I initially started this in an attempt to answer some basic questions about living in a world with generative AI. I had a dream that seemed to provide a perfect solution to how it should be regulated, because… dream logic, and I had to get my Three Laws idea out there. Now that I’ve had a few dozen months to contemplate, I’m not sure if I agree with my laws anymore. The first one is fine in principle, but how do you prevent AI from harming people when it doesn’t even understand the concept of ‘harm.’ The third one is so broad that it’s almost impossible to turn it into any kind of effective policy. The second one is probably solid. I might combine the first and second to say something about how important it is that AI not use our psychology against us.

Anyhow, those are the big, world-sized ideas. I’m really interested in how this impacts my day-to day life.

How do I effectively teach my students in a world with AI? I have to accept that I have no idea what the world will be like in ten years, so the skills I give them have to be broad, flexible. I need them to be adaptable enough to be able to solve problems that no human has ever solved before.

And how do I raise my kids (1, and 5) in this world? I’ve already had to ban unsupervised Youtube, and that was before the AI slop added to the nightmarish, bizzare collection of painful nonsense that seems to draw my kids’ attention like a drug addiction while teaching them unkind lessons.

The third question is: How should I be using AI to improve my effectiveness at accomplishing these goals? I’m sure there are tools out there that would help, but mostly I can just wish for them. For example: I know that with enough training data I can get an LLM to ‘understand’ how I grade papers well enough that the students can just turn them in to a device that scans their work and then prints its best guess for the feedback that I would write if I had the time to grade it. Instant feedback would help my students learning immensely, and I try to give it as much as possible, but I’ll never be as fast as a computer.

So it sounds like this is actually a teaching and parenting blog. Good to know.