Let’s start with the obvious: kids are online a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Whether it's Roblox, TikTok, YouTube, Discord, or some weird game where you play as a goose that harasses villagers, our children are living inside the internet.
And the internet, as we know, is a digital jungle. It is full of scams, creeps, algorithmic rabbit holes, violent content, addictive mechanics, shady monetization, and about 400,000,000 links you hope your kid will never click. And if you're thinking, “But I trust my kid,” congrats! So do I. I trust my kid. But I don’t trust literally anyone else online.
The problem is we can’t be there 24/7. We can't hover over their shoulder every second of their digital life like a paranoid librarian. Even if we could, it’s exhausting. And honestly? Creepy.
But you know who can be there 24/7, monitoring everything from chat messages to sketchy clicks to the moment your kid types “sure you can have my credit card number” into a livestream chat?
Yep. AI.
AI doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t blink. It doesn’t get distracted by folding laundry or trying to finish one episode of anything. It can sit quietly in the background and flag anything suspicious. Whether it’s a stranger asking personal questions, an unsafe link, or a subtle shift in behavior that suggests something’s off. Heck, it can summarize everything your kid did online and send you a clean little report card: “Today, Jordan played Minecraft for 72 minutes, chatted with three friends, and searched ‘What is taxes.’ No red flags.”
In theory, it’s the perfect solution. A tireless, emotionless, ultra-vigilant helper. Think of it like a high-tech babysitter who never takes bathroom breaks.
But—and here’s the gigantic ethical asterisk—at what cost?
We're talking about letting a machine listen to everything our children say and do online. That’s not nothing. That’s a huge invasion of privacy. And in the wrong hands—hello, tech megacorps—it could become a nightmare. Who gets to decide what counts as “suspicious”? What if the AI misinterprets a joke? What if your kid’s data gets harvested? What if we normalize a future where every child has a digital eye tracking their every word?
You see the problem, right?
This isn’t just a tech question. It’s a values question. What do we value more: privacy or safety?
And here’s where I land (for now): I think the future of this technology has to be local. That’s the only way I’d even consider it. It can’t report back to Facebook or Apple or whoever’s the richest man alive this week. It needs to run on your own device, stay inside your home, and keep its digital mouth shut. No cloud uploads. No corporate snooping. No updates, No spyware disguised as “family protection.”
And you know what? That’s not far-fetched. Local AI models are already here. We’re starting to see small language models run on phones and laptops, capable of doing all kinds of cool things without ever touching the cloud.
So maybe—maybe—the question isn’t “Should we let AI spy on our kids?” Maybe it’s, “Can we build a version of AI that lets us protect our kids without selling them out?”
Because the truth is: we can’t be everywhere. But they are.
And if AI can keep my kid from getting scammed, groomed, traumatized, or accidentally spending $400 on Roblox coins while I’m in a meeting… well, I’m open to the conversation.
But as it stands now - as a supercomputer that sits at some rich guy's offices - I don't trust it. with anything.
