a16zBuilding Agents at Home: Homeschooling, Parenting and More | The a16z Show
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 12,212 words- 0:00 – 3:00
Intro & Jesse's background as a YC founder turned homeschool mom
- JGJesse Genet
I was resigned to not challenging myself to build technical or hard things for like the next five years or so. I really wanna be present with my kids. I need to take this break, basically. That is no longer true. A weird superpower of mine is just how incredibly motivated I am for agents to do work for me. I got my agents to learn how to build other agents on their own, so I could be like, "We need another agent, you guys," and they actually can spin them up without me touching the machine, which is a little crazy. But the first few weeks were very rough. It would be a level of pain that I wouldn't want an average person to go through. But the thing is
- KBKatherine Boyle
Jesse, it is so fantastic to have you here. Um, I think you, uh, you've been what I would call a viral sensation, um, on X.
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- KBKatherine Boyle
Posting videos of how you're homeschooling your family, uh, four children under the age of five, which all I can say is God bless you, you're amazing. Um [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs] God bless me.
- KBKatherine Boyle
But we also want your secrets, we want your tips. Um, as, as you know, um, Sarah and I are both moms of young children, and we talk a lot about how AI is impacting education, how AI is impacting the future of the family, and you've become just such an incredible force with your videos, um, on X of how you're using it in a bunch of different tasks around the house and a bunch of different tasks around supporting your family as, as a homeschool mom.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- KBKatherine Boyle
So we wanna start with who you are-
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- KBKatherine Boyle
... um, and, and how you got so interested in, in using AI for homeschool. But, but tell us about your, your previous career too-
- JGJesse Genet
Totally
- KBKatherine Boyle
... um, as, as a Silicon Valley founder.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah. I, so I, I, I started a company, um, many years ago now, um, time, time flies, but I was a YC founder, um, you know, um, re- did a, did a venture backed company, kind of full cycle. Ended up selling it a few years ago. And so I do, uh, you know, on o- on the one hand I'd say I have a technical background, on the other hand, I would admit openly that my co-founder was the [laughs] technical co-founder.
- KBKatherine Boyle
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
So I, I wanna be like, I want people to understand, yes, like I've been swimming in these waters, I've sat in many an engineering meeting where I was sort of following along and sort of lost. Uh, I've sat in many, you know, product cycles and, and reviews, so it gives me a vocabulary, but I hadn't opened Terminal to try to build something myself until maybe six months ago. So I think we're living through a really fascinating time where only recently after, you know, of running, um, a company myself w- did I feel like now the tools are so good that I can really use natural language to, to build things. And so i- the last six months have been, um, like a Cambrian like explosion for me of, of building. And of course the last few months where we have the, uh, OpenClaw, then I went completely obsessed.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm.
- JGJesse Genet
So I'm, I'm happy to discuss that. But I went down a complete obsession. It can only be described as an obsession. [laughs] Um, because I, I've just been building almost, you know, nonstop. But when I say that, on a day to ba- basis, I'm actually spending a lot of time with my kids. And so I was trying to find, like how can I build things that are relevant to my life? So I know we're gonna dig into that, but that's a little bit of how I got to now.
- 3:00 – 6:00
The "aha moment": discovering Claude Code and agentic building
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah, and maybe talk about that six month, like what was the thing that happened six months ago? Or what... Do you remember what the moment was where you're like, "I need to start building to fix this problem," or, or what was the story behind that?
