Explore vs. Exploit: The Evolutionary Skill Kids Need to Beat AI
The difference between explore vs. exploit mindsets and the parenting traps that turn kids into box-checking machines.
Recently I was chatting with one of our academic advisors about two of the evolutionary traits that make the human brain so special: explore versus exploit.
What is the Explore vs. Exploit Dilemma?
In a nutshell, "exploration" refers to an early period of broad searching, learning, and gathering of information about the environment, driven by intrinsic curiosity and play. On the other hand, "exploitation" is when the brain uses that information to achieve specific goals and prefers activities that require narrow, focused execution within a specific environment. (Source 1)
Put in simpler terms, exploring is when you're acting like a kid: testing out wild ideas, playing around, and gathering new information just out of curiosity. Exploiting is shifting into a goal and outcome-oriented mode: focusing on a specific goal and using what you already know to get things done efficiently.
The Problem with the Adult Exploit Mindset
Much of what we do as adults is governed by the exploit instinct. We aim for that next promotion, we think about how we can go on that dream vacation, we strategise about how to get our kids into the right school, or put them into tuition so they can do homework faster. And to be clear, these are all things that are somewhat useful, depending on what you define as survival and success.
But much of what increasingly is known about the human brain tells us that the cognitive advantage we have as humans is how we explore.
Exploration is all about testing new possibilities, hypothesis search, and gathering information without the immediate pressure of goal-directed outcomes. Here are some examples in childhood and adolescent life stages:
Examples of the Explore Instinct in Child Development
What Explore Looks Like During Childhood
Free, unstructured play: Tinkering with random blocks or objects to see what structures can be built, rather than following the instruction booklet.
Spontaneous curiosity: Asking a relentless stream of "why" questions to figure out the abstract, underlying rules of how the world works.
Object exploration: Banging, dropping, dissecting or taste-testing a new toy, piece of food or random item just to see what it does.
Free play and pretending: Inventing imaginary worlds or playing without any specific goal, instructions or logic.
Curious tinkering: Spontaneously pressing buttons, opening cupboards, or taking apart toys just to see how they work.
Asking "Why?": Constantly questioning statements to build an understanding of how the world functions.
What Explore Looks Like During Adolescence
Social and identity experimentation: Trying out different friend groups, fashion styles or music tastes to find where you fit in the social sphere.
Taking calculated, novel risks: Picking up extreme or novel sports, hobbies or past times to test physical and emotional boundaries.
Broader career and educational search: Taking a wide variety of classes, from coding to art history, before settling on a specific major or course of study, or engaging in self-directed learning through choosing new extracurricular activities.
Challenging authority and status quos: Questioning beliefs to figure out your own personal worldview.
Why the Explore Skill Matters in the Age of AI
To reiterate: both explore and exploit were evolutionary advantages back when we had to think about the cost-benefit of running from a wildfire versus stopping to think about what we learned about the wildfire.
But nowadays, explore is the instinct that we as educators and adults want to emphasise for our children.
Why? Because explore is the instinct that our brains have over machines.
The more we emphasise exploit (or short-term, outcome-oriented thinking) as a desirable skill in our schools and parenting styles, the more our children will automate themselves into something similar to machines.
On the other hand, the more we emphasise explore traits as a desirable skill, the more our children will acquire cognitive abilities that are less replicable and less automatable by machines.
Modern Parenting Traps That Suppress Exploration
While each family is different and cultural expectations vary greatly, here are some of the ways in which our parenting styles can close down “explore” and overemphasise “exploit”:
Telling our children there are right and wrong ways to play with toys.
Micromanaging your children’s play.
Not letting our kids struggle or shutting down opportunities for them to experience ambiguity or challenge.
Reflexively reacting when things aren’t perfect; always jumping in to try to “fix” things for our kids.
Being a helicopter parent and trying to control what they do in and out of school.
Not letting our children or teens choose their own extracurriculars.
Overscheduling our children so that they don’t have time to learn what being bored is.
Affirming only when outcomes are “good” or quantifiable (like “A+”).
Rewarding behavior that fits only traditional binaries of “winning” and “losing”.
Conveying to our children that mistakes are things to be avoided.
Teaching our children that the only things worth doing are things with clear material outcomes.
Emphasising short-term gains in our child’s activity choice and behavior.
When you think about your child’s experiences in school and the opportunities you give (or don’t give) them as a parent, how are you intentionally supporting the development of their “explore” skill?
Sources
Gopnik, A. (2020). Childhood as a solution to explore-exploit tensions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1803), 20190502.http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0502
