Use It to Play First: A Kid's First AI Conversation Should Be Silly
Transcript
A kid's first conversation with a chatbot shouldn't be about homework. It should be a pirate poem about the dog.
Before kids use AI for anything that counts, let them mess around with it. Ask it to be a wizard who only talks in rhymes. Give it your weirdest "would you rather" and see what it asks back.
That can feel like wasted time, but a lot is happening. Kids figure out what it can do by poking at it. And sooner or later they'll catch it getting something wrong, or saying something strange.
When the stakes are a pirate poem, that's funny. When the stakes are a science report, it's a problem. Better to meet the weird stuff first, while it doesn't matter.
It helps the adults, too. If you've barely used one of these yourself, sitting next to a kid while it writes a rhyming wizard is a pretty painless place to start.
The serious stuff comes later, and it goes better when kids already have a feel for what this thing is like. So start with the dog poem.