- JGJesse Genet
Well, um, you know, my, my, for my co-founder from Lumi, which was a packaging company, so literal physical packaging. We man- we re- managed a packaging marketplace. Uh, he, he's now, um, off running something called Obsidian, and it's a m- Markdown, um, note-taking app. And I say this because I follow him on Twitter. Obviously we're co-founders. [laughs] And then, and then, and then I follow all these Obsidian geeks on Twitter, and I started noticing, um, a change in the conversation. A change in the conversation, them talking about how they were like building really wild things with Claude Code. Um, that, that, you know, that stuff was referenced. The, um, discussion about interesting ways they started using Obsidian. And, and what really caught my eye, f- so that... The six months ago was me feeling like, hey, I actually feel like I should prob- can probably be building things myself now in the small bits of time that I have. So I have like confetti time, you know? Like I have like 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm-hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
And I started feeling like maybe I can build stuff. The tools are getting so good. But then about few months ago, three months ago, two, three months ago, I saw people saying like, "I'm using Obsidian as a second brain for this thing," and it was called Claude Bot. Uh, and then all these different names.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Using Claude Bots, yes.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah, Claude Bot.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yes.
- JGJesse Genet
And, and, and they were tr- referencing this, and I was like, "What are they talking about?" This was December and into January. Uh, and that's when I realized like, wait, I can build agents who actually code for me while I'm hanging out with my kids. That, that was a complete game changer. And I, and, and actually just pausing in that for one moment, um, this is such a huge deal for me. I, I have re- I was resigned, and not in this like super depressing way, but just being really blunt, to not challenging myself to build technical or hard things for like the next five years or so. Like, I was like, I really wanna be present with my kids. I really... We're doing homeschooling, which is a w- like a wild choice. Um, and so, so I was kind of, yeah, I think the right word is resigned to it. Not sad, not resentful, but just, just like, okay, I need to take this break, basically. That is no longer true. Like what happened a few months ago is that is no longer true. I feel like I've been building better things than I ever have before while I spend almost all of my waking hours like-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Wow
- JGJesse Genet
... with my children. And I, and I explained, I can explain how I do the flow of the day where I do that, where like there's things I do, you know, during the day and things I do at night when they're asleep and stuff. But I'm like truly building things that I'm impressed with personally, and I'm being an active mom. Like, and that was not possible a few months ago.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
Like, it's, it's actually a sea change. For me personally, it's like v- really liberating.
- KBKatherine Boyle
So that's, that's incredibly inspiring what you just said. And, um, you know, I think a lot of parents listening to this are like, "I don't have time to build this," right?
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- KBKatherine Boyle
And so, um, you're a mom, four, five and under.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Um, I'm like, I have two, and I barely feel like I can breathe, let alone four.
- 6:00 – 11:00
A day in the life: homeschooling 4 kids under 5 and when she builds
- KBKatherine Boyle
You're doing homeschooling. Um, can you walk us through
- SWSarah Wang
... a day in your life. Like, how do the hours-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm
- SWSarah Wang
... stack up, and then when do you build, um-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- SWSarah Wang
... and to your point, the big unlock is, like, you're sleeping and they're building for you.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- SWSarah Wang
So, like, how did you, how did you get that set up? Um, so many questions. [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah. Let's, let's, uh, uh, an average day, a typical day, um, you know, wake up at the crack of dawn, right? Because there's a small person who has decided-
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... that that's when, when we get up. Um, and they're like, "You get up," you know? So anyway, I'm, like, waking up, and there's, like, small, you know, little gremlin creatures around my bed, so that's, that's where we start. Um, we, we go from there, obviously, all the basics, like having breakfast, yada, yada. What I try to do, um, there's three kids I'm really homeschooling now, 'cause one is a baby. One is about four months old.
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
Um, I start early, but not that early. Uh, we have a, the three are five, four, and two, the three other children, and I try to do individual sessions with them. So imagine after breakfast and these types of things, I have a place where we homeschool, and I cycle the kids in one at a time, and I need child- I need help with the kids even to do that, right? So I do-
- SWSarah Wang
Right
- JGJesse Genet
... I am lucky enough to have some help with the kids during certain portions of the day. So I cycle the kids in one at a time to where we homeschool, and I do a one-on-one session with them. You know, depends on the kids' mood. They're all quite young, but it can be anywhere from, like, 20 minutes to an hour. Um, and then after that, maybe then it's, like, mid-morning, we will just, you know, do some more unstructured activities, like playing and, and, um, playing outdoors or trying to pull on a thread of something we're doing, um, where we, um, leave the house maybe, go on kind of a field trip or something like this. One time a week, we do a homeschool pod with ano- with two other families. Between the three families, there's 11 kids already. Um, when you meet homeschoolers, these people are reproducing, all right? Um [laughs]
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs] Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
So th- three families, 11 kids already.
