and responsible use in AI, including bias, privacy, and AI decision-making.
b. Meet with your counselor, play, and discuss five rounds of the “What Would You Do?” ethical decision-making scenarios.
c. Develop your own ethical guidelines for the use of AI.
d. What is the Turing test? - 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.
Key Concepts
1) Define the following terms and share the meaning of each with your counselor: artificial intelligence (AI), artificial intelligence agents, automation, basic programming, bots, data, databases, digital workers, general AI, machine learning (ML), narrow AI, superintelligent AI, tasks, triggers, workflows, and variables.
Sixteen terms is a lot, but here’s the good news: you’ve probably already bumped into almost all of them without knowing their names! I’ve rearranged the order to make the concepts easier to understand. Don’t worry, they’re all here.
I think the ones most likely to trip you up are machine learning, plus the three that sound almost identical: digital workers, AI agents and bots. Tasks, triggers, workflows and variables can also feel abstract if you haven’t done any programming yet, so I’ve given each one everyday and troop examples.
Before you dig in, here’s a great video from IBM’s own technology channel, AI Simplified: 6 Concepts You Need to Know About Modern AI (8:49). It comes from people who build this stuff for a living, so watch it first and see how many of the sixteen terms you can already explain!
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Before we continue on, think to yourself about the last time you asked your phone a question out loud, or searched your photos for “dog” and watched every dog picture pop up. Then consider: how did a machine understand your voice, or know what a dog looks like? Well, that’s what artificial intelligence is!
Artificial intelligence is the broad name for computer systems that can do things we’d normally say take human intelligence. That includes understanding language, recognizing faces or objects in pictures, making predictions, and making decisions.
You’ll find it in the chatbot that explains a stuck math problem, the app that names a bird from its song, and the camera that finds faces and focuses on them. Pretty amazing, right?
Every other term on this list is either a type of AI, a piece that AI is built from, or something AI gets used for. Think of AI as the trunk of a tree, and the other fifteen terms as its branches. When you explain these to your counselor, start here and connect everything back to it!
Narrow AI
Picture the best chess app in the world. It could beat any grandmaster on the planet, but ask it to help plan your patrol’s campout menu and it’s completely lost! That’s narrow AI.
Narrow AI is AI built to do one kind of job well. The spam filter in your email, face unlock on a phone, a map app predicting traffic, and a bird identification app are all narrow AI, and it’s the kind of AI nearly everyone agrees we actually have today.
Even the most impressive chatbots are narrow in an important way. They’re very good at working with language, but they can’t decide to go learn a brand new skill on their own the way you can.
General AI
General AI (sometimes called artificial general intelligence, or AGI) is a hypothetical AI that could learn and do any mental task a person can. It would switch between very different jobs, the way you go from math homework to practicing knots to texting a friend.
It doesn’t exist yet. Experts disagree a lot about whether it’s possible and how soon it could arrive, which makes it a great topic to discuss with your counselor!
Superintelligent AI
Superintelligent AI is a hypothetical AI that would be smarter than the best humans at nearly everything, from science to strategy to creativity. It’s even further off than general AI, and some people doubt it will ever happen.
It comes up a lot in debates about AI safety, because a system that much smarter than us would be very hard to control. You don’t need to pick a side, just be able to explain what it means.
Machine Learning (ML)
Before we continue on, think back to how you learned to tell a pine tree from an oak tree. Nobody handed you a rulebook measuring every needle and leaf! You saw lots of trees, someone pointed out which was which, and eventually you just knew.
Then consider: what if a computer could learn the same way, just by seeing thousands of examples? Well, that’s what machine learning is!
Machine learning is a way of building AI where the computer learns patterns from lots of examples, instead of a programmer writing out every rule. Show it thousands of pictures labeled “cat” and “not cat,” and it gradually figures out what a cat looks like.
You see it all the time. Your video app learning what you like to watch, your email learning what spam looks like, and your keyboard learning the words you type most are all machine learning in action.
The more examples it gets, the better its guesses usually become. That’s also why bad or unfair examples lead to bad or unfair results (more on that in requirement 4 😉 ).
Bots, AI Agents And Digital Workers
These three all do work for you automatically, which is why they get mixed up so often. The easiest way to keep them straight is to ask how much each one decides on its own.
