In this 15-minute paper format, I will present an overview of the curriculum I developed contextualising AI through specific thematic examples, including companionship, sex tech and the Cyborg in popular culture. I will critically examine how students engaged with corporate interests, labour models, environmental impact, transhumanism, and technical debates between connectionist and symbolic AI. Using structured dialogues and research-led, ethical manifestos, I will demonstrate how students moved from passive to active, creative users of AI technology, including how some students opted out. I will show how treating use of Large Language Models (LLMs) as a form of ‘metascience’, encouraging analysis of results rather than simply generating them, inspires students to interrogate the bias, inaccuracy, and limitations of the software. Welcomed by students, this curriculum provided space to navigate anxieties surrounding generative AI’s impact on craft, originality, future employability, its potentially harmful outcomes and the environmental cost. My findings show that a critical, student-led approach fosters philosophical, rather than thoughtless engagement with AI. While some educators are energised by its possibilities, many feel anxious about how the technology influences imagination and ideation – this presentation provides actionable recommendations for educators navigating the possibilities and risks of AI and wanting to inspire critical thinking and agency with their own students.