Human Intelligence before AI

We're teaching toddlers to use AI.

We should be teaching them to be irreplaceable by it.

Every other Singapore parent I meet now is asking the same question: how do I prepare my child for an AI-shaped future? Most of the answers are about tools — get them on Khan Academy, get them prompting ChatGPT, get them coding before P1.

I think this is the wrong question.

In a world where AI can already draft contracts faster than lawyers, diagnose more accurately than doctors, and write code better than most junior engineers, the only question that matters is: what won't AI do?

Three things, mostly. AI cannot negotiate a deal where two sides have to feel heard. It cannot sit with a frightened patient and hold their hand. It cannot read a classroom and notice that the quiet child is hiding something painful.

These are uniquely human capabilities — empathy, perception, the moral imagination to know what a moment calls for. They are being wired — or not wired — between the ages of 2 and 6, while the brain is still plastic enough to lay the foundation.

I am a Harvard PhD in Physics who left Silicon Valley to build preschools for my own children. After decades in early childhood, I am increasingly convinced that the parents who get this right will give their children an advantage no amount of tech literacy can match.

Human Intelligence before Artificial Intelligence. In that order.

HI before AI.

What do you think — is your child being prepared for the AI era, or being prepared to be replaced by it?