A Parent’s Guide to AI in the Long Holiday
AI tools, like ChatGPT, are quickly moving from the classroom into the home. For parents, the holiday break is an ideal time to explore AI with your children, ensuring they use it as a co-pilot, not a replacement for their minds.
The following are points to note to make sure your children and you use AI tools in the most productive ways:
AI is not a thinker, but a predictor
The most crucial lesson is transparency about how AI works. It is obvious that AI doesn’t think or reason like a human. It predicts the next word based on patterns from a variety of data.
Teach your children hallucination checks. Hallucinations are when AI can confidently present incorrect or biased information. You can resolve this by turning fact-checking into a game. For example, you get a search result from a chatbot; find reliable sources that either confirm or deny the results.
Studies show many teens feel their work is less original when they rely on too much AI. Help and support your child write compositions or keep a diary where they write about anything. Also, you should train your child to differentiate between AI-generated and a human’s text.
Explore the fun and creative side of AI
AI isn’t just for homework and thesis. It can be a creative tool for generating ideas beyond your imagination.
You can use AI to generate bedtime stories where your child is the hero, or a poem about their favorite toy. For older children, you could use AI to generate and make whole new games personalised just for you and your family.
Using AI to improve a skill is a productive way to go. For example, asking a chatbot to generate a quiz on a topic that your child isn’t good at.
The ethical conversation on data, privacy, and deepfakes
Remind your children never to input identifying personal information into public AI tools. Discuss with them the importance of their privacy. A parent could also teach their child interpersonal skills and provide a safe space for their children. This is to make them not rely on the chatbots as their friend and therapist.
The ability of AI to create deepfakes is a major concern. Use the holidays to discuss media literacy, like what makes an image trustworthy? How do we know what is real online? really apply the notion, ‘trust but verify”
Perhaps, children aren’t the only ones who need an education on AI. AI is a relatively new concept, and the older generation may struggle with it. Those who are AI literate enough have a duty to the rest. Educate them and let us grow together.
Let us use AI as a tool for productivity, helping us in ur day to day. Let us not have it as our major dependence, making us lose ourselves and many other things, like education.
