Play with A.I. with your kids over break
Four (free) things to try
Winter break brings togetherness, dark skies, and possibly rotten weather.
So after you’ve watched Elf for the last time, cleaned up enough puzzle pieces for the rest of the year, and hauled off all the boxes and wrapping paper, gather the kids in front of the warm glow of the computer screen for some good old-fashioned A.I. exploration.
With five kids here and more at your place, we’ll make this quick. Try these four things to get your creative, futuristic juices flowing.
Have fun with art
Describe one of your children to Microsoft’s Bing Chat with physical characteristics and what they like to do. Then, ask it to draw a picture of him or her.
“Draw a picture of a girl who has red hair, blue eyes, and loves baseball.” No matter what comes up, you’ll all get a good laugh.
Next, choose a word to focus on and keep asking it to make it more. “Cuter.” “More awkward.” “Bigger hair.” Then do it again and again to see how ridiculous it gets.
Learn something new
Ask your kids for a topic they’d like to learn more about. (Or pick something you’d like them to learn about.) Let’s try investing.
Then ask the A.I. to explain the concept to you at your child’s age level, but using their favorite activity as a metaphor.
“Explain investing to me like I’m a 7-year-old. Use ballet as a metaphor.”
“Explain A.I. chat bots to me like you’re Daniel Tiger.”
Get some ideas
Current large language models are great at strategizing. Start out small and ask it to help you plan a kid-friendly New Year’s party or a way for middle schoolers to make money on a day off of school.
Ask for ten ideas, then choose one and ask it to give you more details. Remember, it’s a chat bot. So, talk to it like a person. Tell it you like the fourth answer and want more details. Say, “No, that idea doesn’t make sense for a 12-year-old,” or “How would we do #3 in the rain?”
Give them an assignment
I first included this assignment in one of my earlier posts called: Homework and A.I. Is it cheating? If you didn’t have time to do it then, try it now!
Write a paper about a rule you wish you could change.
Ask the A.I. to write a paper about it, compare the two, and combine them (keeping your own voice and personal touch.)
Ask the A.I. to edit the new, combined paper for different purposes. Change up the audience, the medium, or the purpose. Maybe an email to the principal about the change or a social media post for quick dispersal or a speech to rally your classmates at school.
How to get there
Currently, the most advanced A.I. chatbot available is ChatGPT-4. It costs $20 per month through the site or app, and it is universally accepted to be well worth the $20. An earlier version, ChatGPT-3.5 is available for free at the same spot: chat.openai.com.
You can also access a version of the newer, paid version for free through Microsoft Bing. Just click the option that says, “Creative Mode.” It’s supposed to be the same, but I’ve tried several examples, and the results have been noticeably worse with the free version.
If you’ve never tried any of them, stick with the free versions for now while you get the hang of it. But if you’ve played around with it and found yourself disappointed with the results, try the $20 version and cancel after the month is up if you don’t use it.
You could spend $20 for two hours at the movie theater or the same for a month’s worth of exploring the future where your kids will live, work, and play.