Kids, AI & An Uncertain Future

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As the father of a 10-month-old baby, I’ve started thinking more seriously about the future he’ll grow up in. With AI advancing so quickly, it’s hard not to wonder: what if AI ends up doing the job he might one day choose?

Then I had a simple thought—if AI is part of the challenge, maybe it can also be part of the solution.

So I collaborated with Gemini to help write this post. I have to say, it gave me, as a new parent, some refreshing ideas.

If knowledge is cheap, what is still valuable?

Here is the scary thought: by the time my boy grows up, answers may be almost free. AI will write, translate, code, summarise, design, tutor, analyse, and explain. A lot of what used to make someone “educated” may become available to anyone with a device.

But here is the trap: cheap answers are not the same as understanding.

A child who knows nothing cannot tell whether an AI answer is brilliant or nonsense. A child with no background knowledge cannot ask good questions. AI may commoditise information. It does not commoditise judgment. The new advantage is not access to answers. The new advantage is knowing which answers are worth trusting.

So no, knowledge is not obsolete. But the reason for learning knowledge changes. We no longer learn facts only to store them in our heads. We learn them so we can orient ourselves, detect nonsense, and think without being led around by a machine that sounds confident.

In an AI age, ignorance does not become harmless. It becomes easier to manipulate.

So is school still relevant?

In my view, yes, school is still relevant, but only if it stops pretending its main job is information delivery.

If school is just a slower version of Google plus exams, then it is in trouble. If school is worksheets, memorisation, standardised drills, and “sit down, be quiet, copy this,” then AI will expose how thin that model is.

But good school is not just content. Good school is where children learn to think in public. They learn to explain themselves. They learn to be corrected. They learn to work with people they did not choose. They learn deadlines, conflict, boredom, effort, standards, friendship, leadership, embarrassment, recovery, and responsibility.

AI can tutor. It can quiz. It can explain photosynthesis in ten different ways.

But it cannot fully replace the awkward, precious, irritating human laboratory called school.

What should children actually learn?

People are asking what should our future generation become in an AI era, but I would rather talk about the opposite: what they should not become.

Our children should not become little productivity machines. Not by turning childhood into a résumé. Not by learning Python at age three so parents can feel superior at dinner parties.

Here is the rough curriculum I would want for my child:

• Deep reading: If you cannot read deeply, you cannot think deeply.

• Clear writing: Writing is thinking made visible.

• Maths and statistics: The future will be full of numbers, models, risks, and fake certainty.

• History and literature: Humans do not change as fast as tools do. Motives, power, love, fear, greed, courage — these repeat.

• AI and technical literacy: Children should use tools without worshipping them.

• Art, music, sport, craft: Taste, discipline, body control, practice, and performance cannot be downloaded.

• Social skill: Trust is still a human currency.

• Character: In a world of easy shortcuts, integrity becomes a superpower.

Skills without knowledge are thin.

Knowledge without judgment is dangerous.

AI without character is a loaded weapon in a child’s pocket.

So the answer is not “less knowledge, more skills.” The answer is knowledge plus judgment plus agency.

What new jobs might appear?

A lot of future jobs will be old jobs wearing AI armour.

Doctors with AI. Lawyers with AI. Teachers with AI. Engineers with AI. Designers with AI. Scientists with AI. Entrepreneurs with AI. Care workers with AI. And in my industry, security experts fighting AI-powered attacks.

There will also be roles that sound newer: AI auditors, model evaluators, robotics technicians, human-AI interaction designers, synthetic media directors, AI safety specialists, cybersecurity analysts, learning architects, climate adaptation engineers, digital identity experts.

But chasing job titles is the wrong game.

By the time my boy is grown, today’s “hot job” may sound like “fax machine consultant.”

So I do not want to prepare him for one job. I want to prepare him for reinvention.

That means he needs to know how to learn hard things, enter new fields, understand what people need, use tools, build trust, and make something useful.

The future belongs less to people with one perfect skill and more to people who can keep becoming useful.

How I want my child to use AI one day

I do not want my child to fear AI. I also do not want him to bow to it.

Gemini provided me with a simple rule:

Use AI as a bicycle for the mind, not a wheelchair for the mind.

If AI helps him explore, question, draft, simulate, practise, translate, debug, compare, and create, wonderful. If AI replaces his effort, memory, writing, reasoning, or courage, then it is not helping him. It is weakening him.

Parenting is never supposed to be easy, more so in an era where change is the only constant. But as parents, our job is not to predict the exact future, rather it's to raise a child who can meet many possible futures.

That means: read deeply, think clearly, speak honestly, count properly, move the body, make things, understand people, use tools, question answers, tolerate difficulty, and take responsibility.

Not very futuristic, is it?

And yet maybe that is the point.

When intelligence becomes cheap, the scarce things become more human: attention, judgment, courage, taste, trust, love, and the ability to do something real.