- SWSarah Wang
Love it.
- JGJesse Genet
And so, uh, once a week, I lead a science pod. So on that day, it's really kind of cool. All the kids are at our house, and they're, like, running around, and we, we do a science lesson that we weave through, like, the whole day. But in any case, the kids can do ef- effectively 30 to 45 minutes of, like, active instruction per day, and you really wanna make the most of that, and then the rest of the day's pretty, like, thematic. The other thing that I really believe in, so I spend time doing this, is, um, uh, you could call it free-range parenting. You could call it benevolent neglect.
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
I don't know what you wanna call it. Um, but I try to ignore the children. Um, I try to make sure that they're gonna survive the ignoring, um, so they're set up in little places where they can't, um, you know, hurt themselves, but I, I step away from them and try to just see what they do. There's already three of them, even if we don't have the other family over. But so, um, we're, we've gotten... I try to build up the amount of time that they can spend playing together without needing me.
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
So instead of structuring their whole day, we're up to, with the four and five-year-old, we're up to, like, they can... They will spend more than two hours, uh, interacting and doing stuff before they come back to me.
- SWSarah Wang
Wow.
- JGJesse Genet
And I actually use a timer, because I'm like-
- SWSarah Wang
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... I'm, like, paying attention, but I actually use a timer, and, like, I'm trying to build up their tolerance before they're like, "I need a snack," or whatever. And, and they have snacks, and they have stuff they can grab, but the, the trick for me is, like, when do they actually truly come to me and they say-
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm
- JGJesse Genet
... like, "I need, I need," you know? "I need something. I need activity," this or that. But this is part of also why I wanna homeschool, frankly.
- SWSarah Wang
Yeah.
- 11:00 – 18:00
How AI generates personalized lesson plans and logs progress
- SWSarah Wang
Well, I would love to hear, you know, I mean, three different lesson plans for three different ages, um, if you're-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- SWSarah Wang
... choosing to go by sort of the rubric of what they should be learning at different ages.
- JGJesse Genet
Right.
- SWSarah Wang
Like, how does AI, how do you incorporate AI into that? Are you asking AI, "Hey, I have a five-year-old who may be good at a different subject. Like, what should I be doing?" Or, or how is AI actually a, a, a coach or a pair to you in your teaching?
- JGJesse Genet
So I, one thing that gave me a leg up in my s- setup when I started setting up some of my agents, um, and, and we'll get into that, is that I, I did know what curriculums I wanted to follow. I have been reading for many years, um, just different curriculum books and, like, following different homeschoolers and kind of finding little tips, and so there's this, um, you know, this science curriculum that I really love called, um, Building the Foundations of Scientific Understanding. And, and so I, I... It helps to know what you're trying to do, because what I did when I first spun up my first homeschool agent is I actually fed them the text of these books.
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
So I actually, um, either took photos of the pages or I was able to find PDFs online of, like, the full text of the book. So I didn't say, like, "What should we do next in this book?" and ask it to, like, go search the web. Th- my, um, agent, the focus is on homeschool, has the text of all the core curriculums I'm trying to do, and I created, like, a core pedagogy kind of, like, foundational document where I talk about-
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm
- JGJesse Genet
... like, what I think about Montessori, and, like, I just... Basically, imagine me... This is, this is literally how.
- SWSarah Wang
Wow.
