Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is here – for better or worse – and it’s hard at work behind the scenes of many of our kids’ favourite technologies, apps and platforms. Not only that, it’s improving at a mind-blowing rate. If you’re curious to see how far AI video quality has come in just 12 months, try Googling ‘Will Smith eating spaghetti AI’. It’s both exciting and terrifying.
While many of our kids will soon be regularly interacting with AI, and most likely very savvily, what they may not be so proficient in is assessing risk, thinking critically or even using these technologies in a healthy way. As adults who’ve had a little more real-life experience, it’s our job to guide and prepare our young people for an online future where bots do some of the thinking work for us (but not all of it, hopefully!).
AI is a huge topic so let’s begin with the basics of ‘generative’ AI.