Mike Taubman

When Mike Taubman, BA ’04, MA ’05, teaches his students about artificial intelligence, he doesn’t just teach them how to prompt the technology to provide better answers. 

Sure, Taubman’s students learn how to use AI to advance, safely, on whatever path they are pursuing, like someone might learn how to drive a car. (The course he co-created at North Star Academy in New Jersey is called AI Driver’s License.) But what they are really gaining is an understanding of what value the systems are providing, for whom, and why. 

“We open the hood,” Taubman says. “We look at the engine powering the car, the incentive structure of the industry, what is going on economically and politically, in addition to the technology.”

Taubman taught English for nearly two decades before moving into AI- and career-focused roles at North Star, part of the Uncommon Schools network. He approaches AI as a “topic as much as a tool,” dedicates most class time to human interactions, and believes teachers should be helping shape policies around AI technologies.

“AI is a wake-up call for all of us in education to reexamine first principles, to get back in touch with what we believe education is for,” he says.    

One of Taubman’s earliest forays into AI literacy came during a fellowship program in which he helped bring Stanford’s prestigious Structured Liberal Education program (he was a participant as an undergraduate) to high school students and developed an AI literacy curriculum with an AI researcher.

“Teachers and young people are on the front lines of this moment,” he says. “If AI is like cars, what do we believe the speed limit should be? What should liability look like? This is a conversation about beliefs and what is good for the collective.”