It saddens me to say this, but artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and if you have young children, you need to throw all your preconceived notions of their future success out the window.
When I think about how much technology has advanced since I was a child, and how it continues to evolve and grow in unexpected ways, I see how ill equipped any of us were for the present we find ourselves in.
We do not want the same to keep happening. We need our young people to be prepared for an automated world where mastery of certain tools can mean the difference between poverty and wealth.
It’s not even just for the children who want to be engineers or coders. Forget that narrow thinking. The future of AI is not some exclusive club for math nerds and Silicon Valley types.
Whether your child wants to become a fashion designer, a film director, a musician, a writer, a chef, or a farmer, AI is already weaving its way into every single one of those industries. And the ones who understand how to use it will always be 10 steps ahead of the ones who don’t.
Take a look at all those weird videos you see of sentient pizza dancing in the streets of Paris or a gorilla in the wilderness vlogging his day like a YouTuber.
These were created by people who are quickly jumping on the bandwagon at the right time and cashing in on the boom of the social media market.
Turns out there’s big money to be made in creating doom-scrolling slop, but what we see on our For You pages is just the tip of a very deep iceberg.
What lies beneath that tip is a vast and rapidly growing economy built on algorithms, automation and AI-generated everything.
Behind the goofy clips and surreal art is a quiet revolution in literally every facet of our lives. But here’s the thing, AI tools beyond the obvious ones like ChatGPT are quite accessible.
This new industry is being driven by people who are curious enough to learn how the tools work. Not necessarily the geniuses, nor is it only always adults. Sometimes, it’s a 14-year-old in their bedroom making more money from AI-generated, automated or assisted products than from your average entry-level job.
So when I say that your child’s success may depend on how early they begin to engage with AI, I don’t say it to be dramatic, I say it because the gatekeepers of the future are already setting up shop, and they don’t wait for latecomers.
We need to get intentional. Curious kids are certainly not hard to find, but they need tools, exposure and guidance.
Many of the best entry points into AI are free or low cost, designed for beginners, and game-like so they feel more like play than pressure.
Tools like Teachable Machine let children train their own mini models with images, sounds or poses.
Scratch, the coding language for children, now has extensions that introduces easy machine learning.
There are AI art generators, story creators and even Minecraft (game) modifications and plugins that teach automation and logic.
Encourage your child to question the tech they use, using simple examples like why YouTube recommends certain videos to you or how it is possible for Siri to hear and understand us.
By the time a baby born in 2024 is applying for their first job, a lot of today’s ‘safe’ career paths might not exist in the way that they do now.
It’s time for parents to stop operating from their own frame of mind. Your brain, created in the 80s or 90s, needs to accept that the future is now.
Let go of cassette player nostalgia, and do the right thing so the generations after us have a fair chance at competing in the global arena.
I personally am not a fan of the direction this is all heading (yes, I’ve seen ‘Terminator’, ‘The Matrix’, ‘iRobot’, and on top of that I’m a writer trying to publish a human-crafted book in an AI-generated world), but I have accepted that I have no choice but to keep up with technology if I want the world to make sense.
A child today needs to know how to collaborate with AI tools the way we once had to learn how to type or send an email.
They need to understand prompts, inputs, outputs, bias and how to work with machines, not in competition with them.
Creativity will matter, yes, but creativity informed by and enhanced by technology will matter more.
Thankfully children’s brains are like sponges and the things we might find complex can be absorbed by them easily.
They just need you to put the right tools in their hands.
– Anne Hambuda is a writer, social commentator and poet. Follow her online or email her at annehambuda@gmail.com for more.
