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A Parent’s Guide to AI Tools Without Fear · WhozYourMama

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Who's Your Mama, a podcast focusing on tomorrow's future, which are our kids, educators, teachers, parents, all-encompassing with the goal of understanding that our brain is a muscle that we can exercise to control the speed in the direction that we want.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go, y'all.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: The time is now.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Annika Jackson of your brand Amplified.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Who's Your Mama?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Michelle.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I am so happy to be here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when you were starting this podcast.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so it's a really big honor to be able to be in the room.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I that just gave me chills.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: You are the the inspiration behind a lot of things in in life, and and starting this definitely um was a big part, you were a big part of it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there are so many things that we could talk about, and I've been thinking about this for quite a while.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: As how could I zone in on the many hats that you wear?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so for today, I wanted to focus on AI specifically.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about where I am at that in any part of my life and where my daughter's at, where she will be.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We both have daughters very close in age, and everyone is at different points in time.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So can you just start out a little bit about your background in AI, and then we could go into what are some fears that parents might have, um, hesitancy for encouragement for kids and how we could bridge the gap for all of us together.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate this line of inquiry because it is something that's so important.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: We hear the horror stories, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: We hear about kids going on and not wanting to.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of the same thing as with video games.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Kids getting angry because they want to be on their iPad or they want to be playing their game, or now they might be turning to AI as a friend and companion instead of talking to their families.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, my background in AI is that I have an MBA specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I won't get into all the details because it can get too wonky for this uh conversation.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: But what I really love about that is I did that obviously for business implications, but I'm also an educator.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I teach grad school at University of Southern California.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was teaching before we started talking about generative AI.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden I had to say, oh, there's this new thing we're all talking about.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are you using it yet?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And now I can't teach a class without mentioning artificial intelligence and talking about it, the good and the bad, right?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the ethical considerations.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it comes down to this became it's kind of like the genesis, whether I get a PhD or not, of what my PhD would be.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I've really been leaning into how do we make sure that people understand how to use AI, that we know what the future of work looks like, that we know how to teach it to our students of all ages, and that we understand what the best parts of it are and how to use them together for good, because we we hear a lot of the bad out there too, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we see companies like Meta coming up with these cute cartoon AI muses, um, which, you know, they're just probably trying to sell us more stuff, quite frankly.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we all know, well, not I shouldn't take the whole canvas, but many of us know there are elements of that and to what degree and where we're at.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think that there is a way to share, which is a is what Who's Your Mama is about, is paying it forward and also learning from younger generations and and down up and all around.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what the core is is is we're never too old or young to grow.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that look like and how relevant it is?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that's very much out there, and and you bring up a couple of things I was thinking about when you you were talking about meta and and uh different things that are put out there and video games, you know, still to this day, my daughter she she'll laugh if I've gone to the store and I have Charmin toilet paper.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she wasn't big into TV specifically.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was conscious about that in the morning.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would try and do my best as a working mom as you know, to start the day, at least with music.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we would do dance, but I tried not to have TV so that her mind was activated in different ways, but that commercial has literally still stuck with her since she was very young and she's almost 18.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's so funny, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think about that from AI.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the programming, so to speak, what what would you recommend in your own experience as a professor of this, just working knowledge as an adult, as a mother, where is a place for parents to start?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: The best place for parents to start is to educate ourselves.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that can mean playing around with free tools, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: LLMs, large language models are usually the easiest place to start.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: We now see that integrated.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So an easy thing is if you're going and doing a Google search, you're already getting AI overviews of topics, and then Gemini is right there asking you, what part of this did you want more information on?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you're already using AI.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you have Netflix or any other streaming platform, you're already using AI because they're making recommendations, and that's part of machine learning, the recommendation engines.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Every ad we see, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: AI is running about 90% of the ad ecosystem.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So all the little things we don't see.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So as parents, we're all we just need to be aware of the fact that we're already using it, that it already exists in the world.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: But then I also think there's some fun ways to work with our kids.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's what I think.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think some people will hear, I don't have a choice.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna shut everything down and go to kind of that extremist mentality.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is I think there is a balance between, would you agree, of yes, being aware versus fear-based, and how can you be educated and and combine that with your your kids to help them in a world that this is going to be continue to be there, just how to use it in a responsible way.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because the truth is it's there, it's not going anywhere.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody I speak to, um, because I have a podcast that talks about the art of teaching, the future of work, and what technology and AI mean for that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the conversations around that are about building community as one of the most important things.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we do that?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: We do that by making sure people are armed with knowledge, knowing how to use these tools because those are the people who will get jobs.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's we're actually seeing something change right now where it is taking some jobs, but it's not taking all of the jobs.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we still need people with our own common sense, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Our own strategic brains to be the ones who are working with these tools.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, as parents, an easy thing to do.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Think about what you do when you're playing with your kids.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're drawing, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, my daughter is 18, she is away at university, but we had a great 90-minute Zoom last weekend uh because she is in another country and she was showing me all the different um drawings she was making and she does them herself.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: But a fun thing for a parent to do is why don't we take these drawings and we animate them, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Or kids love to make up stories and write stories.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we do a story together and we can use an AI tool to take it the next step further or to come up with questions we can ask each other about the story?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there are really fun ways to engage.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I even have my graduate students make cartoons using AI to show different things with, you know, I mean, ethical monetization and advertising and all this other stuff we don't need to get into.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I try to make it fun for them to learn these different tools to see what capabilities there are.