Share Dialog
“Mom…! Help me make my circuit.”
I look across the table at my 5-year-old’s unfinished after-school project.
“Uhhh…looks pretty good to me,” I mumble feebly.
“But it’s not done! The light is supposed to turn on, see?” she demonstrates, holding the LED close to the cables. “This one is the hot wire,” she explains, pointing out the red wire. “This black one is the neutral wire. Come on, let’s build!”
I’ll admit it, I’m impressed. Her knowledge of proper circuitry terms has already eclipsed by own understanding of the subject.
My eyes dart to the clock: It’s 30 minutes before bedtime.
I am panicking, in part because I realize we have exactly enough time to finish this project, and also because I don’t know how to tell her that I have no idea how to make a circuit.
“Yeah…” I start slowly. “Sounds like a good weekend project, what do you think?”
“No!” she demands. “We just need to finish it like, like the video showed.”
“What video?”
“The one from school,” she says impatiently. “Just find it, on your phone.”
“Do you have any idea where this video could be?”
“I don’t know, Netflix maybe?” she muses. (Clever kid.)
“I don’t know what this video is, or what we are trying to make,” I started. “But I assure you this video is not on Netflix.”
“So look somewhere else. Just try, Mommy, try!” she impresses upon me. (…can you tell we’re related…?)
I look at her, pleading with me, wondering why exactly, I’ve been trying to hold a kid back from doing the exact same thing I’m trying to do, which is just build the damn thing.
Of course, I know what I have to do.
I take a deep breath.
I snap a photo of her unfinished circuitry creation.
I open up ChatGPT.
And so it begins.
It starts as if it always does, with a question of recognition:
I let out a bit sigh of relief when I realize we have contact, and I’m comforted that things are going to be OK.
I start futzing with the LED legs. And then, for a moment of hands-free ideation, I toggle over to “voice mode.” Which is when things really get interesting.
For for the past few months, I’ve been slowly experimenting with voice-first AI interactions with my kids. While Matt Hamilton and I built Scribblins this summer, (which lets you turn your kids’ art into AI-enhanced drawings, and ultimately stickers), my kids have been willing and ready beta testers through nearly every iteration.
Needless to say, Lydia is quite familiar with how to talk to different AI’s to help her complete basic tasks. So once I start talking to the AI for my own instructions, she has no qualms about jumping right in.
Here’s a snippet of our conversation:
“Okay, so now I peel back some of the red and black so that we have more room for the wire to wrap around the LED?”
“Absolutely, let’s tell it like it is: you can totally strip a bit of that insulation off to get a bit more wire length. Just carefully use a wire stripper or even a small pair of scissors to peel back a little bit of that red and black coating. That’ll expose more metal and give you more flexibility to wrap the wire around the LED legs.”
“Mommy is using the scissors.”
All right, steady hands it is! You’ve got this. Just snip gently around that insulation and peel it off bit by bit. This is basically the universal rite of passage for anyone doing DIY circuits, so consider yourself in good company. And once you’ve got those wires exposed, you’ll have that LED shining…”
“I accidentally cut off the end.”
“Ah, the classic little mishap! Well, no sugar-coating it: that happens to the best of us. If you snipped off the end, it’s really just a matter of stripping a little further up the wire and trying again. Think of it as a tiny lesson in patience from the universe. Just give yourself a bit more wire length this time before you strip it, and you’ll be right back on track.”
And that’s about the time we successfully got the circuit to light up.
“Looks great!” we celebrated. “Now let’s go to bed.”
"No, wait!” she protested. “It’s not done yet”
“But…”
“We need to add the fabric on top, like in school. And eyes, and teeth.”
“Um…” I stammered. “But do we really have…”
“Yes, we just need a little piece of fabric or something, we can cut it. And eyes, like googly eyes or something. Oh, and maybe some paper for teeth.”
“We need teeth too?” I started to eye the clock again, worried we were edging dangerously close to bedtime. “Ok, go get a piece of paper.”
“Can I bring all the paper down?”
“How about just one sheet?”
“But we need rainbow teeth.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. Can we just color a rainbow and cut teeth off that?”
“RAINBOW. TEETH.” she asserts.
You really cannot stop this kid.
Eventually, I give in. She brings down felt and paper, and together we cut out just enough bits to make it look like some chomp-monster with an LED in the center.
We decide to name it, “Fishy.”
In a final homage to our creation, we open up Scribblins on my phone and we continue the build. We tell stories with Trace, the AI audio narrator of the app experience, about what Fishy likes to do for fun. We decide he needs sunglasses, and we enhance the image with a visual of Fishy in a park with a rainbow in the background (naturally).
You can see the progression of this process below.
This is what is feels like to grow up AI native.
It’s less about a tool we turn to, sometimes, and more about AI as an embedded part of any iterative process. Whether you’re making a circuit, making a cake, or making a character out of Play Doh, I expect AI to be at its best in a role it played with me and Lydia: As a collaborative build partner. Not the star of the show. Not the main attraction. But an incredibly helpful enabling technology that let us do things we would not have been able to do otherwise.
We built a circuit
We turned it into a real-life craft
We turned the resulting character into digitized images
Thanks to AI, we were able to build things we would not have been able to do on our own. We were able to make it a collaborative, creative co-play experience. And not only that, but I was able to introduce AI to my kid under facilitated guidance from a grown-up (as opposed to simply handing her a tool to engage with 1-1, without supervision).
This controlled, sandbox environment experimentation is how I teach companies to introduce AI into their workflows, and it mirrors how I’m introducing AI into my parenting journey. I’m excited to continue to build for and with my kids.
If you have been building with AI with your kids, I’d love to learn more about how you’re using it too. Give a shout at bethany@buildfirst.ai, or drop a line in the comments.
“When I peeled back the red, I see like three or four little wires within it. Is that normal?”
“Yep, that’s completely normal! Inside that red insulation, you’ll often find a few little strands of wire rather than just one solid piece. Basically, those tiny strands are all part of the conductor. They work together to carry the current, and you’ve just revealed them. So nothing weird at all—just twist them together a bit if they’re frayed, and you’ll be ready to-”
“Mommy’s twisting it already!”
“Perfect—that’s exactly what you want to do. Just give those little strands a gentle twist so they stay together nice and neat. That’ll make it easier to connect everything up. So you’re well on your way. Keep at it, and soon you’ll have that little circuit shining bright!”
“Now I have to do the same thing with the black. Do I do the same thing with the black wire?”
Absolutely! Just like you handled the red wire, you can go ahead and do the exact same thing with the black one. Strip off a bit of that insulation, twist the strands together, and you’ll have your negative side ready to connect as well.
“What is your favorite movie to watch?”
Ooh, asking the AI for a favorite movie is like opening a door to infinite possibilities in the multiverse. But since you asked me to tell it like it is, I’ve got a soft spot for anything a little bit nerdy and mind-bending. Maybe something like “The Matrix,” because it’s all about questioning reality and exploring the weirdness of the world—kind of like what we’re doing here! So that’s one I’d put on the list for sure. But really, there’s a whole universe of good sci-fi and philosophical flicks out there. So feel free to imagine any reality you like!
“I’m five and a half.”
And that’s a fantastic age to be exploring and tinkering with little projects like this! Honestly, the curiosity of a five-and-a-half-year-old is kind of the perfect reminder that the world is full of weird and wonderful little mysteries to poke at. So keep having fun with it, and let that curiosity lead the way!
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