Ask HN: What/how are you teaching your kids in the age of AI?

5 points by nunodonato 34 days ago | 10 comments

I've been feeling more and more lost. Had plans to teach my 10yr python, maybe something fun with games or robotics. But then I look around and I see others doing 100x more advanced things using AI.

Yesterday I tried google ai studio. 1hr later I had an app on my phone. Its hard to justify the motivation of learning all the foundations and hard stuff, when it's so easy to get to the end result using AI.

I've been avoiding showing them that image generation is a real thing, they love to draw and do arts. I fear that that instant gratification will just hook them to do more and more AI images and loose their interest in actual drawing and painting. On the other hand, prompt engineering is a thing, even for image gen.

No question that learning to leverage AI is a skill. But I don't even know how to navigate that when I think about the kind of future my kids will face.

Honestly, sometimes I feel it's just wiser to put your time and effort into things AI is very far to replace us. I'm always swinging from "we need to learn tech" to "we can't beat it, let's put our focus and energy into something else". (note: this is also because my kids are not very tech-oriented, I understand this would be totally different if I had geeks in the house that love computer stuff - like I was!)

How are you all navigating this, especially those of you with kids?

jones1618 34 days ago |

Things I teach my children (and parents):

1. AI/ML is not an oracle. It is neither wise nor omniscient. Never rely on AI for advice (I tell them the pizza glue story). Never rely on AI for opinion (because if you ask for a different opinion it will deliver it, happily).

2. AI/ML is not a source. It can helpfully summarize things and tell you things that may be true but then you need to seek out the sources both to smoke out the errors and hallucinations but also to be exposed to gritty details that get sandpapered away by the "smoothing" of the ML models. AI output tends to be like those posts that show the average face for every country. The resulting faces are interesting and pleasant but should never be confused with real people.

3. Generative AI (text, images, videos, code) is an amazing and fun way to turn an idea into something concrete. But ... beware the pitfalls. A) Beware the delight of novelty. Even if the image/text is kind of coherent and novel, scrutinize the details. Did the result express your original intent? B) Sweat the details. If the result doesn't show/say 100% of what you wanted then it isn't 100% yours. If you stopped there, you would be letting the AI/ML dictate the limits and "flavor" of your creation. It would be better to use the generated output as inspiration or a guide to what you ultimately create.

efsher_azoy2 34 days ago |

ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity are partially replacing search engines now - and this is the reality. However, like with search engines and their output, I think the most important skill is do not trust them blindly.

And programming... Well, I think it is a fun way to make your brain exercise, seems like a good reason to teach it to kids. Also, it helps understand how most of things are working internally nowadays.

nunodonato 34 days ago | |

Yeah I did teach them to use perplexity, I think its the less AI-ish one and relies on more factual data than any "chat" AI.

jjgreen 34 days ago |

Given the pending societal collapse, knife-skills would be useful.

asddsasd 34 days ago |

I don't know.. I play some Cello and tennis myself. AI won't help with that. I can only encourage them to learn something that makes them happy and try to encourage good grades in general so they at least have some shot at whatever bullshit jobs are available to them. Happiness never came from the job anyway.

Alright I caught myself mulling this over: I actually think learning to "grind" is key. I myself learned this very late, I was very averse to putting energy into something - still am - and only by reversing that and learning to "just do it" did I experience some semblence of success. Literally everything that's worth anything to me now has come through grind and not one-off genius moves. So I guess "endurance" and learn to push through. Very, very few people have follow-through. That alone is a skill that'll differentiate you. Someone else here mentioned knife skills and I don't think that's a bad idea at all..

nunodonato 34 days ago | |

thanks for the extra thoughts :) I do agree... learning to grind is hard, and its definitely a hard challenge for most kids these days. Knife skills doesn't align well with [my] girls, but I'll look for a more gender-aligned idea ;)

epsteingpt 34 days ago |

try recess or alpha school for approaches here that are well thought out and at least tested with kids.

blinkbat 34 days ago |

please, for the love of god, teach them to program and let them continue making art. they have zero reason to "learn" AI right now.

riccalmo 34 days ago | |

Best answer right here

nunodonato 34 days ago | |

I think you might have misunderstood my point. I was not leaning to teach them AI. But since my kids aren't "naturally intended" towards tech and code, my questions is more if this is something I should still push a bit, because if you are not going to be a top-level software engineer, then you probably have no chances to compete with AI. Heck, you already don't, what to speak of 10 years in the future...