BBC Bitesize asked me and a handful of other people, a podcast host, an author, a psychotherapist, and a diversity-in-work advocate, for advice parents could actually use on preparing children for a future shaped by AI. I want to expand on what I told them, because a soundbite doesn't leave room for the reasoning behind it.
How AI, robots, and self-driving cars will shape children's future
My honest prediction is that AI, humanoid robots, self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses will reshape both work and daily life within a child growing up today's working lifetime, not in some distant speculative future. Large language models and their successors will be our constant companions, present in how children learn, work and socialise in a way no previous generation grew up with. That's not a warning, it's just a description of the environment I think today's children are actually going to live in.
The skills children actually need for an AI-driven future
The other contributors made points I think matter more than my own. Jimmy McLoughlin flagged healthcare, education and autonomous vehicles as the sectors likely to see the most disruption and growth, and made the point that the valuable human skill going forward is directing AI toward what you actually want, not competing with it on raw output. David Goodhart made a related point worth building on: automation is a long way from replacing the soft skills involved in caring for people, particularly as the population ages, which suggests care-oriented work may be more durable than a lot of white-collar work assumed to be safe from automation.
How to talk to children about AI without leading with fear
Ayo Adesioye's advice was aimed less at what children should learn and more at how parents talk about AI at home, avoiding fear-based framing and instead taking children's actual worries about the technology seriously rather than dismissing or amplifying them. Michael Barrington Hibbert made a related point about focusing children's development on the soft skills AI genuinely can't replicate, rather than trying to out-compete machines on technical tasks that are going to keep getting automated regardless.
4 things parents can do to prepare children for AI
Between all five of us, the advice landed on four things parents can actually do. Talk about AI openly at home, including the less comfortable topics like online safety and how children's data gets used. Build the foundational skills of collaboration, creativity and critical thinking that stay valuable regardless of how the technology shifts. Let children pursue what genuinely interests them rather than only what looks safe from automation. And protect time for face-to-face interaction and unstructured play, which AI can't replicate and children still need regardless of what their future work looks like.
Read the full piece on BBC Bitesize.