Beyond the Screen: Nurturing Your Child’s Development in the Age of AI

“This is the first time in history nobody has any idea what the world will look like in 10 years — what the job market will look like, what social relations will look like, etc. So hedge your bets. Don’t focus on a narrow subject like coding. Give equal importance to your head (intellectual skills), your heart (social skills) and your hands (motor skills). It is in the combination of these three that humans have a large advantage over AI.”
– Yuval Noah Harari

AI Expectations? No Idea.

Some meet the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) with feelings of anticipation, excitement, and wonder. We can use its growing capabilities to enhance efficiency in our lives! Manage schedules, summarize lengthy documents, draft content!  Engage it as a kind of personal assistant!

But as new enhancements and possibilities emerge daily, so too does a growing sense of unease. As public anxiety over job displacement, data privacy, intellectual property threats, and misinformation swirls, we parents found ourselves wondering how to prepare their children for a future in a world that’s growing harder to predict.

Don’t worry. While we don’t have a crystal ball, we have some ideas about how to support children for a better future.

Let’s turn away from framing the question around predictions of what the job market or the world at large will look like in 10, 20, or 30 years, and instead by focusing on what humans look like now. It’s a safe bet that artificial intelligence will advance considerably in the decades to come, and we know that our kids still have capabilities that AI may never have. Our task is to teach our kids to lean into natural human intelligence and physical abilities, and to hedge their bets by widening their horizons so they can use their heads, hearts, and hands to beat the bots.

The HEAD: Intellectual Agility & Critical Thinking

Let’s take a moment and ask ourselves, “What are the things AI does particularly well?” AI excels at tasks like data processing, pattern recognition, and lightning-fast performance. Automated and repetitive tasks? That’s an example of something that’s in the AI wheelhouse. But there are several areas where AI falters and humans excel. Here are a few:

Creativity: AI can simulate creativity, but it aggregates what it creates from hundreds, possibly thousands of sources. In doing so, the end product lacks true creativity. Instead, you have an accumulation of creative ideas originating with humans, reconfigured into something that appears new and original but is largely made from spare parts.

Meanwhile, human creativity draws on authentic emotions, life experiences, complex ideas, emotional intelligence, and the unique ability of every human being to create in their own authentic voice. For example, can AI come up with an outline for a great novel? Probably. Could AI write a great, unique novel? It’s highly improbable.

Critical Thinking: As with creativity, AI can synthesize critical thinking to a certain extent by analyzing data, modelling, and solving problems, but this again falls short of what the human mind can do. For all of its ability to process vast amounts of data in the blink of an eye, AI’s lack of emotional intelligence and ability to use moral and ethical judgment significantly hinders its critical thinking skills.

For example, AI is poor at detecting bias when analyzing a document. Subtle nuances, such as sarcasm and situational subtext, are difficult for AI to grasp. So is the ability to break down a problem to its fundamental truths and come up with a totally new solution from scratch.|

Intellectual Agility: Think of AI like a high-speed train that can get you from point A to point B in a hurry. It’s one way to go, but not always the best. AI takes you on a straight trip with no opportunity to veer off course and explore. Comparatively, your mind is like an off-road vehicle; what it lacks in AI-style speed it more than makes up for in its ability for cognitive exploration and to pivot in the face of shifting contexts.

In short, the human mind is more than simply an input/output machine. It can imagine, it can shift, it can feel, and it can discern in ways AI can’t and possibly never will — good news for parents hoping to enhance their children’s minds for an AI-dominated future.

The HEART: Social Intelligence & Empathy

Another crucial differentiator between human beings and AI is the heart. While it can express itself with language that mimics human emotions, AI cannot truly feel. Our ability to feel emotion, know right from wrong, and empathize with other living beings is one of our greatest traits and another key advantage that we hold over AI.

Feelings: Our emotions are instrumental in guiding us in the right direction in just about any situation. Emotions are key to things like motivating us to act, building relationships, adapting, and enhancing our decision-making. With feelings comes wisdom, intuition, and a moral directive, which AI lacks.

Empathy: The ability to understand and sympathize with others and see the world from their perspective is an inherent human trait. This trait only becomes more pronounced when we share experience with humans and other living beings. Empathy allows us to build connections, be compassionate, and be more caring individuals. While AI can speak in the language of a sympathetic friend and offer support, it’s simply impossible for it to develop authentic feelings.

