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I can understand the concerns but at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I got proper internet access whe

by whazor 15d ago

I can understand the concerns but at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I got proper internet access when I was 12 and that is how I taught myself how to program.

duskdozer 15d ago
And children will still have access to the internet and resources to teach themselves how to program.
- stravant 15d ago
  That's a silly reply. Imagine telling a kid to chisel what they want out of the marble line by line with a straight face when they can clearly see people appearing entire programs into existence in minutes.
  - Joel_Mckay 15d ago
    My first language was RISC Assembly, and it greatly simplified understanding how computers function. There was no Internet, but rather books in a place called a Library with something called informative context. =3
  - asadotzler 15d ago
    Imagine telling a kid they have to learn arithmetic while there's a kid next to him with a calculator. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to paint the barn with a brush before they get to use the $12,000 spray rig. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to wash mom's car with a sponge and bucket when there's a drive-through car wash down the street. Imagine telling a kid they have to master a Walmart 20" bicycle before they get to use the Trek Madone $16,000 road bike. This idea that kids must have it maximally easy is ridiculous. Something broke with parenting in the last few decades because this isn't normal thinking. We are supposed to help children develop themselves into adults, not give the excuses not to. That's some goddamned lazy parenting.
    - seanmcdirmid 15d ago
      The kid that learns, by the end of their education, to use the more advanced tools is going to economically out competed as an adult by the kid that got stuck learning how to do things the old fashioned way. Amish communities exist snd are productive, but they aren’t competing with graduates from Chinese universities. I totally agree with the progression though. Learning the old ways (or cheap ways) can help understand the new ways, as long as you eventually progress to the new ways. China, for example, still tests a lot of Euclidean geometry on the gaokao (national tests) even if it is basically obsolete compared to trigonometry, but they have no better way of testing proof skills.
      - lirolero 15d ago
        > The kid that learns, by the end of their education, to use the more advanced tools is going to economically out competed as an adult by the kid that got stuck learning how to do things the old fashioned way. Source?
- whazor 14d ago
  There are also people arguing that children should have no internet access because its harmful. But children do have access to internet and often with some protections. This is also how I feel about AI, where a full ban is the lazy way out. Similarly like the internet, it is not possible to 100% protect a child every potential harmful AI interaction.
NichoPaolucci 15d ago
Perhaps they can make their ideas reality by learning the fundamentals required to do these things. As much as I think AI is a productivity enhancer, I still think that it's beneficial for people who are still developing their brains. Kids should be thinking for themselves, they barely know how to do it yet.
- vjulian 15d ago
  That’s an excellent philosophy that ought be applied to your own child but not extended to others.
  - NichoPaolucci 15d ago
    I'm not telling anyone how to raise their children, companies have terms of service. When we can't accurately assess risk, the default we reach for is an age minimum (social media, alcohol, driving). If, in time, we find out that AI usage during developmental learning periods is a major positive, I'm sure they will give AI to 5 year olds, and I'm all for that. Though, I have a sneaking suspicion it could be similar to kids with tablets. It encourages isolation, rewards addictive behavior, stunts personal growth, and enforces the concept of instant gratification.
    - vjulian 15d ago
      That is an unnecessary default and also generalizes AI to the point of being analytically not useful.
- win311fwg 15d ago
  > Perhaps they can make their ideas reality by learning the fundamentals required to do these things. Unviable. Learning how to create the universe is provably an insurmountable challenge for the vast majority of people. They require higher level abstractions to be able to learn. Once they understand the high level abstraction they will learn some things about what lies beneath the abstraction, but it is ineffective to start with the low levels. Understanding the fundamentals is best left as an emergent property of the process, not the process itself. The good news is that the high level abstractions we all used a couple of years ago do not require LLMs and are still widely available, so it is not like anyone is going to be left completely out in the cold, but at the same time denying the state of the art abstractions is needlessly limiting.
Joel_Mckay 15d ago
Indeed, it is almost like most adults care about kids getting a good healthy start in life, and avoiding the horrendous mistakes of falling for psychopathic cons. =3
chrisjj 15d ago
> ... at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I'd not realised the ban covers child brains too. /i
sajithdilshan 15d ago
I think over time due the regulations like these younger generations in western countries like US/UK would fall far behind compared to the counterpart in India or China when it comes to AI fluency. I remember when I was a kid growing up there was the same negative perception on internet back then and most people were not allowing internet access to their kids because of porn. But I had access since I was 13 (it was still dial-up) and thank god I did because I wouldn't be a software engineer if I hadn't. I taught myself on how to build web pages in dreamweaver, program in visual basic and even to make animations in flash by the time I was 14. One could argue that young kids should learn those skills without the help of AI, but then again, one could argue that I should have learned computing by punch hole and assembly language to learn how it actually works. What people don't realize is that soon AI would be a new abstraction layer, same as the high level language abstraction we've learned and those languages won't matter just like we don't worry about assembly right now, and I truly feel sorry for the kids that's gonna miss the opportunity to learn AI on their own.
hobom 14d ago
If you give an average classroom of 12 year olds free access to AI, do you think the AVERAGE effect will be that the kids will use the AI to dive really deep into topics and learn programming, or that they will copy and paste the solutions to their homework, and use the freed up time to do other things than study?

