“I, for one, Welcome Our New Computer Overlords”: Using Artificial Intelligence as a Lesson Planning Resource for Social Studies

Due to the introduction and rapid ubiquity of AI and AI-integrated programs that can be used by students and teachers, educational scholarship evaluating the capabilities of AI is needed. The present study evaluates the abilities of three prominent AI programs—ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard—to create high school lesson plans on the subjects of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Indian Removal Act, and climate change. We judge the quality of the lessons’ content based on scholarship in the education field and document the process of prompting the AI to produce lessons more in line with these criteria.