Will AI do the thinking for your child before they’ve even had a chance?

I told a story in a talk last week that’s I want to share with you. A little girl, Maya, asking her mum a simple question… and a device answering before her mum can even turn her head. Fast, accurate, impressive. But something disappears in that moment. The look. The pause. The shared discovery.

And then one day the device doesn’t work, so when Maya asks what something is there is silence. And then her mum says, “What do you think?”

And Maya doesn’t like it. The not knowing. The waiting. The having to think. Because she’s not used to it.

AI can be there, to answer, never busy, never distracted and our children stop needing to think because something else is doing it for them.

We tell ourselves it’s helping. It makes things easier. More efficient. Less friction.

But what if that friction is the point?

What if that pause, that slight irritation, that “I don’t know”… is actually where thinking begins?

So I ask myself, is AI really helping?

Thank you for pausing with me. Take care.

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