Imagine three helpers at a campout. The first one only knows how to ring the dinner bell at 6 p.m. The second is told “get dinner ready” and figures out every step by itself. The third runs the whole camp kitchen: menus, shopping lists, cooking and the cleanup schedule. Can you guess which is which?
Bots: The dinner bell ringer is a bot! A bot is a program that automates a narrow task, like auto-replying to messages, welcoming new members in a group chat, or answering the same few questions on a website.
Simple bots follow a script, while many of today’s chatbots use AI to understand and write language. That means they can handle questions nobody scripted ahead of time.
AI agents: The helper who figures out dinner on their own is an AI agent. An AI agent is an AI system that can take steps on its own toward a goal. Instead of answering one question, it decides what to do next, like searching for information, using another app, and then checking its own work.
For example, you could ask an agent to find three campgrounds within two hours of home and compare their prices, and it would go do the searching for you. That extra freedom is powerful, and it’s also why agents need limits. I learned that one the hard way, which you’ll read about later on! 😛
Digital workers: The helper running the whole kitchen is a digital worker. A digital worker is software, usually combining AI and automation, that’s set up to handle a whole set of tasks for a job role.
Think of a virtual assistant that sorts incoming email, schedules meetings and drafts replies for a team, or a customer service system that answers questions, processes returns and hands tricky cases to a person.
Scout Tip: A quick way to remember the difference: a bot does one step, an AI agent chooses its own steps, and a digital worker handles a whole job’s worth of tasks.
Data And Databases
Data is information, like numbers, words, photos, videos or records. The steps on a fitness tracker, the temperatures in a weather forecast, the scores in a video game and your troop’s list of who has earned which rank are all data. AI learns from data, and automation moves data from one place to another.
A database is an organized place where data is stored so it can be searched, sorted and updated quickly. Picture a giant spreadsheet a computer can search in a split second. Your contacts app, a library’s catalog, a game’s leaderboard and your troop’s advancement records are all databases.
Basic Programming
Programming means writing step-by-step instructions a computer can follow, in a language like Python, JavaScript or Scratch. Basic programming covers the fundamentals, like giving instructions in order, repeating steps, and making choices with “if this happens, then do that.” Computers take every word literally, so leaving out one step is like telling a robot to make a sandwich and forgetting to say “open the bread”!
Every app on your phone, every video game, and every automation and AI system in this guide started with someone writing code. If you want to go deeper, the Programming merit badge is a great next step.
Automation, Tasks, Triggers And Workflows
Automation means using technology to do a task with little or no human effort each time it happens. You set it up once, and then it runs on its own. Requirement 3 is all about automation, so I’ll go into more detail there.
A morning alarm that goes off at 6:30 a.m., turns on your bedroom light and starts your favorite song is a great example. The time is the trigger, each of those jobs is a task, and the whole routine is a workflow!
A task is a single piece of work, like “turn on the light,” “send the packing list” or “add the new Scout to the roster.”
A trigger is the event that starts an automation. It could be a time (“6:30 a.m.” or “three days before the campout”), an action (“a parent submits the permission form”), or a change in data (“a Scout’s rank changes”).
A workflow is a series of tasks that run in a set order once a trigger fires. For example: three days before the campout → send the packing list → text any parents who haven’t replied. 😀
Variables
Remember Mad Libs? The fun game where story stays the same every time, but the blanks change depending on what words you fill in. Those blanks are variables!
A variable is a named placeholder for a value that can change. In a reminder that says “Hi [Scout’s name], the campout is on [date],” the name and the date are variables, so the same message works for every Scout and every trip.
Your score in a video game, the countdown on a microwave and the temperature on a thermostat are all variables too. If you’ve taken algebra, it’s the same idea as the x in an equation, where the formula stays the same and the value plugged into it changes.
