CIVILIZATION MEETS AI: HOW SHOULD HUMANITY RELATE TO ADVANCED AI?

A pilot curriculum of six Socratic seminars for educators and other nontechnical learners.

Project Details

Advanced AI raises questions that nontechnical adults increasingly encounter but rarely have a structured place to examine: What could go wrong? What human values should guide its development and use? How should citizens, educators, managers, and community leaders respond when experts disagree?

Civilization Meets AI is a six-session, in-person Socratic seminar pilot for approximately 20 educators and other nontechnical adults in Phoenix. Over eight to ten weeks, participants will examine six connected concerns: fear and existential risk; misalignment; loss of control; catastrophic misuse; the concentration or corruption of power; and the atrophy of human judgment.

Each 2.5-hour session will combine accessible background material, structured discussion, concrete scenarios, and reflective exercises. This is not technical AI training. It is public-facing AI literacy: helping participants understand competing arguments, identify tradeoffs, distinguish evidence from rhetoric, and form more thoughtful judgments about advanced AI.

The pilot will produce a reusable facilitator guide, participant workbook, supporting materials, and an evaluation record to improve the model for future cohorts. The immediate goal is a rigorous, welcoming space in which people without technical backgrounds can reason clearly about a technology that will increasingly shape their lives and institutions.

Theory of Impact

The guiding principle of Civilization Meets AI is simple: clarity of thought before rashness of action.

Choices about advanced AI will not be made by engineers alone. They will also be shaped by educators, parents, managers, public officials, voters, journalists, and community leaders. Yet many people who will live with those choices lack an accessible framework for understanding the major risks, uncertainties, tradeoffs, and value judgments involved.

This pilot addresses that gap by giving nontechnical adults a structured way to engage serious questions about advanced AI. Participants will leave better able to explain key concerns, recognize where reasonable people disagree, evaluate claims more carefully, and discuss difficult issues without collapsing into either panic or complacency.

The project will be evaluated through participation, structured feedback, and participant reflection. Its tangible outputs—a tested seminar curriculum, facilitator guide, participant materials, and evaluation findings—will make later delivery less costly and more effective.

A six-session pilot will not solve AI risk. Its contribution is more practical and more credible: building the public capacity for informed, responsible judgment. If the pilot succeeds, participants can carry that capacity into classrooms, workplaces, families, and civic conversations, while the materials can support future cohorts and adaptation by other facilitators.

People

Walter Pentland

Team Member

Grants Received– no grants recorded

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Funding Asks

Pilot funding: Civilization Meets AI

Open

A six-session, in-person Socratic seminar pilot that helps educators and other nontechnical adults reason clearly about advanced AI and existential risk.

Minimum

$12,000

Ideal

$15,000

How the money will be spent

The $12,000 minimum funds:

curriculum development and research ($3,500)
facilitator compensation—planning, six seminars, and debriefs ($2,500)
meeting-room rental ($1,000)
participant materials and supplies ($500)
basic video recording/production ($1,500)
graphic design ($500)
editing, transcription, and accessibility ($500)
refreshments and incidental expenses ($500)
evaluation and Version 2 preparation ($1,000)
contingency ($1,000)

The $15,000 ideal level includes the above, plus:

higher-quality filming
editing and graphics
an improved facilitator guide and participant workbook
additional evaluation and refinement for a more polished Version 2 curriculum

Discussion

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