ChatGPT taught your child this.
3 skills your child is developing thanks to ChatGPT and other AI tools.
They say, ‘Don’t use AI for your homework!’, ‘AI is making our kids dumb!’, ‘Stop using AI or you’ll know nothing yourself!’.
But what I notice when tutoring teenagers is a different story.
Because it’s time you see the good sides of it and not only the darker ones, here are 3 skills your child is developing thanks to ChatGPT:
1. Asking the right questions.
If you think that’s useless, think about the last time someone asked you a question that made little to no sense. And how that made you feel towards that person.
AI is a powerful tool, if only you use it well. And using it well mainly requires asking it the right questions.
How will a teenager know if they asked AI the right question, you may ask?
Well, once submitting to their teachers answers that have been (partially) powered by AI, their teacher’s comments will tell them if they actually made a point… or not. AI will not save students from getting off-topic.
2. Relying on others who know better.
See that colleague or manager you can’t stand because they can’t share their to-do list, even with people who are more experienced on that subject?
Well, your AI-user child is less likely to be like that.
Teenagers today are growing up with the idea that something called AI is doing most of the tasks more efficiently than them. They are aware that many jobs are directly threatened by this technology. And so they are humbled by it. And that trains them from a very young age to delegate a lot more than previous generations used to.
Philosopher Emma Carenini is even referring to AI as the fourth narcissistic injury of humanity: Copernic proved us that the universe was not revolving around us, Darwin has established that we are animals like any others, Freud has suggested that we did not know who we truly were, and now, AI gives us the impression that we do not have more spirit than robots.1
3. Focusing their attention on what makes them irreplaceable.
Journalism, translation, customer service, graphic design… so many jobs are directly and already threatened by AI tools.
Teenagers today see their parents get scared for the future of their own jobs at a scale that probably no other generation knew before: while other generations saw their parents be afraid of being jobless, this generation see their parents be afraid of their current job disappearing altogether.
And they are already growing up with the idea that no matter what job they start their career with, they won’t end their career doing the same one. Because, likely, it won’t exist within 40 years time.
Parents and teachers tend to feel like this generation is thus disengaged from their learnings. But they are not. They are simply engaging completely differently:
They engage when they connect emotionally. With the subject, with the teacher, with their peers in group work. They do not work because they have to, what gets them down to work is deeper, inner reasons, whether consciously or not. They work when they see their own added value, and when that drives their motivation. And maybe that will lead them to being a generation less exposed to midlife crises, who knows!
AI cannot be seen as the problem anymore.
Internet has been seen as such no more than 20 years ago.
And the TV before it.
And the radio before it.
Technological progress has always been perceived as the new tool that will derive the next generation from its duties, and from what truly matters.
AI is there already, and saying we disagree will not make it disappear.
So the debate is not about how to prevent students from using AI. They will be expected to know how to once they enter in the work field anyway.
The debate is about how to teach them what AI can do, what AI cannot do, what AI is about, the power and the limitations of the tool, and where their own added value still lies.
And teaching them this will be the job of a whole generation of parents, educators, teachers, and role models. Ours.
https://www.scienceshumaines.com/comment-lia-tisse-sa-toile