Photo: Jeromey Russ/WBZ NewsRadio
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Scouting America made some changes to their merit badge list with two new additions.
The organization has added a Cybersecurity Merit Badge and an Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge. Darrin Johnson, Chief Program Officer for the Spirit of Adventure Council, based in Cambridge, said they are looking to the future with these added badges. "They are really designed to provide a basic introduction of AI and cybersecurity to scouts, with both the technical aspect of it, but also the ethical aspect of them as well," Johnson said.
In order to earn the Artificial Intelligence Merit Badge, scouts will have to answer questions about AI, demonstrate they know how to use it, and explore career opportunities in AI. To earn the Cybersecurity Merit Badge, scouts will need to investigate real-world cyber incidents, participate in cybersecurity challenges, and explore career opportunities in the field.
Johnson stressed the importance of keeping up to date with new technology today and said, "this is just a different world that we live in than we did 115 years ago, and there's other risks and things we need to think about, cybersecurity and AI are definitely one of those." He added that the badges are "providing much more detail about what exactly you need to, as a youth, think about for cybersecurity and how you can stay protected."
When asked about what he thinks the organization will look like a century from now, Johnson said, "I would like to think scouting will still have the same principles and still the relevance that it has today and it has for the last hundred years, but [they will be] doing stuff that we have no idea what it is."
WBZ NewsRadio's Jeromey Russ (@JeromeyRuss) reports.