Ai security literacy framework and k-12 learning platform introduced
AI Security Literacy: Ecosystem-based Competency Framework and K-12 Learning Platform
Cryptography and SecurityComputers and Society
Summary
Schools are using artificial intelligence more quickly than they have guidance for dealing with it safely. The authors created a new framework to help teachers, students, and school leaders understand AI security risks and challenges across different roles. They based the technical parts on real AI safety tests and surveyed teachers to understand their attitudes toward AI. They also made a simple web platform called NeuralFortify that lets K-12 users learn about AI security using actual AI models.
What this means in practice
- •For school administrators: Use the framework to create or improve AI security policies and training programs tailored for K-12 schools.
- •For edtech developers: Develop educational tools based on NeuralFortify to teach AI security concepts to K-12 students through interactive, real AI model exercises.$Commercial implications: Enables creation of AI security learning products that engage schools and districts with practical AI safety education.
Authors
Eric Yocam, Varghese Vaidyan, Paris Kalathas
Abstract
Adoption of artificial intelligence in K-12 schools has outpaced guidance for students, teachers, and administrators. Existing AI-literacy frameworks emphasize understanding and use; cybersecurity frameworks predate AI-specific threats, and neither defines AI security literacy as a competency domain in its own right. We propose an AI Security Literacy (AISL) framework of six dimensions spanning the school ecosystem, ground its technical dimensions in public AI-safety benchmarks and a reproducible multi-seed adversarial evaluation, and ground its attitudinal dimensions in nationally representative survey micro-data from U.S. teachers and adults. Only 34.5% of teachers report a school AI policy, and teachers see their own AI use as easing their work but students' use as complicating it; on the technical side, a reported robustness figure depends as much on the attack and the particular trained model as on the system evaluated. NeuralFortify, a browser-based K-12 platform built on real AI models, is presented as an illustrative operationalization.