A DCF 2026 Generative AI Wish List

We’re only a month away from the new year so I’m going to post an early hope or wish for 2026. After looking at some recent announcements from the Welsh Government and after personally attending a recent ‘national conversation’ event in north Wales, it looks like the DCF (Digital Competence Framework) will be updated this coming year. It will be 10 years in September since Kirsty Williams launched the DCF for schools in Wales, so it is due for an update. I obviously don’t know what updates are, but from what I have read it does appear that the update will "reflect the impact of emerging technologies on young people" which I'm pretty sure will mean generative AI. Therefore my hopes for the updated DCF will include references to ‘critical AI literacy’. It's pretty clear to me that both the Welsh Government and national UK have already made the decision that teachers and learners are going to be utilising generative AI to "harness the transformative power of artificial intelligence to drive economic growth, enhance public services in both Welsh and English, and equip people across Wales with the skills to thrive in an AI-shaped future." As much as I might question this highly problematic technology (to say the very least!), generative AI is being fully embraced by both UK and Welsh governments, encouraging both the public and private sectors to be utilising AI, "Shaping a Smarter, Fairer, More Prosperous Wales." It will be interesting to come back to this post in a couple of years time and see if we have a more prosperous Wales? 😏 There's so much to unpack in that Welsh Government policy / strategy document, that I might look at in another post. 

Going back to the DCF, what do I mean when I say, Critical AI Literacy? Well, I would like to see a DCF that is not just focused on how learners should(?) be using generative AI tools appropriately and effectively, but there is also a focus on a deeper, more critical look at the wider ethics around generative AI. That there are opportunities for learners to gain a deeper understanding about what generative AI is, how it's built, trained and the detrimental affects on the environment and on society. I would like to see learners fully informed about this technology so that they can make truly informed ethical decisions about whether or not to use it, or at least make the decision if they wish to use it less. According to King's College London, Critical AI literacy should,

"help students develop a critical awareness of generative AI models, how they work, why their content should not be treated as a single source of truth and what their social, intellectual and environmental implications might be."

In my 2026 DCF wish list I would like to see opportunities for learners to

- look at environmental and climate issues, highlighting how huge hyper-scale data centres are powered and the enormous amounts of water which are used to cool the processors (which most users have some awareness of), but also being made aware of where these data centres are being built around Wales, the UK and across the world and the appalling impact on many local communities, especially impacting countries in the global south. 

- An understanding of how LLMs are created, the materials that they are trained on, the human input in the training refinement process where workers are exposed to viewing extreme violence, sexual and hate outputs (LLMs are trained on data that will most certainly contain these materials). 

- Reference to training bias, the materials used in the training that affect the quality of the generated output that can lead to discrimination. Also opportunities to raise awareness of how companies who develop LLMs are able to refine the way an LLM generates its response. For example, compare xAI Grok outputs to Google Gemini! 

- Finally I hope there are opportunities for learners to have critical discussions about the profound effects of generative AI on society, job losses, privacy, copyright infringements, the effects on their education and on their mental health.

If the Welsh Government want our learners to be truly "ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world", then in my opinion, we need an updated DCF that ensures that schools provide learners of all ages with the information to allow them to make personal, ethical choices about generative AI.

It’s going to be interesting to see what is finally produced. 

"We need to educate pupils, students, teachers at schools and in higher education, and the public how uncritical adoption of AI contributes to harm and what is needed to prevent or minimize harm. Critical AI literacy is therefore urgently needed." 

Quote from a critical AI literacy project, Radboud Universiteit.