This AI World
What are we doing, really?
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27 April 2026
Open AI launched ChatGPT in November 2022.
Since then, all the big players have established their own versions of large language models, conversation assistants, and productivity tools.
It’s barely been 5 years, yet, generative AI has exploded, like a bat out of hell, into our everyday lives.
But now that we’ve let Pandora out of the box, there’s no way to put her back, no matter how hard you try, sitting on it will not work.
We’re manifesting destruction, and supercharging it through AI.
Singapore recently announced a decision to teach AI to 9-year-olds in schools, as part of their formal education curriculum. Minister for Education, Mr Desmond Lee emphasised “a 'low exposure' model under close supervision.”
Their justification?
That “structured guidance within classrooms is seen as a safer and more effective approach” than “leaving children to explore AI independently on the open internet.”
It seems strange that while several countries have banned social media for children below the age of 16, Singapore has decided to ramp up technology use for children even younger.
In 2022, the KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) in Singapore did a survey and found that most children of all ages in Singapore were using screens more than they should. They came up with guidelines and strategies to give parents alternative activities, and reduce Singapore’s increasingly high childhood myopia rate.
"Our young children are kept at home more, have fewer social interactions and physical activities, using electronic devices for longer periods of time, and sleeping less."
-KKH consultant Dr Benny Loo
Studies have found that 9-10-year-olds face a “fourth-grade slump” - where creative thinking decreases due to increased focus on rules, structure, and a fear of failure. Other studies have shown that the slump doesn’t affect all.
Instead other fourth graders have been found to have a “substantial increase in fluency, flexibility, uniqueness, and unusualness elicited by figural stimuli.”
At this age, their brains are still developing, and at this stage, children should “have a growing need for independence in their decision-making and thinking process.” Yet, the Singapore government has decided that it would be better for their futures to get AI to think for them - stifling brain development, eradicating childlike creativity, and annihilating imagination.
Adults around the world have been suffering at the wide stretched fingers of AI. On top of people falling in love with their LLMs and even marrying them, AI systems have driven many to suicide.
If adults who have grown up long before AI systems were available to the general public, cannot handle the immense amount of information that AI generates, how will a 9-year-old child?
Who are these teachers who are so adept and grounded in their own ability of AI use that they’re prepared to stand guard at the fortresses of these very young minds?
AI kills consciousness.
It stops empathy and compassion.
It distracts and brings anxiety.
There are constant doubts about what's real and what’s not.
A child using a phone to play a video game, killing an intruder in a video game with a ‘kill shot’, swipes the same device to an Instagram video showing the news: an actual child getting killed - shot in the head - behind a warning that says “viewer discretion advised”.
How are they to separate fiction from reality?
It could be AI, it could be real.
How are they to know?
And how are they to care, when this is now the only world that they’ll know.
How do children learn social skills when now their best friend is a robot on a device? COVID-19 saw youth become addicted to screens, socially awkward, and losing social skills. And now we’re imposing this screen time on them - when they have the world outside to play in.
Adults are already losing the capacity to sit with ourselves, undistracted by doomscrolling, and instant gratification. Our phones, an extension of our limbs.
We’re losing the capacity to sit with others, to practice deep listening, to think without looking up, to wander, to ponder. We’ve forgotten direction, how to calculate, how to spell, how to form sentences.
We use AI to do everything for us - so we can do more and more and more.
But we can’t cope.
How can they?
What are we doing to our future generation?
What are we so afraid of that we’re resorting to stealing their childhoods from them?
That Singapore as a country will lose out?
But this is abuse in the name of protecting an economy, and progress for progress sake at the expense of children.
And if Singapore starts - which country will be next?
Because the rat race is going to continue - and your children might be the next victims to be chewed up and spat out - no matter where you live.
Margaret Wheatley coined the term, "technological magisterium.” She explained that the people of today think “we’re the top of the pyramid, we’re the most conscious creative and technofabulous civilisation that has ever evolved, and technology will save us.”
But we’ve seen that technology is dividing and disconnecting us more than ever before. It’s meant to connect, but causes anxiety, misinformation, fear, and hate. We don’t know what’s real anymore, and there’s a constant doubt in the back of our minds about authenticity, and trust.
What makes us human anymore if a robot does our thinking for us?
A robot based on algorithms, created by code, and programmed by humans with ulterior motives.
Which AI are they going to use in schools?
There are so many now - and who’s the programmer?
Where are they feeding the LLM information from?
Because each tool comes with its own set of biases.
New '“ethical” LLM system, Thaura.AI for example is developed by Syrian engineers, two brothers who clearly state they’re against big tech AI, and they are backed by the “Tech for Palestine Incubator.”
Aiden Cinnamon Tea on the other hand is an LLM that was trained by Vanessa Andreotti, Indigenous academic author of Hospicing Modernity and Outgrowing Modernity, and her team.
And then we have ChatGPT - that gets most of its answers from Wikipedia and Reddit.
We’re just recycling people’s ideas, un-evidential ideas, and not thinking for ourselves. And this is the world we’re creating.
In many countries, formal education systems are already so linear - we’re not allowed to meander, to create, or to question narratives. It’s all about acceleration, grades, and expectations.
And now - it’s going to get a lot worse.
Don’t let them do it.
Click to watch:
AI Critic Karen Hao reveals what 90 OpenAI employees told her.
Karen Hao is an AI expert, award-winning investigative journalist, and former reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering American and Chinese tech companies. She is also co-host of the podcast The Interface and freelances for publications like More Perfect Union and The Atlantic. Her latest book is the bestselling ‘EMPIRE OF AI: Inside The Reckless Race For Total Domination.’
She explains:
◼️Why the US-China “AI arms race” may be misleading and politically driven
◼️Why AGI is a marketing scam used to consolidate trillion-dollar power
◼️The hidden human cost behind AI training
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💚 Marla Lise, Earthling at The Eco Chapter