I work in AI. I still don't want my kid using it too easily.

July 1, 2026 - 20:40

I spend my days building and studying artificial intelligence at Google. You might think I would be the first person to hand my daughter a chatbot and tell her to go wild. But the truth is, I am doing the opposite. I am teaching her to pause, to sit with the struggle, and to think for herself before she ever opens a chat window.

It sounds counterintuitive. I know the power of these tools better than most. I see how they can summarize, explain, and generate. But I also see what they can steal: the moment of confusion that forces a real connection in the brain. That moment when a child reads a sentence three times, frowns, and then says, "Oh, I get it now." That is learning. That is the work.

My daughter is young. She is curious. She asks questions constantly. When she gets stuck on a homework problem or a big idea, her first instinct is to reach for a screen. My job is to slow that down. I tell her, "Try to explain it to me in your own words first. Draw it. Write down what you do know." Only after she has wrestled with the problem do we look for an answer together.

I am not against AI. I believe it will be a powerful tutor and partner. But I believe in teaching the skill of thinking before the skill of searching. If she learns to lean on the machine before she learns to lean on her own mind, she will never build the muscle of patience and critical thought. I want her to know the satisfaction of solving something on her own. That feeling is harder to find when a chatbot hands you the answer in two seconds.

So yes, I work in AI. And yes, I am keeping my daughter away from easy access to it. Not because I fear the technology, but because I want her to trust her own brain first.