Thinking Critically About AI News
AI news moves fast and accuracy often lags behind excitement. Use this structured framework and checklist to evaluate any AI article before sharing, acting on, or worrying about it.
News Analysis Template
Select a sample article, then work through 6 structured steps to evaluate it. Each step has guided prompts to help you think critically.
Critical Thinking Checklist
10 questions to ask about any AI news article. Use the interactive version to score excerpts, or print the checklist for offline use.
Module 6 Summary
Across these four lessons, you have built a comprehensive AI literacy toolkit. Here are the core principles to carry forward:
The six-criteria framework from Lesson 6.1 gives you a structured way to assess any AI claim. Evidence quality, specificity, reproducibility, source credibility, conflict of interest, and peer review — run any claim through these filters before forming an opinion or taking action.
From Lesson 6.2: the default stance for AI news should be healthy scepticism, not cynicism. Most partially true claims contain a genuine advance wrapped in exaggerated framing. Your job is not to dismiss everything but to find the kernel of truth and separate it from the hype.
From Lesson 6.3: benchmark scores tell you about capability under controlled conditions, not reliability in your specific use case. Always ask what a benchmark does NOT measure, whether it is saturated, and how it compares to your actual task requirements.
The 10-item checklist from this lesson is your daily tool. Print it, bookmark it, internalise it. Before sharing, acting on, or worrying about any AI news, run it through the checklist. Articles scoring below 5 out of 10 are not worth your attention — and certainly not worth your anxiety.
AI literacy is not about being the person who dismisses everything or the person who believes everything. It is about having the frameworks, habits, and questions to navigate AI news with informed confidence — knowing when to pay attention, when to investigate further, and when to move on.