Lesson 272 · 3 min
Teach your kids to check AI
Children should learn early that a chatbot can sound sure of itself and still be wrong.
Kids tend to trust anything that answers quickly and politely. A chatbot does both. It can also invent a fact, a date or a book title, and say it in the same confident tone as everything else. This is called a hallucination.
Chatbots also like to agree. If your child says "Ho Chi Minh City is the capital, right?", some chatbots will go along with it. Teach your child that a reply that agrees with them is not proof.
Give them a simple habit: for anything that matters, check it in a second place. A school textbook, a teacher, an encyclopedia or a trusted news site all count.
Make it a game. When you catch the chatbot making a mistake together, celebrate it. Your child learns that spotting errors is a skill to be proud of.
Do it now
Play "catch the chatbot"
- 1. Pick a topic your child knows well, like their favourite animal or a lesson from school.
- 2. Ask the chatbot the question below together.
- 3. Check two of its facts in the textbook or a trusted website.
- 4. Talk about what was right, what was wrong and how you found out.
Tell me five surprising facts about elephants, and for each fact say how sure you are.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →Helping grandparents start with AIWords from this lesson
- Hallucination
- When an AI states something false with confidence, such as a made-up fact, quote or source.
- AI literacy
- Knowing enough about how AI works to use it well, spot its mistakes and decide when not to use it.
- Sycophancy
- An AI's tendency to agree with you or flatter your ideas instead of telling you where you are wrong.