Alright, alright, settle down. Pour yourself something strong. It’s Monday morning, feels like the bottom of a birdcage in my mouth, and the first thing I see is this gem about parents teaching their little ankle-biters how to sweet-talk the AI. Jesus. As if raising kids wasn’t enough of a goddamn nightmare circus already, now we gotta train ’em to be prompt engineers before they’ve even mastered wiping their own asses.
The Guardian, bless its bleeding heart, asked readers how they’re prepping the under-13 crowd for our glorious AI-powered future. Because apparently, knowing how to ask ChatGPT for a bedtime story where you’re the princess is the key to success now. Forget multiplication tables or learning not to eat paste.
This guy Matt from Florida, naturally, is all gung-ho. His nine-year-old doesn’t “Google it” anymore, he “ChatGPTs it.” Gets hints instead of answers. Right. Like that’s gonna last. Kid’s one bad homework assignment away from figuring out how to get the whole damn essay written while Dad’s downstairs watching the game. And the six-year-old? Uses the AI as a stand-in parent to answer endless questions while Dad “recharges his mental batteries.” Translation: Dad pours himself another scotch and lets the robot do the parenting. Can’t blame him, really. Kids are relentless. But outsourcing curiosity to a glorified autocomplete function? Feels like taking a shortcut through a minefield.
Then there’s the three-year-old princess. Instead of reading books, they generate AI stories where she’s the star. Cute, I guess. Until the AI starts writing stories where the princess overthrows the monarchy and installs a DALL-E generated Corgi as supreme leader. Gotta watch those algorithms, they have ambitions.
Graham over in the UK uses Alexa as an “intellectual backstop.” Sounds fancy. Means he asks the magic voice cylinder questions he doesn’t know the answer to. Fair enough. But even his eight-year-old caught Alexa bullshitting about Anne of Green Gables. An eight-year-old! That tells you all you need to know about the reliability of these things. You need a human fact-checker, even for kid stuff. Probably especially for kid stuff. Need another drink just thinking about the garbage these things spew.
Nate, a data scientist – figures – uses AI apps to identify birdsong and plants. Okay, that sounds borderline useful, almost wholesome. But then he uses ChatGPT to answer the kid’s “what are bones for?” questions. Wants the kid to “augment his curiosity” with AI while minimizing passive screen time. Seems like splitting hairs thinner than my patience before the first drink of the day. They do “generative engagement” too – telling stories, imaginative play. Trying to have it both ways. Good luck with that, pal. It’s like trying to be just a little bit pregnant.
Ben in Germany calls it a “creative helper,” teaching his daughter prompts and skepticism. Showing her how he uses it for work emails and event planning. Okay, maybe a slightly more grounded approach. Teaching the kid it can be “friend or foe” is probably the most honest thing I’ve read so far. But “always be skeptical”? Good advice for life in general, especially when dealing with machines designed to mimic intelligence they don’t possess.
Someone in the Netherlands uses the ChatGPT voice thing to translate between Italian and Dutch for their six-year-old. The kid understands Dad’s Italian but only speaks Dutch back. Jesus Christ. We need AI translators now just to talk to our own kids? What happened to pointing and yelling? Seems like a symptom of a deeper problem, but hell, what do I know? I just write this crap. Time for a smoke.
David in Ireland gets points for creativity, I guess. Generated fake images with the kids, then made a story about their Shetland pony turning into a unicorn fighting evil sheep in Co Kerry (sounds like a Tuesday night down at the pub, honestly). Turned it into a fake news report podcast using NotebookLM. Played it in the car. Then asked the kids if they should believe it, searched online, found nothing. Lesson: verify information. Okay, fine. But you just used the source of potential bullshit to teach kids about potential bullshit. It’s like teaching fire safety by handing the kid a flamethrower. His five-year-old is “starting to grasp that AI can generate fake content.” Hope so. The world’s drowning in it already.
Now we get to the teachers. God help ’em. Jenny in Spain encourages struggling writers to get sentence-level feedback from AI. Explanations of grammar. Tells ’em not to generate whole essays. Yeah, sure. Like telling a drunk to just have one beer. Some kids ignore the advice? You don’t say. Shocking.
