Part 1 - Before You Talk to Your Kids About AI, Try It Yourself

Part 1 of 12 in the Try It Yourself series — practical AI guidance for parents at blog.parentsguidetoai.ca

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My very first experience with parenting and AI came from a day my daughter spent at Ethọ́s Lab. My daughter is very artistic, and routinely makes some absolutely fantastic art (I have a bias, but also she is actually really talented :D) That day she brought home an extremely complex piece of art that was obviously created digitally, but it was completely unlike anything she had ever made before. I already had a great deal of experience with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, and almost immediately recognized that it was AI generated. She was insistent that she had created it herself and came up with the idea for it, but it took a while to get her to explain the tools she had used. She also got very frustrated because she had worked with the tool she used to get the result over multiple iterations. Back in early 2023, I was also a bit of an AI skeptic (and still remain adamantly attached to the idea that AI art isn't art because art requires human expression and intention). This conversation was the first time I had to think about how the the technology I was learning about AI and working with at work was going to impact parenting, and I was poorly prepared.

That's a moment most parents hit at some point, if you haven't already. Your kid mentions an AI tool you've never heard of. They ask you to explain what AI is. They give you a look. And you realize you're the least informed person in the conversation.

That moment is fixable, and it's really only takes a few minutes and some free tools.

I'm not suggesting you become an expert. You don't need to be. But there's a real difference between reading about AI and actually using it. This whole series is built on that idea: the best way to guide your children through the AI era is to try these tools yourself first.

I want to remind you, this blog, and my guide are a volunteer effort. I work with these technologies in my job every day, but I don't have a stake in promoting or using any tools. Like my guide, I don't use tracking technology on this blog, and I don't include referral links or get any rewards or sponsorships for the tools the I suggest here.

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Why trying it yourself changes everything

Think about learning to drive. You can read every manual ever written about a car. But until you've actually sat behind the wheel, you don't really know what it feels like to merge onto a highway or parallel park on a hill. Advice from someone who's driven is just different from advice from someone who's read about it.

AI is the same way.

When you've used an AI tool, even just once, for five minutes, you will see and start to understand things that are hard to explain from the outside. You know that it sometimes sounds incredibly confident while being completely wrong. You know that the quality of what you get back depends heavily on how you ask the question. You know that it can feel strangely easy to trust.

Those are exactly the things your kids need to understand. And you're in a much better position to have that conversation if you've already been there.

When I had that conversation with my daughter, I had already discussed tools like Midjourney with friends who are artists, so I had already started to form opinions, so when I had to help her understand the difference between prompting a tool that creates a picture, and creating the picture herself, I was able to explain a bunch of the mechanics. Without that experience, it would have been difficult for me to discern where the picture had come from, and I may have operated under the assumption that she was just using a new drawing tool like Inkscape or Photoshop that she hadn't had access to before.

The parent's guide at parentsguidetoai.ca is a great starting point for understanding the landscape. But this series is designed to take you one step further — from understanding AI to actually using it.

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The three easiest places to start

There are dozens of AI tools out there. For now, if you haven't used any before, ignore most of them. These three are the best starting points for parents, and they're all free:

ChatGPT (made by OpenAI) is probably the one you've heard the most about. It's a conversational AI — you type a question or a request, it responds. You can ask it to explain something, summarize an article, brainstorm ideas, or just answer a question. The free version is genuinely useful. Note that the minimum age for a personal account is 13.¹

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI, and it's the one most directly relevant to Vancouver School Board families. The school version — Copilot 13+ — is a managed version with additional protections.² The home version is free and runs in your browser without even needing an account to start. This is the one I'd suggest trying first if your child is a VSB student.

Google Gemini is Google's AI. If you use Gmail or Google Docs, you may have already seen it appear as a suggestion tool.³ The standalone version is free and works similarly to ChatGPT. It's particularly good at working with information and summarizing things.

All three are powerful and flexible tools. They're not identical — we'll go deeper on the differences in the next post. For now, just pick one.

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What to expect from your first five minutes

Here's the thing about AI tools that nobody tells you: there's no wrong way to start. You won't break it. It doesn't judge you for asking something basic. And you don't need to prepare.

Just open one of the three tools above and type a question. Any question. Something you've actually been wondering about, or something related to your kids' school or schedule.

A few things you'll probably notice:

• The response comes fast. Much faster than you might expect.
• It sounds confident. This is worth paying attention to, because that confidence doesn't always mean it's right.
• You can push back. If the answer doesn't make sense, or you want more detail, just say so. AI tools are designed for back-and-forth conversation.
• It might get something wrong. That's okay. In fact, it's useful — we'll talk more about spotting mistakes in Post 5.

The first time I fired up ChatGPT I was enrolled in a script writing class, and I tried some simple things, like asking it to generate a script for a new scene based on Stargate SG-1, and then asked it to generate a list of references to past events in other Stargate episodes to tie in accuracy, and the whole thing it produced was a hot mess of inconsistent and hallucinated content. For me, it drove the point home early that these tools are not well designed research, consistency, or accuracy, although they can be useful with skill and experience.

The goal for this week is not to become an AI user. It's to stop being someone who's only read about it.

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The short version:

• You can guide your children better if you've tried AI tools yourself, even just once.
• Trying the tools doesn't mean you have to use them, but you will have a better understanding of what they are and how they might be used.
• Three free tools to start with: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini.
• For VSB families, Copilot is the most directly relevant — it's a version of what your child may use at school.
• There's no wrong way to start. Just open one and ask a question.
• AI sounds confident. That doesn't always mean it's right.

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Trying one of these tools this week will make the rest of this series more useful. Once you've had that first conversation with an AI, the next post will make a lot more sense: we're going to look at what AI actually is — and why understanding that matters when your child brings home AI-assisted work.

Try it today: Open Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini and ask it one genuine question — something you actually want to know. That's it. Five minutes.

One final tip, if you do try the tools, consider trying three more things:

• Ask a simple question about a task that is very mundane, for example, ask it to build a meal plan for you and your family for a week with a grocery list.
• Ask a complex question about something you know very well. For example, if you are a mechanic, ask for a detailed explanation of how a two-stroke motor works. Look at the answer and note what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and what gets left out. Keep digging in with more questions to see if you can get it make mistakes.
• Explain something that you want to accomplish that you don't know how to do, like creating a website, or planting a garden, but tell it to ask you questions about what you want to accomplish and to help build a plan to do that task.

Next up: Post 2 — What AI Actually Is (And Why That Matters When Your Child Brings Home AI-Assisted Work)

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Notes