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Mani Mohan
I spend my days writing code and my nights tinkering with AI side projects. I'm also the dad of a toddler. These different parts of my life have got me thinking about how AI is changing things. AI has been pretty great for my work. It speeds up my side projects and helps me write better - no more stressing about grammar in my blog posts. It's useful for other day-to-day tasks, too. But as a parent, I can't help wondering what this means for my kid's future.
My wife and I discuss screen time with our toddler a lot. We keep it simple: screens are mostly for long car rides and flights. At other times, we (mostly my wife) read books, do hands-on Montessori-style activities, and sometimes gardening. Exploring the physical world, I think, helps her figure out how the world works.
While we carefully manage screen time to avoid early/excess exposure, I can't help but think about the future implications of AI in children's lives. As AI becomes more integrated into daily activities, it presents both opportunities and challenges for young minds. Will AI eventually become a more significant concern compared to traditional screens? Ensuring that any interaction with technology remains balanced (aka rate limited) is crucial.
I've seen Reddit posts about parents using AI to create bedtime stories, sometimes with pictures using multimodal models. Sure, it makes parents' lives easier, but it also sets up kids to expect a new story every night. We already live in a world of abundance and extra dopamine hits - using AI probably just adds to that.
Colleges are witnessing a shift in learning with the rise of AI-driven platforms that provide interactive courses and personalized learning experiences, exemplified by UC's ChatGPT Edu initiative. This movement is expected to persist, making education more customized based on each student's needs, interests, and pace. This evolution is likely a vast improvement over the outdated curriculum that rarely changes.
I believe traditional college might become obsolete in 10-15 years. Educational institutions could evolve into spaces where students engage in hands-on projects and tackle real-world problems instead of merely memorizing information for exams. There may be a greater emphasis on earning skill certificates rather than pursuing conventional degrees. The challenging aspect? My child's generation will navigate these changes as the first. When I grew up, we transitioned from no internet to dial-up and then to broadband, which feels slow compared to the rapid advancements in AI today!
The future job market will need skills that schools today might not teach. As most technical/routine tasks become automated, human skills will drive innovation and problem-solving in new fields. But what exactly are those uniquely human skills?
Here's what I think they might be (a relatively short list; please comment if you think of anything else!):
Fine Motor Skills: surgeons, musicians, electronics work
Physical Abilities: sports, dance, martial arts
Real-World Problem Solving: construction workers, first responders
Dealing with Conflicts: handling disagreements, finding middle ground, politics
Care Work: nursing, elder care, childcare
Skilled Trades: plumbers, electricians, carpenters
Empathy: applicable in many of the professions listed here (though I think empathy will soon be programmed into AI)
I mentor college students and I've observed a trend over the past decade+: many students seem less inclined to explore subjects deeply. Instead of reading entire textbooks, they often seek quick solutions. This has been my experience, although I do encounter some students who are still passionate about diving deep into topics. When I was learning to code, my boss gave me a C programming book by Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan and encouraged me to read it from start to finish. I may not apply everything I learned directly, but grasping the foundational principles has greatly improved my coding skills today. You don't gain that same depth of understanding by just copying solutions from StackOverflow or using platforms like Cursor or Replit.
This reminds me of how the internet changed our relationship with information. Before Google, finding answers meant digging through textbooks or asking experts—it took effort, but that effort often led to a deeper understanding. I still remember my friend and I sitting in my professor's office for hours discussing something as basic as parallel lines (shout out to Dr. Joe Davidson from Arizona State for encouraging us to ask questions. Remember, no questions are stupid; not asking questions is stupid). The internet has made information instantly accessible, which is amazing, but it has also changed how we learn. Now, with AI, we're taking another big step in the same direction. Information isn't just accessible—it's pre-digested and customized for us. I wonder what that means for how future generations will learn and discover things. While some students might gravitate toward shortcuts, this isn't necessarily a negative thing. Times change, and I might be a dinosaur. I'm curious about what interests today's youth. What inspires their desire to learn, especially in a world filled with distractions that aim to capture their attention for mere seconds?
Curiosity is undeniably human's greatest strength—it drives innovation and keeps us moving forward. But with advanced AI potentially offering answers to all our questions, will we stop asking them? Will we lose that drive to figure things out ourselves?
While AI promises huge benefits, should we keep some distance from it? Just a thought experiment. We need to balance using AI while keeping our desire to discover things. We must make sure technology helps rather than hurts human curiosity. But how do we do that? I have no answers right now.
In my culture, we have this tradition of feeding toddlers while showing them the moon and stars (Nila soru, for those who speak Tamil). From when we were little, we were encouraged to look up and ask questions (Yes, I'm a Cosmos/StarTalk fan). We still do this with our daughter now and then, even though it's tiring to stand on the road and chase crows just so she can eat 1% of the food we spent 2 hours making. Oops, tangent, back on track.
Being curious about the universe and how the world functions has kept me going all these years, and I believe these things won't change with advanced AI. More than being good at how to get an answer, we must teach our kids how to ask good questions (cough cough, prompt engineering). I will think (and read) more about this, and based on my findings, I'll probably write another blog about how we can nurture curiosity in kids.
We also need to make sure our kids have those "uniquely human skills", at least some of them. I am very sure it will be an evolving list in the years to come. What's considered uniquely human today might be different five years from now. The key might be helping our kids stay flexible and ready to learn new things.
With AI becoming big, and more advanced AI coming in the future, what do you worry about? I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you're also balancing the tech world with raising kids in it.
