critical ai handbook
The Critical AI Handbook is Human Restoration Project's guide to using AI in the classroom without losing what makes teaching human. Co-authored with Trevor Aleo, it treats AI as a tool rather than a replacement for teachers, and asks students to look closely at how these systems work, who they leave out, and what they cost. Grab the printable PDF on the left, or work through the prompts and activities on the right.
We do our best to keep these ideas current, and every interactable carries a review date marking when we last checked it for accuracy.
Start here
Using AI Without Losing Ourselves: A Critical Media Literacy for the 21st Century
We must be proactive in teaching students how and when to use AI while taking a critical lens to how it works and its potential pitfalls. This is the essay the whole handbook grows from, rooted in Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy.
read the essayFoundations
What these tools actually are, what they can't do, and why a critical eye comes first.
How a model guesses the next word
Step through a language model one word at a time and watch it run on plain probability rather than understanding.
openCommon AI tropes to avoid
Naming AI like a person (treat it like an intern, it understands, it hallucinated) quietly changes what we trust, so catch the common tropes and reframe each to what the model actually does.
openTools, not systems
A calculator never replaced math teachers and Wikipedia never replaced research, so sort the tools from the systems and see where AI actually fits.
openProactive, not reactive
Students are already using AI, so flip a few classroom moments from a ban into a lesson on using it well.
openMultimodal Thinking
Move one idea across modes, genres, languages, and reading levels, and bring more voices to a topic than any single text could.
Text curation
Map a core text, then use four frameworks (Sunburst, Duet, Tree Ring, Solar System) to build an interdisciplinary text set around it.
openMake a standard student-friendly
Watch a real eighth-grade reading standard get rewritten in language students can actually read, then trimmed to the essentials.
openSingle-point rubric maker
Turn dense standards into a single-point rubric, one column for what proficiency looks like with open space on either side for real feedback.
openTranslating and rephrasing
Move one idea across languages, reading levels, and tones, which doubles as an accessibility tool for multilingual and neurodivergent learners.
openTransformation
Tasks that weren't really possible in a classroom before. These open up creativity and inquiry instead of shortcutting them.
Remix for a new audience
Remix a text for a completely different reader and watch where the model's fluency runs out, since it can fake a fandom's surface but not the references only a real fan would know.
openGoing on an adventure
Turn an AI into a storyteller and play a branching adventure that shows where it shines as a creative partner and where its endless agreeableness runs out.
openRead across texts like a researcher
Trace a theme across several books or compare how two eras handle the same idea, the kind of pattern-finding that used to take weeks.
Research with Elicit
Elicit summarizes research findings like a Scholar-style assistant, and it's the same tool we use to build HRP's research database.
Talk to a PDF
Upload a dense academic PDF and ask it questions, with each answer tied back to the page it came from.
Pair writing with sound
Ask for songs that match a poem or essay, then weigh whether the suggestions actually fit, and where the model's ear falls short.
Visuals that match your writing
Adobe Firefly trains on licensed, compensated work, which makes it a more ethical place to generate images that pair with student writing.
Discussion: AI and academic research
Where does this information come from, how was the model trained, and why does that matter when you cite it?
Ethical Dilemmas
The largest part of the handbook, and the reason we don't just ignore these tools: bias, deepfakes, labor, privacy, and the environment are conversations students need to have out loud.
Whose great works?
Ask for the ten best books of all time, then examine whose canon the answer reflects, and who's missing from it.
Whose wars matter?
Ask which U.S. wars matter most, then compare the model's textbook answer against the Philippine-American War it tends to skip.
Make it hallucinate
Find the riddles, slang, and niche facts that make a confident model invent things, then talk about what that means for medicine and research.
Spot the deepfake
Set real AI-generated images and face-swaps beside the genuine article and see whether you and your students can tell which is which.
Deepfakes, consent, and harm
AI-generated explicit imagery is already turning up in schools, which makes a hard conversation about consent worth having before it happens rather than after.
The environmental cost
A calculator that weighs a class's AI use against a school-bus ride or a hot shower, so the energy question stays concrete instead of abstract.
When AI detection fails
Detection tools flag real student work as fake, so why do we second-guess students' AI use but take the detectors at face value?
Cite the machine
If a student used AI, how should they say so in a remix culture that rarely stops to cite anything?
The AI Incident Database
A searchable, user-submitted wiki of AI gone wrong, with thousands of documented cases to fuel a class discussion.
What counts as knowing?
A model retrieves a fact in seconds, but the handbook's five E's of sense-making (embedded, embodied, enactive, emotive, extended) argue that isn't the same as learning.
classroom prompt
Replace the [bracketed] parts with your own text, then paste it into your AI tool.