Our children, especially teens, are experiencing rapid change as AI applications begin to dominate many areas of learning. They have real reasons to be worried, and we can start supporting them now.
I have been feeling like my children's generation, and the cohort between me and them, are heading full-throttle into a Matrix movie situation. I am worried. All I can do is influence my own children and those I come in contact with to pursue meaningful activities that bring connection. These technologies foster disconnection, discouragement, and despair when they are used without moderation. People are also losing their priority discernment and task completion capabilities by outsourcing it to the bots, and I watch a lot of unhealthy use of the time "freed up" by utilizing AI - if it is freeing one's time to just binge on more mindless entertainment instead of doing something that brings connection & fulfillment then it is promoting vice. I do believe there are virtuous (in the Stoic sense) ways to use AI but I suspect the amount of use of the technology in healthy ways will decrease steadily to the point of being statistically insignificant percentage of the use (if it isn't already there).
As I tell my kids: your screens and AI will never tell you when you are being an overindulged relationship destroying jerk.
Following the default path of the coding will result in you being diminished as a human being if we are not mindful about it, and it is my job as parent to put guardrails on anything that might result my child going off the cliffs of life until the child has developed enough discernment to navigate the context.
Your extensive review of developments in AI and the concomitant concerns is impressive. Thank you for laying it all out so comprehensively and clearly, enabling a non-tech-savvy person to understand it as well as I possibly can.
That’s a tough one. AI is one of those topics that inspires everything from panic to apathy. There’s no doubt there are some serious risks but my eldest (12) was kind of cool about it: “I think everyone’s going to be so absorbed in all this AI stuff, they’ll be staring at their screens even more than now and we can go out an enjoy the empty countryside.”
I have been feeling like my children's generation, and the cohort between me and them, are heading full-throttle into a Matrix movie situation. I am worried. All I can do is influence my own children and those I come in contact with to pursue meaningful activities that bring connection. These technologies foster disconnection, discouragement, and despair when they are used without moderation. People are also losing their priority discernment and task completion capabilities by outsourcing it to the bots, and I watch a lot of unhealthy use of the time "freed up" by utilizing AI - if it is freeing one's time to just binge on more mindless entertainment instead of doing something that brings connection & fulfillment then it is promoting vice. I do believe there are virtuous (in the Stoic sense) ways to use AI but I suspect the amount of use of the technology in healthy ways will decrease steadily to the point of being statistically insignificant percentage of the use (if it isn't already there).
As I tell my kids: your screens and AI will never tell you when you are being an overindulged relationship destroying jerk.
Following the default path of the coding will result in you being diminished as a human being if we are not mindful about it, and it is my job as parent to put guardrails on anything that might result my child going off the cliffs of life until the child has developed enough discernment to navigate the context.
Your extensive review of developments in AI and the concomitant concerns is impressive. Thank you for laying it all out so comprehensively and clearly, enabling a non-tech-savvy person to understand it as well as I possibly can.
That’s a tough one. AI is one of those topics that inspires everything from panic to apathy. There’s no doubt there are some serious risks but my eldest (12) was kind of cool about it: “I think everyone’s going to be so absorbed in all this AI stuff, they’ll be staring at their screens even more than now and we can go out an enjoy the empty countryside.”