by whazor 15d ago

duskdozer 15d ago

And children will still have access to the internet and resources to teach themselves how to program.

stravant 15d ago
That's a silly reply. Imagine telling a kid to chisel what they want out of the marble line by line with a straight face when they can clearly see people appearing entire programs into existence in minutes.
- Joel_Mckay 15d ago
  My first language was RISC Assembly, and it greatly simplified understanding how computers function. There was no Internet, but rather books in a place called a Library with something called informative context. =3
- asadotzler 15d ago
  Imagine telling a kid they have to learn arithmetic while there's a kid next to him with a calculator. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to paint the barn with a brush before they get to use the $12,000 spray rig. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to wash mom's car with a sponge and bucket when there's a drive-through car wash down the street. Imagine telling a kid they have to master a Walmart 20" bicycle before they get to use the Trek Madone $16,000 road bike. This idea that kids must have it maximally easy is ridiculous. Something broke with parenting in the last few decades because this isn't normal thinking. We are supposed to help children develop themselves into adults, not give the excuses not to. That's some goddamned lazy parenting.
  - seanmcdirmid 15d ago
    The kid that learns, by the end of their education, to use the more advanced tools is going to economically out competed as an adult by the kid that got stuck learning how to do things the old fashioned way. Amish communities exist snd are productive, but they aren’t competing with graduates from Chinese universities. I totally agree with the progression though. Learning the old ways (or cheap ways) can help understand the new ways, as long as you eventually progress to the new ways. China, for example, still tests a lot of Euclidean geometry on the gaokao (national tests) even if it is basically obsolete compared to trigonometry, but they have no better way of testing proof skills.
    - lirolero 15d ago
      > The kid that learns, by the end of their education, to use the more advanced tools is going to economically out competed as an adult by the kid that got stuck learning how to do things the old fashioned way. Source?
whazor 14d ago
There are also people arguing that children should have no internet access because its harmful. But children do have access to internet and often with some protections. This is also how I feel about AI, where a full ban is the lazy way out. Similarly like the internet, it is not possible to 100% protect a child every potential harmful AI interaction.

NichoPaolucci 15d ago

Perhaps they can make their ideas reality by learning the fundamentals required to do these things. As much as I think AI is a productivity enhancer, I still think that it's beneficial for people who are still developing their brains. Kids should be thinking for themselves, they barely know how to do it yet.

vjulian 15d ago
That’s an excellent philosophy that ought be applied to your own child but not extended to others.
- NichoPaolucci 15d ago
  I'm not telling anyone how to raise their children, companies have terms of service. When we can't accurately assess risk, the default we reach for is an age minimum (social media, alcohol, driving). If, in time, we find out that AI usage during developmental learning periods is a major positive, I'm sure they will give AI to 5 year olds, and I'm all for that. Though, I have a sneaking suspicion it could be similar to kids with tablets. It encourages isolation, rewards addictive behavior, stunts personal growth, and enforces the concept of instant gratification.
  - vjulian 15d ago
    That is an unnecessary default and also generalizes AI to the point of being analytically not useful.
win311fwg 15d ago
> Perhaps they can make their ideas reality by learning the fundamentals required to do these things. Unviable. Learning how to create the universe is provably an insurmountable challenge for the vast majority of people. They require higher level abstractions to be able to learn. Once they understand the high level abstraction they will learn some things about what lies beneath the abstraction, but it is ineffective to start with the low levels. Understanding the fundamentals is best left as an emergent property of the process, not the process itself. The good news is that the high level abstractions we all used a couple of years ago do not require LLMs and are still widely available, so it is not like anyone is going to be left completely out in the cold, but at the same time denying the state of the art abstractions is needlessly limiting.

Joel_Mckay 15d ago

Indeed, it is almost like most adults care about kids getting a good healthy start in life, and avoiding the horrendous mistakes of falling for psychopathic cons. =3

chrisjj 15d ago

> ... at the same time it feels weird to deny young people the ability to make their ideas reality. I'd not realised the ban covers child brains too. /i

sajithdilshan 15d ago

I think over time due the regulations like these younger generations in western countries like US/UK would fall far behind compared to the counterpart in India or China when it comes to AI fluency. I remember when I was a kid growing up there was the same negative perception on internet back then and most people were not allowing internet access to their kids because of porn. But I had access since I was 13 (it was still dial-up) and thank god I did because I wouldn't be a software engineer if I hadn't. I taught myself on how to build web pages in dreamweaver, program in visual basic and even to make animations in flash by the time I was 14. One could argue that young kids should learn those skills without the help of AI, but then again, one could argue that I should have learned computing by punch hole and assembly language to learn how it actually works. What people don't realize is that soon AI would be a new abstraction layer, same as the high level language abstraction we've learned and those languages won't matter just like we don't worry about assembly right now, and I truly feel sorry for the kids that's gonna miss the opportunity to learn AI on their own.

hobom 14d ago

If you give an average classroom of 12 year olds free access to AI, do you think the AVERAGE effect will be that the kids will use the AI to dive really deep into topics and learn programming, or that they will copy and paste the solutions to their homework, and use the freed up time to do other things than study?