Gen Alpha and AI
I’ve spent the last 24 hours writing prompts for the Suno AI to produce AI-generated songs, and I’m full of fascination and whimsy at what’s ahead…
One simple prompt: “Write a song about my son Dezi, who’s a superhero; make it sentimental and powerful and something he would like but not kids’ music.”
What came out was pure magic: a song that sounded like the AI “composer” was trained on Rachel Platten’s Fight Song. It used his name and talked about how his superpower is his smile (true). I played it for him, and he LOVED it.
“Who’s singing it?” he asked me as we were listening to it again on the way to the school drop-off line.
“Uh. There’s no real singer. The computer is singing,” I replied.
“Well, the computer has a really nice voice.”
No, the song wasn’t moving, nor was it particularly engaging or creative—its only notable aspect was that I had provided a prompt that was personal to me and my family.
It dawned on me that this sort of thing will just be part of life for my kids and their peers. Because I remember a world where AI was rather mundane, like a year or two ago, when it could finish your sentences and tell you how to avoid traffic. (Amazing that this feels mundane in 2024)
Just like the pre-pandemic world, that pre-generative AI world feels like a fading dream.
Every generation has its defining moment and, consequently, its fading dream.
For boomers, it was the Vietnam war or maybe the moon landing. For Gen X, perhaps the rise of personal computing. Millenials/Xennials have 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis that hit when a lot of us were new to industry. Gen Z has the rise of mobile phones.
I used to believe that the pandemic was Gen Alpha’s defining moment; it forever altered our way of life, and my children will remain somewhat oblivious to its extent for a while.
After this morning’s interaction with my son, I wonder if Gen Alpha’s plate-shifting moment is actually the rapid rise of Generative AI and if the pandemic was just a precursor.
Or perhaps it’s not so black and white. Perhaps, it’s a ricochet, with one development leading to another: personal computing gives rise to mobile technology, which sets the stage for a pandemic era dominated by digital living and a deep yearning for human interaction, only to find ourselves frequently interacting with something that is anything but.
It raises many questions about the future of education. Schools are unique places that house members of many generations in various roles.
How we deal with our fading dreams and burgeoning possibilities is really something to consider.