Raising Humans in the Age of AI education

The pace at which AI is becoming part of how we raise our children is accelerating. Just in May 2025, both China and the United States announced new initiatives to make AI education mandatory in schools. On top of that, Google revealed it is preparing to release a version of its AI tools designed specifically for children under 13. These shifts point to a future where AI is not just a tool but a presence in the daily lives of our children, woven into their learning, their play, and their questions about the world.

For many, this feels like a turning point. Not just because AI is becoming part of the curriculum, but because the speed and scale of these initiatives reveal a deeper truth: this technology is no longer optional. It will shape the tools our children use, the jobs they pursue, the way they find answers and the way they discover their own paths.

So where does that leave us, the parents?

Some will feel relief. Let the experts handle it. Let the systems adapt.
Others will feel unease. What does “AI education” even mean? Who decides how it's taught? And what happens when machines become the first to answer our children’s questions?

These are not easy questions. But they are the right ones.

The Illusion of Control vs the Practice of Agency

We are often told that the future is uncertain, that the pace of change is too fast to predict. This can leave parents feeling powerless. But there is a difference between lacking control and lacking agency.

Control is about prediction, command, and certainty. Agency is about authorship, response, and care. Rather than aiming at guaranteed outcomes, agency seeks to shape the path by how we walk it.

AI is entering our homes through homework, apps, or machines that talk back. It arrives with the promise to be useful. It raises the question, however, of whether we will still be engaged and present. Whether we will still be listening, still be asking the second question, still be revealing what it means to make sense of the world, not just compute it.

The First Line of Action Is at Home

Governments may standardize AI learning. Companies may push new tools into classrooms. But the first line of response does not begin there. It begins with parents.

In the home, we still have room to shape the culture around AI. We can invite curiosity instead of compliance and consumption. We can model discernment over distraction. We can ask what kind of people we want our children to become, not just what kind of tools they will learn to use.

Rather than turning away from technology, this moment invites us to step more deeply into our role as shapers of its meaning. We have the chance to guide how AI enters our homes, how it is received by our children, and how it reflects the values we want to carry forward.

Tinkering as a Practice of Agency

One way to stay present is through tinkering. Approach new tools with the mindset of an explorer, in an openness of discovery shared with your child. Try something unfamiliar together. Ask your child what they think of an AI’s answer. Compare it to your own. Let them see you wonder. Let them see you squirm and disagree. Let them see you choose.

This kind of joint exploration invites us to step away from the pressure to know everything and instead to foster matters like curiosity, conversation, and the willingness to seek meaning together.

What We Can Be

A child born in 2025 will never know that:

• Creating professional images required advanced design skills
• Coding was something done almost exclusively by engineers
• Cameras were a requirement for making videos
• Composing music was a privilege gained by years of embodied skills
• It was difficult to communicate with people that spoke other languages
• There was a time when humans did not have conversations with machines 

But they can grow up in a world where humans still speak, explore, and build with each other.

We may not be able to control the future. But we can still be the people who listen well. Who stay curious. Who name what matters. Who refuse to offload the work of making sense to the machine.

And if we are that, if we can be that, then our children may grow up knowing that technology was not what raised them. We were.