School, Homeschool and Artificial Intelligence (AI): How Catholic Moms should be rethinking the way we do Catholic school and Catholic homeschool in a world with AI

Are you wondering how your kids' future will be affected by the entrance of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to the world?

I've been thinking about this one a lot.  It's going to change everything, and we need to start rethinking the way we do school to set our kids up for success.

Tune in to see what you can do!

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Transcript:

**1. Introduction: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Generations**

So I've been hearing so much on the news where people have been, for lack of a better word freaking out a bit about artificial intelligence, you know, there's anything from is evil to it's coming for our jobs. Well, I haven't heard a lot yet about how it's going to affect our kids. So I wanted to touch on that during this episode, because 10 years from now, when many of our kids are entering the workforce, it's going to be a different world. And here are my thoughts, my backgrounds in economics, I want to start with a bit of reassurance.

**2. AI as a Tool: Lessons from Technological Disruptions**

AI is technology. It's a tool, we've had innovations disrupt the economy before the car, put carriage drivers out of business, or they learned to be auto mechanics, there's always going to be times of transition where jobs in certain sectors are lost. But then everyone adjusts and new kinds of jobs are created. For instance, the computer put a lot of secretaries and clerks out of business. But arguing that the computer caused more jobs to be lost than gained in the long run doesn't make sense. Almost every job requires using a computer.

**3. Understanding AI: Complex Logic and Its Functions**

So when we're thinking about how to prepare our kids to find jobs in a world with artificial intelligence, first we need to understand how it works. It's basically a fancy calculator. Now, how does a calculator work? When you tell it what you want to know, like four plus four, it uses a mix of logical reasoning combined with some stored information about what numbers mean? What symbols represent them how they work together, and it puts out the output four plus four equals eight. Artificial intelligence does the exact same thing.

**4. Limitations and Capabilities of AI**

Unknown Speaker

So what's fascinating is that AI is like a calculator for more than just math. It can also do language and coding and images. I bet it can do music, too. But I haven't looked into it. But I see no reason why it wouldn't be able to compose music. So how does it work? Let's suppose you ask it to write a poem.

Unknown Speaker

AI can find patterns in poetry online, it can find lists of rhyming words, and it knows the logic of language to assemble an original poem, on whatever topic you assign it. But here's what it can't do yet...

**5. Shaping the Future: Focusing on Human Skills**

Unknown Speaker

It can't write a really good poem. It lacks personality. It lacks original thought. Things like metaphors. Why? Because it's just assembling things that have already been created. It's assembling them in new ways, but it's not really making anything. That is a great leap. There are no insights, no metaphors, no deep truths, and the artistry is minimal. There's no surprises. It's formulaic. It's a poem that's functional. And oftentimes, the answers that you get are error prone, and boring. Ai also works a bit like search engine optimization...

Unknown Speaker

And that means it works a bit like an echo chamber. Again, it doesn't break through to originality. Okay, so here's what this means for future jobs. It means that for office jobs, lower level language work, and coding and artwork, that kind of thing can be automated, this is going to increase productivity for everyone...

**6. Human Advantages in a World with AI**

Unknown Speaker

Because the busy work kind of things like product descriptions can be done by AI. Now they're going to be really boring product descriptions of you use it. If you want to have like a website. That's funny. It won't work that well. So here's what else it isn't going to do. It isn't going to create satisfying human connection...

Unknown Speaker

It isn't going to have authentic love, friendship. It's not going to be a visionary that drives the future. It isn't going to make higher level connections. For example, if you ask it to code something you... It offers you snippets of code, but it can't create an entire program with all the pieces put together. So you still need to figure out how to put them together...

**7. Nurturing Future Skills in Kids**

Unknown Speaker

So for example, let's say you want to make a video game. It's a great tool for troubleshooting. But you still need people to build like the storyline and plug all the bits of code into it, basically to be the higher level thought. So what does this mean for our kids, it means that their advantage is going to be in original thought...

Unknown Speaker

Intuition, logical connections, empathy, human connection, and visionary thinking. And that needs to become an emphasis in the way we do school. We want to raise kids with an entrepreneurial spirit. That means letting them take risks and make mistakes, nurturing their innovation, and especially argue that letting them have time to explore and copious opportunities to be bored, are going to aid them in developing creative thought...

**8. Rethinking Education for the AI Era**

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It means leaning into their uniqueness to their unique strengths and talents, rather than worrying about mitigating their academic weaknesses. But if you're picking out things like your curriculum, it's going to be more important to dig into your reasons for teaching things. For instance, when we teach history...

Unknown Speaker

We are hoping our kids are going to learn from the successes and errors of the past and understand the progression of philosophy. Those lessons can be internalized in so many ways without rote memorization, because our kids will have unlimited information at their fingertips. And the memorization is not going to be as crucial...

**9. Fostering Creativity and Innovation**

Unknown Speaker

It'll be really worth honing in on the purpose behind each lesson and making sure they're grasping the concepts, giving them the tools for discerning right from wrong and focusing on teaching the critical thinking skills. More than anything, I think we should be concerned with dulling their capacity for curiosity and inventiveness and raising them to measure their success...

Unknown Speaker

By their ability to consume and regurgitate information or follow like formulaic conformity. Let's look at like food and fashion. I think we as a society are getting tired of things that are uniform and generic, like the sourdough craze. Why did we have that that's still going on...

**10. Emphasizing Individuality and Human Skills**

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Because people don't want low quality mass produced generic bread, they want something real, something unique, something was personality. I think that kids who spend the day between a one size fits all school and watching TV are going to have a hard time...

Unknown Speaker

Those are the things that kill creativity and innovation. They emphasize conformity for success. And I think certain kinds of unschoolers or kids in school that give a lot of agency like Montessori or other child led learning, schools are going to have an advantage. Project based learning will help build the muscles that our kids need...

**11. Developing Essential Human Skills**

Unknown Speaker

For higher level thinking and systems thinking, what else is going to give them an

**12. Nurturing Relational and Social Skills**

Unknown Speaker

advantage? I think focusing on helping our kids learn to build good relationships is going to matter as well. It's something anyone who's had an experience with automated customer service phone calls can relate to; we just want to talk to a human. AI might be smarter, but it won't know how to empathize or relate to people. And it won't always understand the times when there needs to be a special exception to a rule or when someone's problem doesn't fit into a box.

Unknown Speaker

That's still a human skill. So simply prioritizing connection and basic relational skills can really help our kids.

**13. Embracing Human Distinctiveness**

Unknown Speaker

So in summary, really, we just need to think about what makes humans different from computers. That's your child's competitive advantage. That's what you want to nurture in your kids. Does this mean you need to overhaul your school curriculum? No, not necessarily. I wouldn't do anything dramatic yet. But I think time will show the advantage of shifting the balance from shoving knowledge into our kids to more deeply encouraging their drive to be curious, risk-taking self-starters.

**14. Concluding Thoughts: Fostering Creativity and Independence**

So in conclusion, let your kids be bored. Let them take risks. Let them pursue their interests, build on their strengths, and help them build good relationships. We want to encourage creativity, empathy, uniqueness, and innovation. By focusing on these human qualities and skills, we can equip our children to thrive in a world where artificial intelligence is a powerful tool but cannot replace the essence of human thought, connection, and creativity.