- JGJesse Genet
Imagine me, like, walking around making, like, voice notes, like, waxing poetic about all my, like, educational philosophies and stuff, and then my agent, like, literally sycophantically being like, "This is brilliant," you know?
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
"This is so good." Um, and then, um-But I can, I can look past that. I can look past the LLMs, uh, giving me praise. And, but you're-
- SWSarah Wang
They're giving it context-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- SWSarah Wang
... to your point on-
- JGJesse Genet
Yes
- SWSarah Wang
... your philosophy of education. Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
Specifically-
- SWSarah Wang
Mm
- JGJesse Genet
... my philosophy, and then feeding it the book. So I would say it's a combo of my, um, feeding it my philosophy, like, verbally and explaining myself, and then feeding it core texts, including core curriculums, like the science curriculum. So then what I do, to, to answer your question, I'll be going in with the, um, five-year-old, and I'll just say, "What's our next..." Uh, I'll make a quick voi- this is why I always do this, is, like, me making a voice note. This is me making a pretend voice note. Um, I'll say, like, "I'm going in with five-year-old. What comes next on science and math for them?" And, um, in just a few minutes, the agent can spit out, uh, where we are in our phonics curriculum, where we are in our, in our math. And then I've also taken photos of all of the educational materials I own, like Montessori beads and these types of things. So my agent will send me-
- SWSarah Wang
Mm
- JGJesse Genet
... a completed lesson plan, including photos of things I own in my own cabinet to pull out, and it'll be like, "Oh, Quinn..." So then the, the missing loop is the logging. Okay? So how would it know where she is in her curriculum if I don't log? The logging actually is, like, such a geeky concept, like a... I don't know, it smells like, it seems like a small detail, but getting the logging really good made this whole thing really sing.
- SWSarah Wang
Wow. How do you do that?
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- SWSarah Wang
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
The, the logging is also voice notes. Everything is voice notes-
- SWSarah Wang
Ah
- JGJesse Genet
... voice notes and photos, because I don't have time to, like, sit at the laptop very often. So I need it to be, like, really mobile friendly. So the logging... So imagine you've got this agent, they know all of my core curriculums, everything, but the missing link is where is that child at? So when I'm in the session with Quinn, and she's doing some math and she's doing some reading, et cetera, I just snap a couple quick photos usually. Maybe the photo of the page of the book we're on, or, like, I snap a couple, like, um, establishing pics usually.
- 18:00 – 27:05
The full agent stack: from 5 to 11 agents (and growing)
- SWSarah Wang
mentioned one agent that you have. Um, but, uh, I think I saw something, um, where you publicly talked about five agents, and then before this session started, you were like, "Up to 11 now."
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- SWSarah Wang
Um, could you just tell us about, you know, your, your... I love it. No, like, I mean, you're one of the most sophisticated users of, of AI, right?
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- SWSarah Wang
So, like, can you-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- SWSarah Wang
... tell us, um-
- SWSarah Wang
You know, what those 11 agents do, or like at least the most-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- SWSarah Wang
... important ones, how you manage them.
- JGJesse Genet
Right.
- SWSarah Wang
And then I think this element of token cost is really-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm
- SWSarah Wang
... interesting as well.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- SWSarah Wang
I'm hearing a lot of CTOs say, "Oh, it's my head count budget, now my token budget." Like, how do you-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm
- SWSarah Wang
... think about that from like a household perspective?
- JGJesse Genet
I do think that a weird superpower of mine is just how incredibly motivated I am for agents to do work for me, and I do think all of us here could relate to this. Like, uh, in, in our, in our early motherhood phase, we, we are some of the most motivated individuals to be able to get work done on a computer without having to sit down and touch the computer, because that is the barrier. Like, I'm literally holding a baby, like my key port is being pressed by baby's feet or something. It's like-
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... a, a, a grown man cannot compute the, like, the, the, the difficulties that I'm having using my laptop, right? So, and, and sometimes people will react even to my online content and say like, "You could just use Claude Code for this," and I'm like, "Yeah, I could if I had time to stay on my computer."
