Growing up with AI

I grew up in a small town in Transylvania, and will always remember the day when I assembled my first computer and loaded the first mp3 songs and movies on it. At the time we didn’t yet have Internet in my home, and I was exchanging files via CDs with my friends and my father’s colleagues.

By the time I went to college, my campus had its own intranet, and my friends and I built up a collection of hundreds of albums, television series, movies, software packages, anything you could imagine. It was as if all of the students were part of this giant web, seeding and peering on torrents while constantly exchanging the latest school news in forums and chat rooms. Later, I used the internet to find my first internship abroad, master’s scholarship, job, and apartment. I also founded a global community of young makers and hackers—HacKIDemia—where kids could connect and exchange knowledge via videos, social groups, and local events: all thanks to this new medium that was breaking down geographic and institutional borders.  

I was part of the first wave of the internet generation, and now, looking back at my childhood, I realize how lucky this was. I grew up in a small town in a post-communist country and was the first in my family to go to college and study abroad; because of the internet, I had opportunities to connect and work with people from all over the world on meaningful and fun projects. Being a child that grew up with the web expanded my perspective on what is possible and it allowed me to participate in global conversations and projects while becoming a global citizen.   After reflecting on my own childhood, I can’t help but wonder what this experience will look like for today’s children, who are not just growing up with the web, but are also the first generation of kids to grow up with artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily lives. 

Recently, we’ve seen both the potential and the challenges of a global, connected community. While I was enchanted with the power of the web growing up, I now recognize its power through social media to overturn governments or manipulate large groups of people. We are finally starting to have the hard conversations around the ethics and policies that large companies and governments around the world need to start implementing in order to prevent future abuses.  In this context I believe it is more crucial than ever to teach young people and their families to have a critical understanding of the new AI technologies and devices that are already part of their homes and lives...

Read the full article on the MIT Media Lab website.