Key Concepts At A Glance
Once you can explain each term with an example of your own, you’re basically done with requirement 1! Here’s the whole list side by side for a quick review before you meet with your counselor.
| Term | In one sentence | Example you know |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial intelligence | Computers doing things that normally take human intelligence | A chatbot answering your question |
| Narrow AI | AI built to do one job well | Face unlock, spam filters |
| General AI | Hypothetical AI that could do any mental task a person can | Science fiction, for now |
| Superintelligent AI | Hypothetical AI smarter than the best humans at almost everything | A big AI safety debate |
| Machine learning | AI that learns patterns from examples | Video recommendations |
| Bot | A program that automates a narrow task | Auto-reply messages |
| AI agent | AI that takes its own steps toward a goal | An assistant that researches and compares campgrounds |
| Digital worker | Software handling a whole job role’s tasks | A virtual assistant for a team |
| Data | Information like numbers, words and photos | Rank records, your photos |
| Database | Organized, searchable storage for data | Your phone’s contact list |
| Basic programming | Step-by-step instructions for a computer | A script that sends a reminder |
| Automation | Technology doing a task with little human effort | Reminders that send themselves |
| Task | A single piece of work | “Send the packing list” |
| Trigger | The event that starts an automation | “Three days before the campout” |
| Workflow | A series of tasks in a set order | Trigger → send list → text parents |
| Variable | A named value that can change | The Scout’s name in a message |
Scout Tip: Try explaining each term with an example from your own life, like your phone, your favorite game or your troop. It makes for a much more fun conversation with your counselor, and you’ll remember the terms long after the badge is signed off!
If the programming terms still feel shaky, the Digital Technology merit badge covers a lot of the same ground and pairs really well with this one!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Basics
2a) Identify ten examples of how AI is currently used in everyday life.
Here’s one of my favorite everyday uses, and it’s kind of a funny one. When I’m figuring out what to cook, I take a picture of what’s in the fridge and write out a train of thought about the kind of meal I want and what I’ve got to cook it with.
Then I ask, “What are some meals that could be done?” It gives me options, and I push back with things like, “I’d rather do it in the Instant Pot,” or “I want more protein.” Once it gives me a recipe, I’ll ask, “Is there a way to make this easier without compromising on quality and flavor?” and it gives me another one.
That back-and-forth on everyday decisions is where AI is most helpful, and it’s a good reminder that AI shows up way beyond homework. Anywhere a device recognizes, predicts or understands something for you, there’s a good chance AI is working behind the scenes.
- Face unlock on phones, which recognizes your face from a camera image.
- Spam filters that learn which emails are junk.
- Video and music recommendations based on what you’ve watched or played before.
- Map apps that predict traffic and your arrival time.
- Voice assistants that understand spoken questions.
- Autocorrect and predictive text on your keyboard.
- Photo search, like typing “dog” to find every dog picture on your phone.
- Translation apps that turn one language into another.
- Chatbots that answer questions and help you write.
- Online shopping suggestions for products you might like.
Pick your favorites from this list, then keep an eye out over the next day or two and add a few you spot yourself. Once you start looking, you’ll see AI everywhere!
2b) Identify five examples of how AI is currently used in the workplace.
At work, AI mostly takes on information jobs: the reading, sorting and writing that used to eat up hours of someone’s day. That frees people up for the parts of the job that need judgment and a human touch.
- Sorting and drafting emails for people who get hundreds a day.
- Customer support chatbots that answer common questions any time of day.
- Fraud detection at banks, which flags purchases that don’t look like you.
- Scheduling tools that find meeting times that work for everyone.
- Meeting summaries that turn an hour of talking into a short list of action items.
2c) Identify five examples of how AI can be used at school or in support of your education.
AI can be an amazing study partner, kind of like a tutor who’s awake at midnight and never gets tired of your questions! It works best when you’re still the one doing the thinking, and it’s there to explain, quiz and give feedback. Here are some examples to consider:
- Practice quizzes made from your own notes.
- Feedback on a draft you’ve already written yourself.
- Explaining a hard concept a new way when the textbook isn’t clicking.
- Language practice, like having a conversation in Spanish.
- Turning your notes into flashcards for a test.
2d) Meet with your counselor and play ten rounds of the “AI or Not?” game to determine if the presented scenario utilizes AI. Discuss your answers.
Your counselor will likely describe ten scenarios, and you’ll decide whether AI is involved. The trick is to ask whether the system is learning, predicting or understanding something, or just following a fixed rule. Try this quick practice round before your meeting:
| Scenario | AI or not? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A thermostat that turns on at 6 a.m. every day | Not AI | It follows a fixed schedule |
| A streaming app suggesting your next show | AI | It predicts what you’ll like from your history |
| A calculator app | Not AI | It follows exact math rules |
| Face unlock on a phone | AI | It recognizes your face from patterns |
| An automatic door at a store | Not AI | A sensor opens it when something moves |
| An email spam filter | AI | It learns what junk mail looks like |
You also may play a digital game picking out if an image or video is AI like this. Some of the trickiest rounds involve fakes, because AI has gotten very good at making things that look and sound human. The same tools that help people create can also be used to fool them, so it helps to know the most common kinds.
