Last week, I posted about my daughter using AI as a teammate, not a shortcut, as she heads to college. With boxes packed and CU-Boulder move-in happening tomorrow, I was hoping to create awareness about teaching kids responsible AI use.
Link to original post: https://lnkd.in/g3g82x92
The response surprised me: 552 likes and 174 comments with only a handful disagreeing.
My network skews toward people already using AI—leaders, marketers, and parents who follow the work I do helping teams work with AI teammates and use it responsibly. So this level of support likely reflects my network more than the general population.
But even accounting for that bias, parents shared stories of kids already using AI to build businesses and solve problems. Business leaders confirmed AI skills are becoming a hiring factor.
Most telling was what people asked for. Most of the skeptical comments weren’t “don’t do this.” They were “how do we avoid dependency?” and “how do we preserve critical thinking?”
The comments showed we’re in the “how do we” phase, not the “should we” phase. And that’s exactly where we need to work together.
Yesterday, my daughter and I sat down and discussed practical use cases for Google’s NotebookLM, Perplexity, ChatGPT’s deep research, agent, and study mode. She’s walking into a world where AI literacy will matter as much as any other core skill.
The 551 people who engaged reminded me that it takes a village to raise children. It’s going to take a village for all of us to learn how to use AI responsibly too.
The critical thinking concern keeps coming up, and it’s the right question. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on frameworks for that this week. My daughter certainly got a good dose of those frameworks yesterday 🙂
Our discussion focused on AI being only as good as the questions you ask. She learned how to give AI relevant context, guide its thinking, challenge its reasoning, check its work, and push for better logic. It’s about learning how to think with AI.
That’s what I’ll be sharing more of later this week: practical frameworks to teach critical thinking with AI, not in spite of it.
To all parents having that bittersweet moment of dropping off your child at college, you’re not alone. You’ve done well.
See original post here