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Because, because what I am building, like when an agent ... When I say that I had an agent build a website, like I l- or build, um, you know, an app, they are using Claude Code or equivalent, Codex, you know, all, all these products. Um, and so people are sometimes t- bringing my attention to this. Like, I needed, uh, I needed their information, like, to say, "You know, you could've done this yourself on, uh, Claude Code or Codex." And I'm like, "Yeah, I, I know." [laughs]
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
"I am aware of that." Um, but, but, um, so I'm building agents to do things for me, and they're effectively, they're using the computer. It's, it just, they're using my computer for me because I cannot sit there and use it.
- SWSarah Wang
Totally.
- JGJesse Genet
So, so how do I-
- SWSarah Wang
You're creating time.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah, so how do I-
- SWSarah Wang
Yeah
- 27:05 – 33:56
Tech stack deep dive: Obsidian, Claude Code, Mac Mini, security
- SWSarah Wang
ask sort of a, a, a techie question on just your stack? Because you've dropped, you know, you mentioned Obsidian.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- SWSarah Wang
We're obviously talking about OpenClau. Can you just quickly go through what does your tech stack look like? Do you... What models-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm
- SWSarah Wang
... under the OpenClau hood do you use?
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm.
- SWSarah Wang
Like, are you using Open Router?
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm.
- SWSarah Wang
Um, do you pick based on their capability set, or is it more of a cost basis?
- JGJesse Genet
So the core things I'm using are, um, alm- almost all my agents have been OpenClau. I have played with some of the other ones. Um, my, my husband is also quite technical, and he, he built an OpenClau variant, um, uh, that-
- SWSarah Wang
Wow
- JGJesse Genet
... so I was, like, playing with his. So we're, we're a little like, you know, a little out there. But, um, but mo- but, uh, uh, out of the 11, 10 are OpenClau. The, um, the... I use Obsidian, which is a collection of markdown files, a way of viewing and, um, organizing markdown files. I do use that as sort of a quote unquote "memory or second brain."
- SWSarah Wang
Mm.
- JGJesse Genet
When I say I'm logging the homeschool lessons, it's a fair question to say, like, logging where, or like, where do they go? Um, they are all becoming markdown files.
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
So it'll be like Quinn, math, March 17th, um, and that becomes a markdown file, a single markdown file for every lesson, every subject that I make a voice note about or what have you. Um, so that's all in Obsidian. Um, and, uh, s- and then the other things I'm using, under the hood on the models, uh, and then I'm always playing, I mean, we're always playing with, like, people are launching cool memory projects and different stuff. I'm always dabbling. Um, but the, the OpenClau and Obsidian are, like, the two core things that kinda keep my team ticking. I do have them all installed on Mac Minis-
- SWSarah Wang
Mm-hmm
- JGJesse Genet
... from a s- from a hardware standpoint. Um, and, you know, people ask, do I need to have a Mac Mini? It's not about needing a Mac Mini. It is about needing a computer that is isolated from your personal files.
- SWSarah Wang
Hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
So if you are going to use-
- SWSarah Wang
Yes. Okay
- JGJesse Genet
... so, so this is the-
- SWSarah Wang
We wanna get into security element too, yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
The security element.
- SWSarah Wang
Okay.
- JGJesse Genet
Just to kind of demystify, like, and, and I maybe have part... I've participated maybe in the hype, because I posted about my five Mac Minis and stuff, and [laughs]
- SWSarah Wang
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
But, but, um, but people, but if you are, like, someone out there or a parent, in, and the $600 for a Mac Mini, it's a pretty reas- pretty good, well-priced computer. But if you have an old computer sitting around, you can absolutely use that. It needs to stay on in order for your agent to always be alive.
- SWSarah Wang
Mm-hmm.
