Generation AI

Generation AI (GenAI) is a Finnish AI literacy research and education initiative launched in 2022 by six university, industry, and NGO partners, and funded by Fin Strategic Research Council. It arose from concerns about diminishing feelings of security, control and free will in a data driven society, declining trust in authorities and science, and widening inequalities in digital skills and agency. These challenges motivated the consortium to build an evidence base and practical solutions for educating the “AI generation.”

Get to know the initiative

GenAI’s goal is to lay the foundation for technology education that explains how AI works, the opportunities it offers and its dynamic effects, while openly discussing its limitations and risks. The project focuses on novice learners, especially children and young people, helping them understand how AI systems shape what they see online, how they are profiled and how decisions are made about them. To make learning intuitive and fair, it produces free, open-source tools such as the “GenAI Teachable Machine,” the social media simulator “Somekone”, and “Breakable Machine”. 

These classroom resources let learners build simple classifiers, see  how social media algorithms track and profile them, and explore algorithmic decisions without coding. Crucially, the tools are designed to be safe for schools: they run in a browser window on local devices, have zero tracking cookies, comply with GDPR, and do not send user data outside the classroom. This privacy first approach ensures that AI education does not compromise learners’ rights or expose their data to tracking. No other AI education initiative is equally privacy-preserving.

Who are the beneficiaries?

Beneficiaries include children aged 6-16 years (through school interventions and pre-school sessions), pre- and 
in-service teachers (through teacher training and workshops), policymakers (via targeted sessions organized by 
the project, participation in government advisory groups, panels, conferences, and publishing of guidelines 
regarding AI education and children’s rights), children's science initiatives, and general public (via availability of 
our tools and resources free online).

Why is this a good practice?

GenAI also engages AI developers, schools, authorities, businesses and NGOs to equip teachers with research based pedagogy and to embed AI literacy into curricula. Its interventions aim to strengthen children’s resilience in a technological world, foster cybersecurity thinking and improve research on children’s rights and AI. The project teaches learners to recognise how small online choices create digital footprints, how biases creep into systems and how algorithmic discrimination and inequality arise; this helps them question technological determinism and the misuse of trust. By measuring its impact on learners’ data agency and ability to navigate complex processes, GenAI ensures that AI education remains ethical, inclusive and sensitive to fundamental rights.

GenAI’s free and open resources have been used over 180.000 times from more than 50 countries. By 
demystifying AI and promoting critical thinking across subjects, the project gives young Europeans and their 
teachers the knowledge and confidence to question, evaluate and shape AI technologies. In doing so it builds 
trust in digital systems, reduces inequalities and prepares society for an AI centred future. As open-source 
tools, they are easily adaptable to languages and cultural contexts.