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I would so for people that are they have no knowledge and or limited and also limited resources financially.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that some people could hear that and think, oh, that's great, but I, you know, I'm a starving student, or I'm a I'm a single parent, and just trying to make ends meet.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where would be a place where they could go and and access some of that to learn more, seek more, and and then an another form of connecting with a a child or their children?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: All of the LLMs, there is a free version.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so the large language models, so if you're using Claude or using Chat GPT or Gemini, all of them have a free version.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: On those free versions, there is an element of you can create, you can design, not just words, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can a lot of them you can do video, you can do all of this for free.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're not putting any proprietary information, don't put personal information in them, but you can use them as basic tools.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually have a one sheet that I can give to you to share with your audience that has a whole bunch of the design tools that you can use for free to try making cartoons with your children, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Make a little video, doing these creative processes because before we jumped on, you and I were talking about creativity.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one thing when we see all of the different AI ads, we hear this about local businesses all using the same AI ads.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: We see, you know, food companies using and the the food doesn't look that great.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I see this all the time on my, I don't know if anybody else sees that, but I see it all the time on my social media.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's like the sea of sameness.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's the worst case, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to use it to create things that everybody else is doing.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: But children have such vivid imaginations, and I think it's that's a really fun way to connect with our children too.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of saying no technology, or instead of being scared about the technology, let's say, hey, I don't really know much about this, but I know that this tool can help us create some graphics and you're writing this.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what can we what can we do together?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was thinking about this before um when I knew you were coming on and I had these flashbacks and showing our our age is I was thinking, okay, when the World Wide Web came in.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went even further back in in the roller coaster um Rolodex of my life, and I thought about the yellow pages, and I'm like, dude, and Liberty and I have played that game because she's you know, she's our daughters are close, and this are almost the same age.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is that do you know what this is?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we've just laughed about that, but I think that vulnerability to show just as a human, but also with our kids, is it encourages, and I even think there's a retention in them that they will maybe even unconsciously default to to remember that it was something that their mom or their dad or their aunt, uncle that they weren't comfortable with, but and didn't know, and were showing that they were willing to learn and and grow, yeah, and and finding ways to do that creatively, and it creative doesn't have to mean drawing things, it could just be where does your mind go and all of that.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Another really fun one that I'll put by name, Suno, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a music maker.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can go in, say you want to make a song for your friend's birthday.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, your dog's birthday, right?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: You got you can go in with your kid and you just choose, you can choose what kind of voice if you don't want to put your own voice.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can put in lyrics that you wrote, you can put in all these different things for again for free and have it create a silly little song for you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I will laugh, I will look back and laugh at myself because I sing it out loud all the time just to kind of get thoughts out.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, same, same.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when Siri was when my daughter was little, I was always singing songs about brushing of teeth or getting dressed or bedtime, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: All those little songs.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: That is something a parent can do with their own voice, even to make it fun songs.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe they can't be home for bedtime.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: You could use, you know, you could record your voice.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: You could also get an AI clone of your voice.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a lot of these tools you can do for free.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you could have it be to your child.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we we as parents have to be really creative too about how we're gonna teach these tools to not be scary, to be things that students need to learn.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, there are great people all over.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know Kansas University has a school where they are working with elementary school kids and personalized learning using AI.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really it.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: You just hit the nail on the head.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I I know we're gonna have to wrap up is personalized.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: 100% and it's it continues to change.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you and I were growing up, you know, our parents would be like, it wasn't like this when we were growing up.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's like, okay, well, the same thing.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are these things are gonna continue to evolve.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is about personalizing for what is working for you as a person, if you have a family, your child, where they're at, but it doesn't have to be feared.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there is a way to embrace the change and know that it will help in the growth of how things are growing outside to make the best decision.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And just one other quick little tip as parents, we can sometimes see our our students struggling with subject matters.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to Google, you can go to YouTube, but you can also go into AI and they don't take it, you know, it if you have certain prompts, you say, I'm learning about this subject, you can ask it questions.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, even as an adult, I've found it easier to go back and forth with an AI tool to help my own comprehension than it is for me sometimes to listen to a lecture or go to one of these other, you know, go to YouTube.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have, I have as well, and I'm I'm I feel as though I'm late into the not that it's a game, but in terms of adopting it.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when I felt like I was ready to I utilize it in a way that has been very helpful of some of the things that I wasn't retaining in certain areas that made more sense for me.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's one area that worked for me.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, I don't like anything, it's not a one-stop shop, but what do you want for the shop of your life and and where are you trying to go and why?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and then sharing that with our kids.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I really do think that that is something that will continue to evolve and a way to bond with kids and as adults not to fear.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for taking the time to be on here.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have so much more that you can say, and um I I will follow up with you on that that one page and something that we could just put out there or you can.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if um if anyone does want to reach out to you and further discuss anything, is there a best way for them to contact you?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your brandamplified.com.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: There is a button there.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can schedule time with me to talk through any topic you want.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also leave half hour slots for people.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to talk about AI, if you want to talk about education, you want to talk about anything, I'm there for it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'll also, you know, send you some resources and a special link for things like the workshop and other things that parents can do to engage their children and also learn AI at the same time, just for the use from all of them.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you are, I mean, the the brand is uh uh behind the name amplified.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: You wear so many hats and really are an inspiration to so many.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um I look forward to continuing these conversations, even if it's not here.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I will be sharing more because there's there's a lot a lot of growth in in this area in particular.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as I always sign off, is let's go, y'all.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: The time is now.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tuning in to Who's Your Mama, and I look forward to collaborating from a community standpoint for the next episodes.