In January, Mary Ruskell (a high school senior) wrote about her experiences with generative AI for CNN. She writes eloquently about the existential questions she is facing as this technology makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction. Generative AI has made mistrust her default setting. She asks a pivotal question: “When some of the main tools you use as a teenager to connect with real friends—memes and social media—are corrupted with artificiality, how do you make real connections?” Treating internet content with skepticism is not just an item on an AI literacy checklist. It’s a habitual behavior that has dramatic consequences for how she does (or does not) connect with others.