- Photos. AI can make pictures of people doing things they never did, including fakes used for things like false insurance claims or to embarrass someone. Be more skeptical of any shocking picture that shows up in your feed.
- Writing. Plenty of AI writing slips through unnoticed, and plenty of human writing gets wrongly accused of being AI.
- Confident answers that are just wrong. AI can state a made-up fact with total confidence. That’s called a hallucination, and it’s why you always check the work.
- Voices. AI can copy someone’s voice. If you get a call that sounds like a loved one in trouble, even from a number that looks familiar, hang up and call them back on a number you know.
- Fake news. Some of what shows up in your feed is AI-generated, and some of it doesn’t need AI at all!
A lot of scams and tricks existed long before AI, like email spam and spam calls. AI just makes the fake evidence a little more convincing, so the old advice to slow down and double check matters even more now.
2e) Create a timeline with five key milestones in the development of artificial intelligence.
AI feels brand new, but people have been working on it for more than 75 years! It’s grown in bursts, with big breakthroughs followed by quieter stretches, and each milestone below pushed the whole field a step further.
| Year | Milestone | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Alan Turing’s paper proposes what he called “the imitation game,” now known as the Turing test (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) | Asked the big question: can machines think? |
| 1956 | The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, organized by John McCarthy (Dartmouth) | AI became its own field of study |
| 1958 | Frank Rosenblatt demonstrates the perceptron, and after 50 trials, the computer “taught itself to distinguish cards marked on the left from cards marked on the right” (Cornell Chronicle) | One of the first machines that learned from examples, the root of machine learning |
| 1997 | IBM’s Deep Blue beats world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a rematch (IBM) | First computer to beat a reigning world champion under standard tournament time controls |
| 2011 | IBM’s Watson beats Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (IBM) | A computer handled tricky, pun-filled questions in everyday English |
| 2016 | DeepMind’s AlphaGo beats Go champion Lee Sedol 4 to 1 in Seoul (Google DeepMind) | Go was thought to be far too complex for computers |
| 2022 | OpenAI releases ChatGPT on November 30 (OpenAI) | AI chatbots went mainstream almost overnight |
That’s seven, and the requirement asks for five, so pick your five favorites! Then go a step further and add one or two milestones of your own with a source for each. Self-driving cars, AI image generators and AI that predicts the shapes of proteins are all fun ones to research.
Automation Basics
3a) Identify ten examples of how automation is currently used in everyday life.
AI and automation get lumped together a lot, but they’re different things. Automation just means a task runs by itself once it’s set up. Some automations use AI, and lots don’t.
A traffic light on a timer is automation, and so is one with a sensor that changes when a car pulls up. It only starts leaning toward AI if the system learns traffic patterns and predicts what’s coming.
Once you know to look for it, automation is everywhere. Anything that follows a set routine on its own, without a person pushing buttons each time, counts!
- Thermostats that heat or cool your home on a schedule.
- Automatic doors at stores.
- Dishwasher and washing machine cycles that run each step on their own.
- Sprinkler timers that water the lawn.
- Streetlights that switch on when it gets dark.
- Scheduled phone backups that run overnight.
- Automatic bill payments from a bank account.
- Alarm clocks and recurring phone reminders.
- Vending machines that take payment and drop your snack.
- Traffic lights on a timer.
3b) Identify five examples of how automation is currently used in the workplace.
Some of the most useful automations are the boring ones. In my own work, I’m automating my finances, so I just send a receipt and it gets filed in one place automatically. That’s general bookkeeping, and trust me, nobody misses doing it by hand!
Businesses automate anything that happens the same way over and over. Every minute a machine handles is a minute a person gets back for work that needs a human.
- Assembly lines and factory robots.
- Email auto-replies, like “I’m out of the office this week.”
- Automatic payroll that pays everyone on the same day each cycle.
- Inventory systems that reorder supplies when they run low.
- Receipt and bookkeeping tools that file expenses automatically.
3c) Identify five examples of how automation can be used at school or in support of your education.
Your school probably runs on more automation than you’d guess! From when class starts to how your quiz gets graded, a lot of the school day happens on its own once someone sets it up.
