With artificial intelligence no longer confined to the realms of science fiction, and pioneering tools such as ChatGPT and MidjourneyAI already demonstrating their remarkable capabilities, parents and educators have an obligation to prepare kids for this new reality and its far reaching implications.
After all, the advances in AI will redefine a broad range of sectors, industries, and professions in the years ahead, with the potential to make skills and knowledge gained in high school, often redundant by the time students graduate college.
With this, it is absolutely critical to give students the right exposure to the workings and different use cases of AI. Knowing and understanding the course of technology should help them better plan their own futures, and pursue academic goals that could complement this broader trend.
If you are a confused parent or an educator who doesn’t know how to best achieve this, here are some simple tips to get your kids started.
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Use Stories & Movies
Science fiction still remains one of the best ways to introduce AI to kids, preferably via novels, but even movies or TV series should do the trick. While they may not always be accurate in their depiction, they do a wonderful job in getting kids excited about the concept.
Famous novels such as Klara and The Sun or Machines Like Me are great places to get started, but if your kids are not particularly into reading, movies such as Her and Ex Machina would do just as well.
The key is to get your kids to start questioning the possibilities of technology, and while consuming such media content, their reasoning skills will be on overdrive trying to piece together different possibilities and outcomes that lay ahead, especially pertaining to artificial intelligence.
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Explore AI Applications
There are plenty of AI tools already available for the masses, which kids can learn to use and play around with to get a reasonably well understanding of their potential and inner workings. ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Image Upscaler are the most popular, but there are a slew of other applications that are just as exciting.
You can ask your kids to simply edit your photos with AI with any one of the 100s of different image editing tools that now sport AI features. Over time, they will start questioning the workings of different tools, motivating them to dig deeper into the technicalities of AI and machine learning.
Hands-On Projects
If your kids are sufficiently older and have developed a basic understanding of coding languages, they can start with certain hands-on projects, such as building bots with machine learning or AI components, or simple recommendation programs using Python or Scratch.
This helps them in developing much needed critical thinking skills, all the while gaining an intuitive understanding of AI models. No amount of reading or watching movies compares to getting your hands dirty while getting in on the action.
Discuss Ethics
Along with the wide range of use cases and capabilities, artificial intelligence comes with a host of different ethical considerations. Issues such as job displacements, privacy concerns, and racial bias, among others.
Kids must be better prepared to address the challenges that come with AI, while understanding that it goes beyond just their individual careers and ambitions. The best way to go about this is by having a discussion pertaining to ethics, along with large volumes of literature and media content already dealing with this topic.
Final Words
The dawn of AI is finally upon us, and the changes, transformations, and upheavals that society is set to witness in the years ahead will be anything but easy. The best you can do for your kids is to expose them to the whole spectrum of this pioneering technology to help better prepare them for the future.
