Shaping Tomorrow: How AI Will Transform Our Children's Future

AI is changing the way we work. It’s no stretch to say that soon it will likely change the way we experience entertainment, the way we receive information, and even the way we think about the world around us.

As we stand on the edge of a generational technology shift, many of us with children (or who hope to have children someday) are wondering about the ways in which AI will shape our children and transform their future.

It’s already making waves in education — and that’s just the beginning.

AI Is Making Waves in Education

By now anyone interested in this newsletter has seen at least a few stories of students using ChatGPT and similar tools to cheat (and of professors accusing students of the same, sometimes based on weak evidence or merely a hunch). Those are the first waves, but likely not the most impactful.

We’ve already seen some university professors pivot toward embracing these tools, encouraging students to use them for classroom work. And the in-class, in-person, handwritten essay is still a handy tool for plagiarism-wary teachers.

Aside from ChatGPT plagiarism concerns, AI is poised to make even bigger (and more positive) waves in education.

AI tools are already detecting emerging mental health issues, and it’s easy to see how similar technologies could detect learning disabilities before human teachers notice them. AI also holds potential for teachers to create a level of educational personalization that they could never do on their own, with personalized lesson plans or homework assignments based on individual students’ needs.

Of course, no one wants a future where we relinquish all our children’s education to AI systems. But these tools (and the tools we haven’t thought of yet) could drastically expand teachers’ capacity and capabilities.

AI-Related Skills Will Become Necessary and Common

Over the past 70 years we’ve seen a consistent pattern: a technology comes along promising to deliver big changes or improvements. At first it’s novel and limited in scope. But within a generation it becomes commonplace, an essential part of life that people need to know how to use if they want to get ahead.

Examples include the typewriter, the personal computer, the internet, and the smartphone. We’re arguably in a similar transition around coding and development, at least in the professional sector.

Expect AI skills to follow this same path. Right now we’re in a bit of a gold rush, with prospectors creating specific AI tools and seeking to capture various corners of various markets. But eventually the AI landscape will look less like AOL vs. Yahoo vs. Lycos and more like “do you know how to use web-based business tools” or “can you code in Python or Ruby”.

Those who have the skills and contextual understanding to operate AI tools will have an advantage.

Reason to Be Concerned: AI Ethics Education

One slightly worrisome element in all this is that we don’t know yet how AI will shape the future — and to a degree, the ways in which it ends up doing so are up to today’s thinkers, organizations, and businesses.

It’s incumbent on everyone involved in the creation of these tools to do so responsibly, creating tools that provide for human flourishing but that remain firmly under human control and guidance.

There are also numerous ethical considerations when it comes to AI. These go deeper than simple questions of plagiarism or even philosophical ones about what learning really is. Ethical considerations touch on bias in AI systems, the ecological impact of the compute power required to run these systems, furthering inequality (whether by accident or design), and more.

As we raise the next generation, training in ethics will be vital — including in the ethics of AI.

Preparation Is Key

While we can’t predict the future, we can be confident that AI will shape the future that our kids and grandkids will grow up in. That’s why preparation is key: parents and educators alike should begin actively engaging with children’s relationship with AI, guiding them in AI-related education and awareness.

With intentional preparation, we can help the next generation enter adulthood and the workforce with a working understanding of AI tools — just as previous generations did with touch typing, internet navigation, and coding and development.