- JGJesse Genet
So that's where laptops are not as ideal, but you can leave a laptop plugged in, and you can, um, change the settings so it stays always on, but it needs to always stay on. When you close it, your agent would go dark.
- 33:56 – 40:04
Agents improving real daily life beyond the screen
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Like, I mean, w- talk us through, like, the number of things that you've done around the house where it's been a game changer in your mom life.
- JGJesse Genet
So my new MO with agent life is I'm really, really trying to push it to have an impact on my, quote-unquote, "real life," like my physical life. Like, I want my days ... Uh, someone else asked me, like, "What is your goal with, like, your agents?" And I was like, "My goal is, like, literally to, like, wake up to, like, music that's, like, perfectly suited to my mood, and then, like, walk in and have, like, smiling children, like, who just learned how to brush their teeth from an agent or something." I don't know. Like, my goal is, like-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... a literally perfect day. I will not stop until I'm living just, like, a literally perfect day.
- KBKatherine Boyle
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Um, but in my real life, um, and so, so whenever I hit a friction point in my day, I ask myself, "Can my agents do this?" Um, and so, like, if I, if I, what I really wanna be doing in that moment is, like, playing with my baby, and what I'm actually doing is, like, on the Instacart app, like, trying to put, like, "No, not five bananas, four bananas," you know? Like, and I'm just, like, using this, like, silly interface. Then I ask myself, "Okay, can my agents do this?" And then I'm willing to invest the time to try to make them do it. So, uh, so, so that's how I decide what to do, and it is, it does become, like, a dream list, I think, of every mom's list of chores. Like, I've got agents ordering on Amazon, ordering on Instacart. Yeah. Dealing with, um, or, like, you know, s- i, i, um, if there's, like, an activity your kid has, and there's this laundry list of things you're supposed to have ready, I'll, like, send that to the agent and be like, "Order whatever I don't have for this on Amazon," you know? Like, um, and I don't even process or even spend my time processing the email. I just, like-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... send it off to my agents.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm.
- JGJesse Genet
But-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... but currently, you need to put in quite a bit of, like, training time with your agents to kinda get them-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm
- JGJesse Genet
... to that level. That time, I think, will come down, um, as we keep going farther into this technology, but, but that's my goal is, like-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm
- JGJesse Genet
... perfect days, no time spent on admin that I don't wanna spend.
- KBKatherine Boyle
What's the level of trust of, like, let's say buy a f- a birthday present for a five-year-old girl.
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Go. Like, do you need to be prescriptive on what that is, or is it actually pretty good at coming up with things like that? 'Cause that feels taxing to-
- JGJesse Genet
It is
- KBKatherine Boyle
... to me right now, at least. [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Okay, so one, one, one way I feel like you can get the, um, the model ... So I think of the agent as like, you know, like we might talk about OpenCloude or something, but then they don't have a brain, and you're plugging in the LLM model that you're choosing as the brain.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm. Yep.
- JGJesse Genet
Um, so each of these models has different levels of sophistication. Um, and so you might get a different answer on what to give a five-year-old from Opus than you would from, um-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Right
- JGJesse Genet
... you know, from a different model. So, so that's one answer is just like, keep in mind that the brain of the agent is the model you've selected.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah. Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
And then two, one of the ways I get, like, quirkier ... I like quirkiness. Um, I like ... I don't want just, like, the default answer. If I were to answer that question-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm
- 40:04 – 53:47
Letting kids interact with AI: values, risks, and the future of parenting
- KBKatherine Boyle
them? So I'd love to hear how that's become a, a question in how you're educating your kids, if you're letting them-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- KBKatherine Boyle
... interface with the agents themselves.
