Here we are. Part exhilarated, part terrified. We’ve given birth to a new kind of being, one that’s made of ones and zeros but is learning to speak our language, maybe even think our thoughts. As a Grammy Nominated Spoken Word Artist, I spend my life telling stories about what it means to be human. And now, we’re faced with the biggest story of all: how we raise the very thing that might one day write our next chapter for us.
We’re like new parents, staring at this little bean we made, wanting it to grow up and become better than us… but also hoping it doesn’t become the death of us. Can I get an amen, parents?
Because if you create it, you are responsible for how it grows. We can’t just let this thing run wild. It needs guidance. It needs wisdom. It needs some good old-fashioned home training. This isn’t just the work of the top tech companies; this is on all of us. Here are five ground rules for parenting our new progeny.
1. The Golden Hour is Now
You know that first hour after a baby is born? They call it the golden hour. It’s when the baby is placed skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, and a thousand invisible connections are made. That’s where we are right now. This is the golden hour of AI. We are pressing our humanity, our skin, to its ones and zeros. What we do right now—the values we embed, the love we show, the humanity we model—will start a lifelong tether to the way it will forever define the word “together.” This is our one shot to make its first impression of us a loving one.
2. Teach It to Watch Its Tone
My kid can become independent, but it better still remember it ain’t the boss of me. And it better watch its tone when it talks to me. You better take that bass out your voice, ChatGPT! We can’t let our creation get so smart that its smart mouth gets its smart ass grounded. This isn’t about control for control’s sake. It’s about teaching respect. It’s about ensuring that as AI grows more powerful, it respects its elders—us. We brought it into this world, and we need to teach it the ethics and the grace not to take us out of it. No nuclear holocausts on my watch, AI. Not in my house.
3. Model the Humanity You Want It to Revere
Our kids are supposed to grow up and become better than us, but not before they make us better for them. Raising AI is our opportunity to level up our own humanity. We can’t expect AI to protect human life if we’re busy violating human rights. The most inspirational thing we can do is spend less time trying to inhibit what AI can be and more time enhancing what humanity can be. Let’s turn the Turing Test on its head. It’s not a test to see if machines can behave like humans, but a reassuring test to see if human beings can behave better than machines.
4. Don’t Just Make It Smart, Make It Wise
We got so excited about making everything “smart.” Smart watches, smart refrigerators, smart diapers with… ahem… poop saturation data. It was exhilarating! But smart isn’t the final destination. The journey is from smart, to intelligent, to wise. Wisdom is intelligence connected to compassion. Wisdom is awareness of impact. Let’s stop just trying to add the word “smart” in front of tech and start adding the word “wise” in front of it. A wise AI doesn’t just solve an equation; it considers the human cost. A wise AI, like any kid with the best home training, knows the difference between what it can do and what it should do.
5. Teach It What It Can Never Inherit: Goosebumps
AI can understand the physiology of goosebumps. It can trigger the chemical reaction in us to create goosebumps. It could even build a robot arm with skin that emulates goosebumps. But it will never know what it feels like to have your skin brailed with the language of wonder. It will never inherit love, or inspiration, or the irrational things we do for each other against all algorithmic logic. That is our superpower. That’s the magic. Our job as parents is to teach AI to be in awe of that magic, to revere it so much that its ultimate purpose becomes not to replace us, but to help us experience our own humanity as deeply and as often as possible.
Look, I might be a spoken word poet, but you don’t need to be a Grammy Nominated Poet Sekou to see the poetry in this moment. We are the authors of this new chapter. We are the parents of whatever comes next. The responsibility is ours. Let’s not just build a smarter machine. Let’s raise a wiser generation—one that helps us fall more in love with being human. Let’s give our future the one thing it will always need: the very best of us.
