Demystifying Generative AI: A Pedagogical Approach

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous in contemporary society, increasingly assuming a central role across different fields and not limited to scientific research, but including healthcare, education, communication, and the creative industry. Specifically, Generative AI (GenAI), the branch of AI which typically produces synthetic content in response to a user prompt, is increasingly playing a fundamental role in these fields. In this perspective, it is crucial to train individuals with the skills and understanding needed to effectively leverage AI as a transformative tool which is efficiently integrated within the society. In this context, school education plays a key role in introducing students to the subject, especially considering that they are already regular users of GenAI-based technologies. We devised a 2-hour lecture, tailored to high-school students aged between 14 and 19, to introduce and familiarize them with these concepts. The lecture is designed to be accessible not only to final-year students or those following science-oriented curricula, but to a broader audience. This contribution presents the lecture materials, including both theoretical content and hands-on notebooks, discusses them, and makes them available to the wider public, while also sharing the insights from the participants.