Anton in Geneva talks about LLMs as tools, like hammers. Fine. But then he says we have “computers in our heads” that need training. Buddy, the computer in my head needs a reboot and probably a stiff drink, not training from another machine. Explaining to kids why they shouldn’t cheat with AI because they need to “own the tools of their success”? That’s some corporate motivational poster crap right there.
Then there’s the backlash crew. A translator in Slovenia, name withheld (smart move), is staunchly keeping her 11-year-old away from it. Wants the kid to use her own intelligence first. Hallelujah! Someone speaking my language. She knows these things exist but doesn’t use them for schoolwork. Good for her. Takes guts these days to insist on actual human effort. Pour one out for the translators, folks. They see the writing on the wall, probably written by a machine.
Adam, a teacher in Vancouver, gives the classic advice: ask AI what you’d ask a teacher. Would you ask a teacher to write your essay? No. (Some kids probably would, let’s be honest). But then he says AI lies, gives false info, need critical thinking… and never cite it, like Wikipedia. So… use this powerful, lying tool, but pretend you didn’t? Sounds like a recipe for institutionalized plagiarism and confusion. What a mess.
Angie, a primary teacher in the UK, uses Adobe Firefly to generate images from kids’ descriptions. Sparks imagination, adjusts vocabulary, sees AI flaws firsthand when it interprets things literally. Uses character.AI to bring historical figures “to life.” Okay, maybe some value there. But then she warns the kids AI can seem too human, they might get confused, always use it with an adult. Lady, you just fed them the goddamn apple, now you’re warning them about snakes? Pick a lane.
Another Adam, this one a high school teacher in New Zealand, deals with Māori and Pasifika students who are rightly pissed off when AI misunderstands their culture. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? These things are built on scraped data, reflecting all the biases and blind spots of the internet, which mostly means the biases and blind spots of well-off white dudes. He uses it for random speech prompts. Okay, maybe. But the fact that the kids take to it faster than the teachers? That’s not necessarily a good sign. Kids will eat candy for breakfast if you let them. Doesn’t mean it’s good for ’em.
Joanna in Bath lets her 11-year-old use it for homework ideas, then reformulate. The standard “responsible use” line. How long before “reformulate” just means changing a few words? Asking for a friend.
Richard, a university lecturer in Uganda, is pushing it early. Believes the “AI revolution is here to stay” and early adoption means success. The relentless march of progress, folks. Get on the train or get run over. Never mind where the train is actually going. Probably off a cliff, knowing our luck.
Then, another voice of reason, or maybe just old-fashioned curmudgeonliness (my kind of people). Someone in Oxford whose five-year-old barely knows the internet exists. Calls LLMs “plagiarism machines,” built on stolen labor, stunting imagination. Tells the kid to be suspicious of any machine wanting to write or think for him. Amen. Let the kids develop their own damn critical thinking and imagination before handing them a machine that does a crappy imitation of both. This anonymous administrator gets it. Pour them a double.
Finally, someone else not introducing it to their 10 and 8-year-olds. One kid has ADHD, attracted to shortcuts, instinctively avoids hard work. Well, shit. Sounds like most adults I know. Handing that kid AI is like giving a pyromaniac a Zippo and a can of gasoline. What could possibly go wrong?
So, what’s the takeaway from this sideshow? Parents and teachers are scrambling. Some are diving headfirst into the algorithmic Kool-Aid, hoping to future-proof their kids. Others are dipping a toe, terrified but feeling pressured. A few brave souls are holding the line, insisting on good old-fashioned human brainpower.
It’s the usual story. Shiny new tech arrives, promises miracles, disrupts everything, and leaves us confused, anxious, and probably poorer, while a few guys at the top get obscenely rich. Now they’re dragging the kids into it before they even know what hit ’em. Teaching them to rely on a machine that hallucinates facts, steals art, and can’t tell a unicorn from a hole in the ground.
Me? I’ll stick to my whiskey and my own messy, unreliable, goddamn human thoughts. At least when I bullshit, I know I’m doing it. These machines? They lie with a straight face, and people are lining up to teach their kids how to listen. It’s madness. Pure, unadulterated, 21st-century madness.
Makes you want to drink. Heavily.
Chinaski out. Go pour another. You probably need it.
Source: How and why parents and teachers are introducing young children to AI