The Challenge
Two Questions That Shape My Approach
Every parent I know is wrestling with the first one. The world our children will inherit looks fundamentally different from the one we grew up in—and AI is accelerating that change faster than anyone expected. There's real anxiety in that uncertainty.
The second question is where I land when I move past the anxiety. It's a more optimistic framing—one that assumes AI is a tool we can use intentionally, not just a force happening to us.
Question One
What skills and traits should we encourage so our children can be successful adults in a world transformed by AI?
Question Two
How can I use AI to be more present with my children, not less?
These questions are connected. The way I use AI in our family life is itself a form of teaching. Kids learn from watching what we do, not just what we say.
Theme One
Raising Humans When the Rules Are Changing
For generations, we optimized education for knowledge retention. Memorize the facts. Learn the formulas. Accumulate expertise through years of study. That made sense when access to information was scarce and expertise was hard to come by.
That's now the least valuable skill. When anyone can access expert-level knowledge through natural language, the bottleneck shifts. The question becomes: what do we nurture when access to information is no longer the limiting factor?
What matters now
- Curiosity over memorization
The drive to explore, question, and dig deeper—this is what AI amplifies. - Critical thinking
Evaluating outputs. Spotting nonsense. Knowing when something doesn't add up. - Creativity
The thing AI can enhance but can't originate. The spark that starts with "what if?" - Asking good questions
This is the new literacy. The quality of the question determines the quality of what you get back. - Emotional intelligence
Collaboration, empathy, reading a room—the deeply human skills AI can't replicate. - Comfort with tools as partners
Neither magical nor threatening. Just powerful instruments that reward skill.
We're not training them to compete with AI—we're raising them to collaborate with it, to direct it, to know when to trust it and when to push back.
This is a fundamental shift in what it means to prepare a child for adulthood. The goal isn't to make them AI-proof—it's to make them AI-fluent. Comfortable with the tools, confident in their own judgment, clear on when to lean in and when to question what they're seeing.
Theme Two
AI as a Parenting Amplifier
The Human-Centered AI philosophy isn't just something I talk about at work. It's something I try to live at home. If AI should augment humans rather than replace them, then the question for parenting becomes: how do I use these tools to be more present with my kids, not less?
The answer I keep coming back to: let AI handle the prep work so I can focus on the connection.
Project
No Thank You Evil — AI-Assisted Adventures
My kids love tabletop roleplaying games. The problem? Creating adventures takes time I don't always have. Writing NPCs, balancing encounters, building worlds—it's creative work, but it's also preparation work that competes with actually playing together.
How it works
- AI generates adventure frameworks, NPC personalities, and encounter ideas
- I review and adjust to fit what my kids are excited about
- The prep that used to take an hour now takes minutes
- That freed-up time becomes actual play—imagination, laughter, connection
Built with intention
- Trained on age-appropriate developmental psychology and neuroscience research
- AI tailors tasks, roles, and challenges to each child's developmental stage
- Puzzles and encounters calibrated to stretch without frustrating
- The tool is shaped by real expertise—not generic prompts
I'm not a neuroscientist or developmental psychologist. But now those insights are built into every adventure automatically. The AI brings expertise I don't have, calibrating challenges to where each child actually is—not where I guess they might be. That's one more thing I don't have to research, don't have to second-guess, don't have to hold in my head while I'm trying to be present.
The "fully polished" adventure might take hours to prepare from scratch—and even then, I'd be guessing about developmental appropriateness. The AI-assisted version gets me 70% of the way there in minutes, with the developmental expertise built in. That's more than enough to have a magical evening with my kids.
The AI handles the scaffolding. I bring the presence.
The goal isn't to automate parenting. It's to automate the things that aren't parenting so I can do more of the things that are.
Bringing It Together
Modeling the Relationship
Here's what I've realized: the way I use AI in front of my kids is part of preparing them for an AI-changed world. They're watching. They see me ask questions, evaluate answers, push back when something doesn't make sense, and use these tools to create things we couldn't create alone.
They see AI as a collaborator, not a replacement. As a tool that rewards curiosity and good questions. As something that amplifies what we bring to it.
That's the lesson I want them to carry forward. Not fear of being replaced. Not blind trust in machine outputs. A healthy, productive partnership—human creativity and judgment, amplified by computational power.
The same philosophy, whether I'm at work or rolling dice at the kitchen table.