Morals and Ethics: AI exists because of society’s need for quick and easy answers. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing on its face, AI lacks the ability to independently ask what it “should” do, vs. what it “could” do. In other words, without programming that restricts it from performing morally or ethically questionable functions, AI is incapable of knowing right from wrong. Human beings, on the other hand, are fully capable of weighing what is ethically correct, even in highly nuanced instances where there may be a bit of a grey area, and making a judgment based on what they feel is morally correct.

The HANDS: Fine Motor Skills & Physical Capability

Arguably, the greatest advantage we have over AI is that as human beings, we are biological beings living in a physical world. As such, we’ve evolved to gain mastery over matter, while AI cannot — and won’t be likely to inhabit the physical world in the way that we can. While advancements in robotics will likely help bridge the gap between software and the physical world, humans’ physical abilities will continue to do things that AI may never be able to.

Mastery Over Matter: Take the simple act of a child molding a block of clay. As they go, they learn that each time they knead or roll the clay, or add water to loosen it, they get immediate tactile feedback. During this process, they learn through trial and error how to work with their hands. Now consider an individual who works with their hands, whether they’re a craftsman, construction worker, painter, or plumber; they’ve got a skillset that cannot be replaced by AI.

Adaptive Physical Intuition: Going deeper into the concept of Mastery Over Matter, human beings are excellent at physical improvisation. Whereas machines in environments like factories can do structured, repetitive work in an efficient manner, we’re able to make split-second adaptations in the physical world. Think of a guitar player breaking a string and knowing how to play the same notes by putting their fingers on a different part of the fretboard, or a child fixing a broken toy with a rubber band. These are examples of how humans can “feel” their way through a physical hurdle with instincts and inventiveness that are unlikely ever to be matched by AI.

Tactical Discernment: While AI can process incredible amounts of physical data and robots can be programmed to apply specific amounts of pressure, there are limitations. That’s because humans have an incredible sensory feedback system that helps us navigate the physical world without having to look. Think of a child reaching into a “mystery bag” — with just their fingertips, they can tell the difference between a smooth marble, a rough stone, or a fuzzy piece of felt. This ability to feel microscopic differences in texture, temperature, and density makes us highly adept at tasks ranging from surgery to knitting to wood carving and beyond.

Bringing It All Together: Skills to Teach Our Children in a World That’s Increasingly AI

While it’s natural to feel anxious about the possibilities of AI, there is an abundance of abilities that human beings possess that are irreplaceable. The even better news is that these abilities come naturally to us as humans. The trick is finding ways to help our children develop these abilities so that AI can work with them, not against them.

Ways to Help Your Child Develop an “AI-Proof” Mind:

Strategic Games: Classic games like Chess, Sudoku, Scrabble, and 20 Questions all challenge the mind to be agile, think critically, and apply reason in ways that AI can’t. We have a wonderful round-up of our Best Sparkle Games to really get those imaginations going!

Deep Listening: Reading or listening to a long-form story and predicting the ending or debating a character’s choice is an excellent way to inspire the imagination and expand critical thinking skills. We dive into the power of story in this blog post here, if you’re looking to try this out with your children!

Creative Exploration: Allowing your child to have unstructured free time where they have access to open-ended creative materials like clay blocks, paint, crayons, markers, paper, coloring books – anything they can use to express their creativity – will go a long way in boosting cognitive growth, emotional intelligence, and innovative thinking! Lisabeth touches on this thinking in our blog post titled “Momma, I’m Bored!” The Beautiful Benefits of Boredom.”

Mastering Physical Tools: A great way to help your children become accustomed to shaping the physical world around them is to introduce them to age-appropriate construction and tool sets.

Collaborative Cooking: Have your child work with you as you prepare a meal! We have so many kid-friendly recipes under the “Sparkle Kitchen” category on the blog! Cooking with your kiddos will help them learn the chemistry of baking – whisking, kneading, measuring – while helping them become more adept with their sensory awareness (smell, taste, touch). The reward for your child isn’t just a meal, but a well-earned sense of accomplishment.

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Looking for more support in this ever-changing time? We encourage you to check-out our newest Storybox Playlist titled “Stories About Our Delightful Humanness in the Age of AI.” This collection of stories aren’t about resisting AI, or about competing with it. They are stories about what happens when people lean into our head, heart and hands — when a thinker also builds, when a maker also feels, when a feeling person also asks hard questions. They are reminders, in a noisy time, of where our real richness lives.

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