- Bell schedules that ring at the same times every day.
- Auto-graded online quizzes.
- Assignment due-date reminders from your school’s learning app.
- Self-checkout at the school library.
- Scheduled study reminders you set up for yourself.
Automation Ideas For Your Troop
If you want a standout example for your counselor, look at your own troop. A troop is full of jobs that repeat every month, and the ones people forget or put off are the ones that slip through the cracks, which makes them perfect for automation.
- Follow-ups and reminders. Reminding people about dates and deadlines, and even drafting the message for you.
- Money stuff. Remembering when dues or payments are due, and collecting receipts in one place.
- Handoffs. This is my favorite. If you document your responsibilities, and after every project you have AI take in what happened, you end up with a ready-made handoff for the next person in your position.
That last one would solve a problem a lot of troops run into, where everything someone knew walks out the door when they age out or step down. If you’re in a troop leadership position right now, writing a handoff like this would be a really kind thing to leave behind! 🙂
3d) Explain how automation performs repetitive tasks without human intervention and how it reduces human error and optimizes resources.
Automation is something that’s existed for centuries, but now it can be applied to digital work much more effectively. It’s essentially a way to take the doing of a task, and use machines to do some or all of it.
When it’s done well, automation gives people back time on the chores nobody wants to repeat, and it helps in three big ways.
- Repetitive tasks: Once it’s set up, an automation handles the task every time the trigger happens, without anyone having to remember to do it.
- Reducing human error: A well-built automation does the task the same way every time and never forgets a step, even on the 500th run.
- Optimizing resources: The time people used to spend on the boring part goes to the parts that actually need a person.
3e) Create a timeline with five significant milestones in automation development.
Automation goes back a lot further than computers! People have been building machines to take over repetitive work for more than two hundred years, and each of these milestones helped make the next one possible.
| Year | Milestone | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 1801 | Joseph Marie Jacquard’s loom is “controlled by a chain of multiple cards punched with holes” that decide which threads get raised for each pass of the shuttle (Computer History Museum) | Punched cards became an early way to store instructions for a machine |
| 1913 | Ford introduces the moving assembly line at its Highland Park plant, and a Model T could now be built “in only ninety minutes” (Ford) | Mass production changed how nearly everything gets made |
| 1959 | The first Unimate industrial robot prototype goes onto an assembly line at a General Motors diecasting plant in Trenton, New Jersey (Association for Advancing Automation) | Robots started doing factory work |
| 1967 | The world’s first ATM opens at a Barclays branch in Enfield, London, on June 27 (Barclays) | People could get cash without a bank teller |
| 1974 | The first barcode scan at a store happens on June 26 at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, on a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum (GS1) | Checkout and inventory tracking sped up dramatically |
| Your turn | The home thermostat, email filters, robot vacuums, self-checkout, smart home assistants | Find the year and a source for any that catch your eye |
Pick your five favorites for your timeline, then add at least one of your own from the “Your turn” row. Bonus points if you find a milestone connected to your hometown or to the kind of work your family does!
Ethics in AI
4a) Research ethical concerns and responsible use in AI, including bias, privacy, and AI decision-making.
I once built an AI agent in OpenClaw to help me draft emails and capture my thoughts. After a call, I dictated a really good reflection for it to log and mentioned that I was planning to email the person afterward.
The agent emailed them immediately, private reflections and all. My reaction was basically, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible!” 😅
That taught me a rule I still follow. Never let AI have permissions to do anything that affects the outside world without your permission, and if it does, make sure it can be undone. If I make a change in a software tool, there’s a backup I can roll back to, and I turned off my agent’s ability to send anything at all.
Payments can’t be undone, so AI should never be handling them for you. You also shouldn’t give it the ability to post for you, or do anything else that could embarrass or hurt you or someone else.
A lot of people forget this part. AI can’t be a stand-in for your own responsibility. If you use AI to make something and it’s wrong, you’re still the one responsible for that mistake, whether it’s a school essay or a business.
