Marketplace Tech Raising kids in an AI-driven world
14 snips
May 13, 2026 
Joanna Stern, technology columnist and author who spent a year using AI for almost everything, shares family experiments with driverless cars, AI toys, and a mistaken chatbot advice about a pet mantis. Short stories explore kids’ reactions, a cooking robot that surprised them, and rules she uses to raise creative, skeptical humans in a world full of smart machines.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Kids Will Grow Up Offloading Tasks To AI
- Children will grow up in a world where smart computers remove friction from everyday tasks.
- Joanna Stern realized kids may never do things the way she did, like driving or researching, because AI will handle most of those steps.
Kids Rejected AI Toys But Kept The Cooking Robot
- Joanna Stern's children rejected AI toys but embraced a countertop cooking robot that keeps dumping empty ingredient containers.
- The family kept the bulky cooker because it makes surprisingly good side dishes and became a running joke in the house.
Raise Creative Skeptical Kids Not Robot Reliant
- Teach children creativity and skepticism so they become humans, not robots, in an AI-filled world.
- Joanna Stern advises building rules about AI use and guiding kids to question outputs rather than blindly trusting chatbots.
