Henry does not need to grow up distrusting AI. I hope he uses it. I hope it helps him understand things and build things I cannot begin to imagine.
Someday he may scatter Lego across the floor, point a camera at it and have AI identify every piece and tell him exactly what to build.
I just hope there is still a moment when he pushes the instructions aside—and Hunter sees him do it.
Bibliography
1. • Boyan Jovanovic and Peter L. Rousseau, “General Purpose Technologies,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 11093, 2005.
2. • Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner, “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” Science , Vol. 333, 2011.
3. • Hamsa Bastani, Osbert Bastani, Alp Sungu, Haosen Ge, Özge Kabakcı and Rei Mariman, “Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 2025.
4. • Michael Trucano, “AI and the Next Digital Divide in Education,” Brookings Institution, July 10, 2023.3.