Common Groud - AI vs. Human Agency game
As AI increasingly shapes how we learn, work, and make decisions, human agency, meaning our ability to think critically, make informed choices, and act with purpose, matters more than ever. AI can open new possibilities, but it also challenges us to reflect on whose values guide our choices and how much judgment we delegate to technology. Maintaining agency means questioning the answers we receive, considering different perspectives and taking responsibility for our actions. Through dialogue and shared exploration, we can critically reflect on these aspects.
Common Ground is a game developed by The Agency Compass team that brought together educators from Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Poland to explore how we can strengthen understanding of the importance of human agency in students. The team developed it through collaboration during the ASEF ClassNet19 project.
Common Ground is a card game that invites players to explore AI dilemmas, consider different perspectives and reason through decisions together. It turns complex questions into conversations about values, responsibility and choice. In each round, players face a relevant AI scenario. Each player receives a role, a secret goal, and two evidence cards. They must defend their interests, question the evidence, and agree on one of four imperfect options. Only after the decision, they reveal their roles and discover whose interests shaped the discussion.
We would like to invite you to try it in your own classroom - it can be used in the Knowledge and Technology unit when exploring the ethics of AI or in your subject classes. The scenarios are related to different contexts: medical, environmental, technological, educational and many more.
It is licensed as an Open Source: CC-BY: The Agency Compass (Barbara Ostrowska, Hang Ngo, Livio Gloor and Michael Zhang) with support of Asia-Europe Foundation
The Scenarios are meant to be printed double-sided; the Role cards as 2 pages on 1 page.