Code.org made a great video on how AI picks up bias from the examples it learns from. AI: Training Data & Bias (2:40) is part of their free How AI Works series, which was made for students in grades 6 to 12.
| Concern | What it means | A question to ask yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Bias | AI learns from data made by people, so it can repeat unfair patterns in that data | Would this answer treat everyone fairly? |
| Privacy | Whatever you type into an AI tool may be stored or used | Would I be okay with a stranger reading this? |
| AI decision-making | AI can sound confident while being wrong, and it can’t be held accountable | Who checks this before it matters? |
| Cost | Running AI uses energy, costs money, and causes environmental externalities, even when it feels free | Is what I’m making worth what it takes to make it? |
I added that last row myself, because I think it’s an important one. There is a cost to using AI, even when it doesn’t feel like there is, so make sure what you’re making is worth it.
4b) Meet with your counselor, play, and discuss five rounds of the “What Would You Do?” ethical decision-making scenarios.
Ethics questions rarely have one perfect answer, and that’s what makes them so fun to talk through! A good answer usually weighs who could get hurt, who’s responsible, and what a Scout would do even if nobody was watching. Try talking each of these through with a parent or a friend first.
- You have an essay due tomorrow, and AI could write the whole thing in ten seconds. What do you do?
- A friend shows you an AI-edited photo of another Scout that’s meant to be funny, but it’s a bit embarrassing. What do you do?
- An AI tool gives you a statistic for your presentation, but there’s no source. What do you do?
- Your patrol uses AI to plan the campout menu, and it suggests something a Scout in your patrol can’t eat. Who’s responsible?
4c) Develop your own ethical guidelines for the use of AI.
Your guidelines are like a personal code for using AI, a short set of rules you’ll stick to even when it would be easier not to. Mine are short and blunt, because rules you can remember are rules you’ll actually follow.
- Don’t use it to mislead people.
- Don’t take credit for what AI created as if it were your own original work.
- Don’t use it to produce something that isn’t useful to anyone.
There’s a lot of talk about AI “slop,” and it’s a fair concern, although what looks like slop to one person might be useful to someone else. You might notice that all three of mine connect right back to being Trustworthy and Helpful from the Scout Law. Keep yours short, and make them yours!
Where’s The Line On Schoolwork?
I think AI should help you think about ideas, but you should always take the first pass yourself. AI is a great helper for when you get stuck, but if you use it for every answer, you won’t make progress in your own skills.
Here’s how I do it: When I write an article, I brain dump all of my ideas first, then have AI build a structure around them, rather than asking AI to write the article for me.
The reason is that you have far more context than AI does. You have sight, touch, smell, memory and years of experience with your situation, and most of that never makes it into a chatbot. So give it your perspective first, and let AI help you organize and stress-test your thinking.
How To Use AI To Earn This Badge (The Right Way)
Take all the requirements, give them to an AI tool, and say something like: “Give me stories illustrating these points. Ask me questions, and let’s go through each requirement so that I understand it.” It’ll talk through any topic for as long as you want.
One warning, though. AI is kind of a yes man, and whatever you tell it, it’ll lean toward agreeing with you. So tell it to be skeptical of your ideas and to challenge you, or save a reusable prompt that tells it to think critically. Your counselor will definitely hear the difference.
Parent Note: Most AI chatbots have age rules. OpenAI’s terms of use, for example, require users to be at least 13, and anyone under 18 needs a parent or guardian’s permission. Check the rules for whatever tool your Scout uses, and set it up together.
4d) What is the Turing test?
The Turing test checks whether a person asking questions can tell a machine apart from a human. It comes from Alan Turing’s 1950 paper asking whether machines can think, and he originally called it “the imitation game” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
An interrogator asks written questions to two hidden participants, one a person and one a machine, and tries to work out which is which. If the interrogator can’t reliably tell them apart, the machine is said to have passed. Fun thing to discuss with your counselor: do you think today’s chatbots would pass?
Congrats on Finishing Part 1 of the Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge!
Wow, great work getting through all of that! You definitely deserve a break at this point; give yourself a pat on the back! 🎉
Your counselor meeting will go a lot smoother with all of your notes in one place. Before you meet up to talk through the first half, gather these together:
- Your own explanation and example for each of the 16 terms
- Your AI and automation examples for 2a to 2c and 3a to 3c
- Your two timelines, with your five favorite milestones and at least one you added yourself
- Your own written AI guidelines for 4c
Once you’re ready to continue on to part 2 of the Artificial Intelligence merit badge (Requirements 5-8), click here. We’ll cover deepfakes, how to write prompts that actually work, project ideas, and what a career in AI looks like from the inside. I’m rooting for you! 🦅