TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Studio Practice · AGE 11—15 · FACTUAL · DURABLE

Fact, opinion, and telling them apart

AI writes facts and opinions in the same smooth tone, and only you can sort them.

The idea

"The hall is twelve metres long." You can measure that. "The hall is beautiful." You cannot measure that; it is the writer's view. Most texts mix the two kinds of sentence. Some texts are written to persuade you rather than inform you. Reading well means asking of each sentence: can I check this, or is it what the writer believes? It also means noticing when a text gives you very little to check at all.

Why it matters

AI writes facts and opinions in the same smooth tone. Only you can sort them.

See it in the studio

A website describes a library: "Completed in 1962, the library is the finest modern building in the city, and its reading room is twenty metres long." Three claims. The first and last you can check. The middle one is an opinion placed between two facts so that it looks like a fact too.

Watch for this

Opinions dressed as facts: "everyone knows", "clearly", "the best". Those words usually mean the evidence is missing.

Try it

Take a paragraph about any famous building. Underline every sentence you could check with a measuring tape, a date, or a document. Circle the rest. Count both.

Prove it

Read a short text to a friend. Point to one fact, one opinion, and one place where the writer is trying to persuade you.

How it works

The grown-up name for this is media and information literacy. The persuasion part matters most. A text built to sell — a brochure, an advert, a post — picks the facts that make its opinion look obvious. Later on this map you will meet machine-written text that does the same thing without meaning to.

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON