Teaching AI to Kindergarteners
This week, I visited a kindergarten as a parent guest speaker and delivered an “AI class” to my child’s class.
It was fascinating—and surprisingly efficient.
I used ChatGPT to co-create the original lesson plan. Preparation took almost no time.
The class had two parts: First, I told a story—“Little Dinosaur Looking for Mom.” Second, I showed the children a pink, winged baby dinosaur and invited them to imagine what Mommy Dinosaur looked like. Each child described her in their own words—“She has rainbow scales and lives on a cloud,” “She wears sunglasses and rides a seahorse,” “She bakes cake at the beach”—and our teaching assistant typed those descriptions into ChatGPT in real time. Within seconds, it generated vivid, whimsical images of each imagined mom.
This format powerfully encourages uninhibited imagination and creative expression. When one child said, “Mommy Dinosaur is holding a birthday cake and a giant pancake at the seaside,” the whole room erupted in cheers. That moment crystallized something vital: If you dare to imagine it, it can appear—right there, on screen.
It reminded me of a news story from abroad: On their very first day of school, students were guided to register ChatGPT accounts and use them in lesson design. Tools like ChatGPT are emblematic of this AI wave—not just flashy demos, but force multipliers for learning and knowledge application.
My own workflow has shifted dramatically. For example, writing complex database queries used to take 10–20 minutes; now ChatGPT drafts solid, working code in under a minute. The efficiency gain is real—and tangible.
Technology’s trajectory is irreversible. What’s exciting isn’t just adoption, but how thoughtfully using these tools reveals new educational possibilities: novel experiences, yes—but also new ways of thinking.
Attachment: Lesson handout (PDF)
How to Cultivate a Child’s Perspective
When children develop a broad, future-oriented perspective early, it profoundly shapes their intrinsic motivation and cognitive habits.
In a parenting group, a mom—who’s also the group admin and founder of an edtech organization—shared a telling anecdote. Her son’s current role model is Sam Altman. Unsurprisingly, his thinking already resonates with Altman’s: ambitious, systems-aware, and mission-driven.
She quoted him directly:
“My dream is to spot emerging tech opportunities that can scale in the real world—then gather top talent and capital to build world-changing products, like Apple, Tesla, or Windows. Everything else is just a tool toward that goal.”
So how do we help kids internalize such expansive vision early? One effective path is intentional exposure to exceptional thinkers and builders—people whose values, curiosity, and impact align with what we hope to nurture. But that requires conscious environmental shaping and interest-guided scaffolding.
Yes—it does, to some extent, hinge on parents’ own awareness and capacity.
When Will Artificial General Intelligence Arrive?
With AI dominating headlines, speculation about AGI timing has surged. So have I—curious, skeptical, and quietly awed.
AGI means machines with human-level—or superhuman—intelligence: capable of reasoning, learning, adapting, and performing any intellectual task a person can.
Two dominant camps have emerged. Optimists predict true AGI within ten years—pointing to the explosive, Moore’s-law-like acceleration in AI capability. At some inflection point—or “singularity”—they argue, scaling alone may unlock general intelligence.
Pessimists, like my friend—a Tsinghua PhD in philosophy of science—disagree sharply. He believes AGI won’t arrive in our lifetimes. Why? Because we still can’t define consciousness, let alone reverse-engineer how human awareness emerges from biology. Without a rigorous, shared understanding of this foundational human trait, building its artificial counterpart remains speculative at best.
That said, this AI wave is qualitatively different from past cycles: broader applicability, faster real-world integration, and measurable utility across domains.
His pragmatic advice? Seek out disinterested experts—researchers without commercial stakes—for grounded perspectives on AGI. Their insights tend to be quieter, but far more durable.
Winning = Capability × Strategy
This week, I read The Art of War Explained: Twelve Lectures on Sun Tzu and the Logic of Victory.
One line stuck: Winning = Capability × Strategy.
It’s not addition—it’s multiplication. Strategy doesn’t replace capability; it amplifies it. If your capability is fixed, better strategy dramatically increases your odds of success.
Capability is objective—skills, resources, data, time. Strategy, however, is learned. And few texts teach strategic thinking more rigorously than The Art of War. For anyone serious about mastering Chinese strategic thought, start with Sun Tzu—and lean on trusted modern commentaries.
A vivid contrast between Eastern and Western strategy? Think chess vs. Go. Chess prioritizes piece capture; Go prioritizes influence, territory, and long-term balance—even sacrificing stones to win the game. Victory isn’t about elimination. It’s about out-thinking, not just out-fighting.
Start with the Core Function
Recently, I designed a learner platform. Version 1 looked sleek—full of animations, dashboards, and “smart” features. We launched it… then scrapped it entirely.
Version 2 began differently: identify the single most essential function—what must work flawlessly for learners to get value—and build only that, deeply and well. Only after validating it did we layer on adjacent capabilities.
This mirrors a principle from a well-regarded UI/UX ebook: “Start with a feature, not a layout.”
The next chapter adds: Don’t obsess over details yet.
Simple, powerful, and especially relevant for digital products. It prevents wasted effort, sharpens feedback loops, and accelerates meaningful iteration.
Attachment: