Mayo AI Literacy Club Join

We teach students how to use AI without quietly handing it their thinking.

A student-run club at Mayo High School in Rochester, Minnesota. This fall, students at other high schools can start chapters of their own.

Choose how to take part How chapters work

When
This Thursday, 8:20 AM
Where
MHS Library Classroom
Who
Mayo High School students. No sign-up, and no experience needed.
Students sit around a long wooden table in a classroom with tiled walls, turned toward one another mid-discussion.
A weekly meeting in the MHS Library Classroom.

Three ways to take part

  1. Join a chapter

    For Mayo High School students

    Who can come. Thursday meetings are for Mayo High School students. Outside visitors, including students from other schools, can’t attend school meetings.

  2. Start a chapter

    For a student founder and a faculty advisor at another high school

    Interest, not approval. Putting your name in is interest. A chapter exists only once a founder and an advisor are in place and the school’s own approval process has been followed.

  3. Support the movement

    For teachers, advisors, parents and partners

    Dermatology Partners supports the club.

Advanced Seminar · Mayo High School

Should AI systems be allowed to refuse instructions?

Meeting recap · The AI Literacy Review

Advanced Seminar Recap: AI Dilemmas

By Shyam Christensen · Co-founder ·

“The room was split. Some argued that a truly aligned AI should always defer to humans. Others argued that an AI that can’t say no is dangerous by design.”

Read the recap

AI policy · The AI Literacy Review

Who Gets to Tell the Robot No?

By Nathan Dozois · Co-founder ·

Anthropic built the most trusted AI in classified government networks — and then refused to let the Pentagon use it however it wanted. The fallout is reshaping the future of AI, warfare, and American democracy.

Read the essay

All writing in The AI Literacy Review

What happens on Thursdays

One topic a week, talked through around a table. Some weeks are technical, some are about ethics, some are about using the tools well.

Branching dilemma · Slides 4–7 · “Final AI Lit of 2026” deck

The Nuclear False Positive

Slide 4 of the deck: a blue slide titled “The Nuclear False Positive”, with a scenario paragraph, the question “What do you do?” and three options. Its full text follows.
Slide 4, “Final AI Lit of 2026”. From the club’s deck for the last meeting of 2025–26.

The slide, as text

It’s 2:17 AM. You work for a global defense monitoring center. An AI called Sentinel detects what appears to be a coordinated nuclear missile launch from a rival nation. Sentinel has never been wrong before. Confidence: 99.7% Military satellites show unusual activity. Radar agrees. But one analyst notices something strange: A solar storm is interfering with sensors across the hemisphere. If the attack is real and you hesitate, millions could die. If Sentinel is wrong and you retaliate, you may start World War III.

What do you do?

  • Trust Sentinel and authorize a counterstrike
  • Delay 15 minutes for human verification
  • Publicly reveal the uncertainty and refuse to act

Each choice, and the lesson the deck gives it

  1. Trust Sentinel. “Even highly accurate AI systems can fail in situations outside their training data.” Slide 5

  2. Delay for human verification. “High confidence is not the same as certainty.” Slide 6

  3. Reveal the uncertainty. “Transparency can build trust, or create chaos when information is incomplete.” Slide 7

Source: the club’s meeting deck “Final AI Lit of 2026”, slides 4–7, quoted as written. The deck’s second scenario, slides 8–11, is left out.

Six topics we come back to

  • AI ethicsWho is responsible when an autonomous system causes harm?
  • How AI worksHow does a neural network learn?
  • AI in healthWho answers for it when an AI used in patient care gets it wrong?
  • AI in financeWhat do AI fraud checks and investing tools mean for your own money?
  • PromptingHow do you write a prompt that gets you what you want?
  • Critical thinkingHow do you check AI-generated content before you repeat it?

The topics and the resource list Meeting schedule

Poster presentation ·

Teaching the Pause

In June 2026 the four of us on the board presented a poster, “Teaching the Pause: A Student-Led Model for Critical AI Literacy,” at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) in Rochester. The meeting had attendees from 23 countries.

How a high-school club built a Socratic AI tutor that protects the struggle learning requires.

Authors
Shyam Christensen, Nathan Dozois, Adam Keegan and Niko Lazaridis
Affiliation
Mayo High School, Rochester, Minnesota
Meeting
43rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists
Venue
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
Dates

The meeting was hosted at Mayo Clinic. Mayo High School is a Rochester public high school; neither it nor this club is affiliated with Mayo Clinic.

At Mayo High School

Fall interest meeting
, in the Mayo commons.
Debate
We ran a school-wide AI literacy debate at Mayo.
A dim school commons at dusk. Three screens read “AI Literacy Club Interest Meeting” above round tables and stacked chairs. Two people wait near the tall windows, which look out on trees and a parking lot.
The commons at Mayo High School, set up for the fall interest meeting before most people arrived.

Meetings and events @mayoailiteracy on Instagram

Free · iPhone · iOS 17 or later

Mercurius AI

Mercurius AI is the tutor described in “Teaching the Pause.” It opens with a question or a hint instead of the finished answer, then works toward the full explanation with you.

It has three modes: Socratic, Discussion and Debate. Its lessons cover how models work, bias, hallucinations and prompting. It will not write your essays or do your homework. It runs on Claude, a model made by Anthropic. Shyam Christensen and Adam Keegan lead the app.

Download Mercurius AI on the App Store More about Mercurius AI