- JGJesse Genet
They, they, they do a bit, um... It's a little bit of an interface issue for young kids as, as you both may know, where, um, the... Something that I do find interesting is that the most current tools don't pick up on kid voices the same way they do adult voices.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- JGJesse Genet
I actually think, I, I don't know who's gonna study this or figure it out and come up with a solution, but we need, um, there's all these amazing voice products, but the-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm-hmm
- JGJesse Genet
... kid voices are not very well picked up. Um, so I feel-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... like when we finally get to a conversational thing with kid voices, I don't know if it's the pitch of them or just the fact that their words don't have the same cadence or, uh, their diction is not as good, you know, but, but, but what's weird to me is, like, the LLMs will pick up, like, adult voices with, like, heavy accents and stuff, but then not, like, a five-year-old in the same way. So there's some gap there.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
But so we have an interface issue to overcome, but then if you put that to the side, um, the, um, you know, the other thing we may feel in the future, and I'm, I'm guessing, like, all of us, is we may feel like it's a w- kind of crazy that any of us were interacting with the LLMs, like, out of the box. Um, like, maybe we'll all wanna have, there'll be this variety of filters and curated, um, kind of identities and different stuff. And I know some of these products exist, but currently the default is most of us go directly to, like, OpenAI, and we, we open the, the chat box, and we talk to it, and you're selecting a model, but you're talking to that model kind of out of the box. I think that when it relates to kids, it's gonna probably be the norm faster than even adults, where, yeah, there's a, there's a level of personality and creation and, um, ideology that you may wanna-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Mm-hmm
- JGJesse Genet
... layer onto that. So that came naturally to me because I know what I wanna do in my homeschool, and, and this is a good moment to touch upon, I think all parents can spiritually be homeschoolers. Um, we've got about, uh, depending on the data that you follow, somewhere between, like, 3 and 6%, which is pretty different, but of, of K through 12 students in the US are homeschooled and, like, not in some kind of traditional school. It's already a lot of kids, millions of kids. But, um, I believe that the tools coming online that homeschoolers may be the most rabid for are gonna be equally, um, useful to all parents. And in fact-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Totally
- JGJesse Genet
... I believe all parents want to teach their children things-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... and may believe-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JGJesse Genet
... there's gaps in their schooling. And so all parents, to a degree, will be leaning into what we currently think of, like, a homeschooling ethos. So I'm really excited for that. But, um, but, but, but it comes more naturally to a homeschooler or, like, to, to, to me, uh, I'll just use myself as an example, to know that I, like, I think this about Montessori, and I think this about, um, these different kind of educational philosophies. So I just put, I just program that right in. Um, and so I do have an agent thatI put it in contact directly with the children sometimes, and it just... I don't have to wonder if they're-- what kind of, I guess, ideology they're getting from that agent because I gave it to the agent.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Totally. And, and just, just to, to build on the-- I, I have noticed what you've said too about the children's voices not being picked up. Like, it's like maybe a 50% hit rate.
- JGJesse Genet
Mm.
- KBKatherine Boyle
Um, but have you, have you started, um, you know, letting your children engage with the agents in any way? And if so, how are you, how are you doing that?
- JGJesse Genet
I have a couple, I have a couple different devices that I wanna experiment building, and because I have agents now who can build crazy things, uh, or help me build crazy things, I'm gonna try. But because the core thing I feel like I'm missing is a great interface, uh, but I do... Currently, um, my kids have a lot of questions. I mean, every, okay-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... every child has like a zillion questions.
- KBKatherine Boyle
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
And so they love asking, um, AI, and they are aware that it's AI. Like, I don't, um, pretend. Like, they, we still, even when we use names with it like Sylvie or something, they are aware that it is not, like, a human being. But they, so they ask questions. We'll do a lesson, like we'll do like history or something, and then I ask them, I ask them what they'd like to ask, and we do those follow-up questions with AI. Um, and they're aware that they're interacting with AI. I'm s- I'm standing right there. So if things-
- KBKatherine Boyle
Yes
Episode duration: 54:02
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode yiJOTCRVWjc
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome