AI Literacy Initiative

Don't Freak Out

A student-friendly guide to the most common fears about AI — built with Otis, a warm chat companion that answers questions without the hype or the dread.

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The challenge

Students in Gen Z and Gen Alpha are hearing conflicting messages about AI every day — it's cheating, it's killing the planet, it's taking their future jobs. Teachers wanted a single destination that acknowledges these fears honestly instead of dismissing them, and gives students a calm place to ask follow-up questions.

Our approach

We built a six-fear, research-backed mini-site with a chat companion named Otis powered by Claude. The content structure follows a validate → nuance → reframe pattern so students feel heard before they're educated. Otis is rate-limited, refuses to invent statistics, and refers to crisis resources when a conversation signals distress.

What we built

  • Six fear pages covering cheating, environment, intelligence, jobs, privacy, and bias
  • Otis — an Anthropic-powered chat drawer with a teacher-safe system prompt
  • Per-IP rate limits (12/min, 200/day) to keep costs predictable
  • Responsive dark mode and full accessibility pass
  • Static build system so teachers can add new fears by editing one JSON file

Impact at a glance

6
Fears addressed with research citations
<3s
Median Otis reply time
$0.003
Estimated cost per Otis message

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