Human by Design: Reimagining Adolescence for the AI Future

I was chatting recently with my friend’s son Elliot, a rising high school senior.  I asked him how it was going; he had to transfer to a new school mid-year after his family was displaced by the fires in LA. After a few sharp critiques of vapid teenage social hierarchies, he said:

“Honestly, I don’t see the point of high school,” he said flatly.  “If the whole planet doesn’t go down in flames, AI is going to take over all of the jobs I could get anyway.”

It broke my heart to hear this bright, creative kid – who used to light up a room – resigned to such cynicism.

I hate to say it, but I’ve heard some flavor of this from a lot of teenagers.

“The bottom rung of the career ladder is breaking”

Elliot may not be too far off. In a recent (and ominously titled) NYTimes op-ed, “I am a LinkedIn Executive: I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Is Breaking,” LinkedIn’s Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman shared some of his team’s recent findings:

• Unemployment among college graduates has jumped 30% since 2022, the year ChatGPT was launched.

• Gen Z respondents are “more pessimistic” about job prospects than any other demographic.

• 63% of executives surveyed believe that “AI will eventually take on some of the mundane tasks currently allocated to their entry-level employees.”

A new arms race

At the same time, there is an arms race among AI companies (eg Open AI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, plus a handful of Chinese companies)  to dominate the market, set standards, attract talent, and wield considerable geopolitical power.

This arms race is currently unregulated, which for practical purposes means that prioritizing human wellbeing is not in scope for the near term.  (For more on that, see this excellent TED talk  “Why AI is our ultimate test and greatest invitation, by Tristan Harris, CEO and cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology)

What does this mean for those of us who are tasked with raising and launching kids into a healthy adolescence and then adulthood?

In his op-ed on the AI future, LinkedIn’s Raman suggests that kids must embrace AI and learn how to use it. Of course. Why would we not move heaven and earth to give them skills to use the thing that is transforming the world?

But being a savvy AI user is not enough to get us through whatever this waves arms around is. By definition, that will only keep us in a supporting role to AI’s ongoing dominance.

In his TED Talk, Harris repeatedly emphasizes that it is not too late, that we do not have to accept AI dominance as a foregone conclusion. But we can’t just sit on our hands.

So what do we do instead?

Humanity is at a crossroads, to be sure.  While we still can, we need to reimagine parenting and education as a collaborative effort in which we help young people uncover who they are, what brings them a sense of meaning and purpose, where and how they belong, and how they develop the skills to have positive, prosocial agency in the world.  To better understand the world around them, they need to understand who they are and their role in it.

Fortunately, we humans have a time-tested approach to helping our young people find this inner wisdom. Initiating young people through a series of tests designed to build this character is not only effective, it’s efficient.  In his book “From Boys to Men: Spiritual Rites of Passage in an  Indulgent Age ,” author and  counselor to at-risk youth, Bret Stephenson, describes modern adolescence as a maze, where young people bump and blunder their way through young adulthood, with trial and error as their only teacher.

In contrast, rites of passage are designed by adults for young people to experience their journey to adulthood as a labyrinth - winding, curving, full of surprises, but structured with the ultimate goal of finding oneself before winding their way back out to give their gifts to the world.

As such, the labyrinth is a far more loving – not to mention effective and efficient –  model for building character.

Future-ready skills for an uncertain future

In a world where 99% of all school work can and will be done by AI, yes, teaching AI literacy is crucial.

But we need to refocus the intention of education to animate the inner life of our kids — the very things that make us human. For we’re facing a lot of challenges these days, and we are going to need kids who are self-directed, resilient, kind, ethical, imaginative, and resourceful critical thinkers.

What would it look like if we created experiences to help kids deepen their sense of:

Identity:  Who am I? What are my values?  What am I grateful for?

Agency: What skills and dispositions do I possess? How can I cultivate these to be stronger? What am I willing to work harder at?

Belonging: Who are my people? And how can I contribute? How can I foster healthier and more authentic relationships?

Purpose: What combinations skills and ideals do I want to contribute to make the world a better place?

Shadow: How do I understand and identify my blind spots? How do I help others do the same?

Presence: How do I recognize the impulses within my body? What emotions am  I experiencing, and how can I get to balance?

These uniquely human attributes – along with a solid command of AI – will help our kids, their kids and future generations beyond stay in a healthy dynamic with each other, the planet, and our robot overlord-wannabees.

To thrive through this, we need to connect more deeply to our messy, authentic, wild, meat-sack besotted souls. We need to celebrate together, mourn together, learn together, and stay curious, together.