Why Banning AI Isn't a Plan

Transcript

Nobody hands a kid a knife and walks away. But nobody plans to cut their chicken for them forever, either.

With AI, we keep getting offered two options. Give kids full access and hope for the best. Or ban it and hope for the best.

Banning feels like the careful choice. But it doesn't keep AI out of kids' lives. More than half of teens say they already use chatbots for schoolwork. It's in their search results. It's on the laptop at home, where a school rule doesn't reach.

So a ban mostly decides who teaches them, and usually the answer is nobody. They figure it out alone, from the chatbot itself, or from a friend who's sure it's never wrong.

The knife approach works better here too. Show them how it works. Use it together, where you can see what's happening. Then hand over a little more as they show you they can handle it.

A ban only tells kids what not to do. It doesn't teach them anything about the thing they're going to use anyway.