Theory of mind refers to the attribution of mental states that humans ascribe to other humans or objects (such as computer-based systems). Recently, the attribution of mental states has been investigated toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a basic manner to capture people's engagement toward it, and people's perception about AI social skills and AI capabilities. In line with this idea, mental state attribution can be used as an indirect measure of students' understanding of AI functioning, and in particular of the kind of interactions students may have with AI systems. Too often is the case of people using generative AI systems in ways that exceed their actual ways of functioning. In our study, children of age in the range 9-12 were involved in one-shot unplugged activities concerning data and models. The unplugged activities were not aimed at teaching the theory of Machine Learning, but rather they were designed so as to provide awareness on some basic mechanisms and help developing a correct use of tools that are becoming more and more present in everyday life. This paper introduces the activities and reports the results that were achieved.

Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly becoming pervasive in everyday life of everyone. In this setting, developing correct AI conception since childhood is not only a need to be addressed in educational curricula, but is also a children right. Accordingly, several initiatives at national and international levels aim at promoting AI and emerging technology literacy, supported also by a proliferation in the literature of learning courses covering a variety of topics, learning objectives and targeted ages. Schools are therefore pushed to introduce innovative activities for children in their curricula. In this paper, we report the results of a case study where we tested the contribution of an AI block-based course in developing computational thinking, and human and AI minds understanding in fifth and sixth grade children.