KIDS AND AI: A STRAIGHT ANSWER

Is AI safe for my child to use?

Safe enough to be worth teaching, and risky enough that it should be taught rather than left to chance. The real risks are not the ones that make headlines: they are that AI states false things with total confidence, that it can be unfair in ways nobody notices, and that it is very easy to let it think for you. None of those are solved by banning it — a child who meets AI for the first time unsupervised at fourteen is in more danger than one who learned how it fails at eleven.

What we teach: AI can be confidently wrong, and spotting that is a skill.

Is using AI for homework cheating?

It depends entirely on what was handed in and whether anyone was misled. The line we teach is simple: you should be able to explain every part of what you turned in, and you should be honest about the help you had. A student who asks AI to quiz them before a test has done something completely different from a student who asks it to write the essay — even though both 'used AI'.

What we teach: Academic Integrity — doing your own thinking, and being honest about any help you had, including AI.

Will AI make my child a lazy thinker?

It can. That is the honest answer, and it is the reason the last lesson in the program exists rather than the first. The difference is one question: is the AI doing the thinking, or making them think harder? Asking it to quiz you, argue against you, or find the hole in your reasoning builds the muscle. Asking it for the finished answer replaces it. Most children default to the second unless somebody shows them the first.

What we teach: use AI as a learning partner — the best use of AI is not getting answers, it is getting better questions.

How do I know when AI is telling my child something false?

You often cannot tell by reading it, and neither can they — that is precisely the problem. AI writes the most likely-sounding answer, so a wrong answer sounds exactly as sure as a right one. The fix is a habit, not a detector: flag the specific claim, find a real source you can actually open, and compare. And you cannot use AI to fact-check AI.

What we teach: how sure an answer sounds tells you nothing about whether it is true.

What age should a child start learning about AI?

Around grade 6 and up. The material is approachable enough for younger, motivated children, but the concepts, vocabulary and real-world applications resonate most with children in grades 6 and above. The better signal than age is whether they are already using it — if a child is asking AI things unsupervised, the moment to teach them has already arrived.

What should I actually say to my child about AI?

Three questions before they share anything AI helped make: Is it fair? Is it safe? Is it honest? They are short enough to remember and they cover most of what goes wrong. Beyond that, the most useful thing a parent can do is ask to see the conversation, not just the output — the prompt tells you far more about what your child was thinking than the answer does.

What we teach: a 3-question ethics check, used before anything gets shared.

What information do you collect about my child?

Very little. To create a child account we ask for your child's first name — that is it. No last name, no date of birth, no school, no personal details. The parent account needs an email address for login and to receive the child's access code. We do not sell or share any data with third parties.

Who is behind this?

Families. Parents involved in their own schools who wanted their children to direct AI rather than be directed by it, and who thought AI literacy was too important to leave to chance. This was built by parents, for parents and children.