Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian says he wants his daughter to use AI every day; reveals how she changed - The Times of India

Alexis Ohanian has spent much of his career building and investing in technology, but one of his most useful lessons about artificial intelligence has come from watching his seven-year-old daughter use it. The Reddit co-founder says he wants Olympia to work with AI every day, treating it as a tool for asking questions, exploring ideas and developing her creativity. Their conversations at the dinner table have become part of that routine. Yet it is not simply what she asks about an AI system that has caught his attention. Watching her speak naturally to the technology has also made him reconsider assumptions he had carried from years of using computers.Alexis Ohanian wants his daughter to explore big questions with AIDuring an interview on the Possible podcast, hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, Ohanian described a family routine built around asking a big question over dinner. It began before AI became part of the household. When his daughter was younger, he would try to answer her questions himself, looking things up when he did not know enough.“Even just seeing my own seven-year-old’s relationship to AI—and the ChatGPT app is definitely the one that runs all the numbers for us—and seeing the way she converses with it. Seeing the way we do a big question every night at dinner. And we started doing this pre-AI, and so poor papa had to be the answer, and we’d look it up if I didn’t know, but she was also younger, so the questions were a lot easier back then. But now the questions are getting harder.”He sees this as a change in the way children can approach information. Previous generations had reference books and dictionaries, followed by search engines such as Google. For Olympia, conversational AI is becoming another way to find answers, but one that allows her to continue asking questions rather than stopping at a list of search results.Ohanian said he wants her to use the technology every day. His aim is not to make AI a replacement for learning, but to let her become comfortable using it while she develops her own interests and abilities.Alexis Ohanian says his daughter changed how he thinks about speaking to AIOne of the more personal observations Ohanian shared concerned the way Olympia communicates with ChatGPT. He had spent years getting used to typing questions into computers and had little reason to reconsider that habit. His daughter approached the technology differently.For a child who has grown up with much better speech-recognition tools, speaking to an AI assistant can feel more natural than typing. Ohanian said watching her converse with the system helped him recognise that his own preference for typing was shaped by older experiences with speech-to-text software, which had often been unreliable.He recalled, “I think because I was so hung up with speech-to-text being bad for so much of my life, that it took a seven-year-old—who’s really only known amazing speech-to-text—to help me realize like, “My God, you’re right. This paradigm is here.” And this is the fun part.”AI is becoming part of her drawing sessionsOhanian also described how he and Olympia have been experimenting with AI as part of their creative activities. He recently found some of his childhood sketchbooks, which his parents had kept, and photographed several of the drawings. Using a recent version of ChatGPT, he showed his daughter how those pencil sketches could be turned into coloured illustrations.Some of the drawings were unfinished. That did not prevent them from being transformed into more complete images, giving Olympia a chance to see how an early idea could develop into something different.The process has also become part of their drawing sessions. Ohanian said they follow tutorials from the YouTube channel Art for Kids, drawing alongside the instructor with physical markers and paper. Once they have finished, he can photograph their work and use AI tools to alter or extend the images. They can see a drawing brought to life, including imagined versions of it moving through space.For Ohanian, the technology adds possibilities to an existing activity rather than taking its place. The child remains involved in the creative work, while the software provides a way to see the result differently.Alexis Ohanian's vision for raising a daughter who can use AI as a creative superpowerOhanian's enthusiasm for AI does not mean he wants his daughter to skip traditional learning. He specifically said that reading, writing and arithmetic remain fundamentals she needs to understand.He has also introduced Olympia to Synthesis Tutor to support her maths homework. He described it as part of the family's efforts to use available tools to help with learning, rather than relying on AI for every task.His wider point is that children will need to know how to make use of increasingly capable systems. He described AI as a kind of superpower that he wants Olympia to have, particularly when it comes to creativity and turning ideas into something tangible.In the interview, he suggested that the value of these tools would increasingly depend on what people chose to do with them. He spoke about agency, persistence and creativity as qualities that would remain important even as AI systems became more capable.Parenthood has influenced the way he thinks about technologyOhanian's comments about Olympia fit into a wider discussion about how technology should affect people's lives. He has spoken about wanting to build products and support companies that reflect the kind of world he hopes his daughters will grow up in.That thinking was part of the reason he established his venture firm, Seven Seven Six, in 2020. In the podcast interview, he explained that becoming a father had made him think more carefully about the professional decisions he was making and the values those decisions represented. He wanted to be able to explain his work to his daughter as she grew older and show her that he had tried to build businesses he could be proud of.His interest in AI also extends beyond family life. He discussed how the technology could help online communities, including by taking some of the repetitive work away from volunteer moderators. He believes AI agents could handle tasks such as identifying spam, leaving community leaders with more time for activities that involve organising people and building relationships.He also spoke about possible uses in sport, where AI could help with player development, scouting and safety, particularly in areas such as women's sport that have historically received less investment.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.