"It's really hard to predict anything in the next five years," Adam Tal, an Israeli marketing director and father of seven and nine-year-old sons, said when describing the post-creative AI world.
Tal is "very worried" about the future that the technology brings to his children - whether it is a deepfake, "not being able to distinguish between reality and AI" or "a thousand new threats that I have not been trained to detect."
Mike Brooks, a psychologist from Austin, Texas, worries that parents are indifferent and refuse to address AI issues, as they seem to be overwhelmed with other concerns from online adult content, Tiktok to video games.
However, some parents still try to become technology controllers.
Melissa Franklin, the mother of a 7-year-old boy and a law student in Kentucky, commented: "Among friends and family, I was the only one to explore AI with my child. I don't understand the technology behind AI, but I know it's inevitable and I want to give my son a better start than to overwhelm him."
Benefits and risks
For parents, they are facing many difficulties due to the lack of scientific research on the impact of AI on users.
Some parents cited a study published by MIT in June that showed that brain and memory activity were stimulated more in individuals who did not use generative AI than those who had access to the technology.
This caution shapes the approach of many parents. Tal liked to wait before letting his son use AI tools. Melissa Franklin only allowed her son to use AI under her supervision to search for information "which we cannot find in books, on Google or on YouTube".
Meanwhile, Marc Watkins, a professor at the University of Mississippi, who focuses on AI in teaching and is also a father, said he is very interested in the new forms AI is applied, but believes it is necessary to learn about the topic and "have in-depth conversations about it with our children".
He emphasized that his children will use artificial intelligence, so he wanted them to know the potential benefits and risks.
CEO of AI giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang, often speaks of AI as "the greatest balance of power we've ever known," democratizing learning and knowledge.
But Watkins is concerned about another reality: "Parents will see this as a technology that will be used if you can afford to pay, to help your child outperform others."
Watkins stressed that with his and his wife a doctorate in computer science, their son would have an advantage over his peers in accessing and using AI, as they were rich and had an above-average income for many people.
However, many other families do not have that advantage and certainly lead to a gap in access to AI and this, he said, will cause some big impacts.
