I’m a technology veteran who helped create ‘Internet in a Box’ at Spry Inc. in the 1990s, putting the entire World Wide Web on a single floppy disk. I thought I understood how technology transforms society—until my 27-year-old son mentioned having philosophical conversations with an AI about consciousness.

As someone who homeschooled four children for 15 years, teaching them Latin and Greek not because they’d use these languages but because different languages teach different ways of thinking, I realized AI systems are like languages too. Each one structures thought differently, and our children are learning these ‘languages’ unconsciously.

Drawing on my unique perspective as both a tech pioneer and experienced educator, I created the AI Literacy for Families curriculum to help parents teach their children to think critically about any form of intelligence they encounter—artificial or otherwise.