Forget “Future-Proofing” Your Kids: Help Them Navigate Uncertainty
TL;DR
Trying to "AI-proof" our children with bootcamps and linear career paths promises a false sense of certainty. Drawing on intergenerational wisdom and modern neuroscience, real resilience in an AI-driven world isn't about eliminating uncertainty—it's about teaching our children how to self-regulate and navigate the unknown with courage, humor, and hope.
A river near my grandmother’s childhood home in Thailand
In the late 1940’s, my grandmother decided to leave her family home and move across the country to start a business she’d never done before, in a province she’d never been to. One generation later, her daughter left the country to attend graduate school on the other side of the world and start a business she’d never done before. One generation later, her granddaughter decided to move back to Asia and start a business she’d never done before (one that couldn’t even have existed when the grandmother was young).
We tend to think that the ideal is to invest in certainty; that it’s somehow better to set goals that make things more certain.
But things are always changing: change is the default, not the anomaly. In fact, the only constant in the world is change. In Thai Buddhism, the term for this is อนิจจา (anicha), which roughly translates to “impermanence.” Things rise and fall, come and go, including emotions, jobs, relationships, opportunities, money.
The fact of uncertainty is especially resonant in an AI-age, where questions are frequently being raised not only about the future of employment and education, but about human worth and purpose in a machine-led era of history.
I see this fear of uncertainty daily in sensational headlines: all read along the lines of “How to ensure our children aren’t replaced by machines” or “How to choose a major that won’t be obsolete in 5 years”. As a parent, if you are willing to pay, there is a universe replete with “education” companies waiting to sell you certainty that your children won’t be replaced by machines (or worse, unsuccessful!).
Choose the latest flavor of the month that will make your child AI-proof: entrepreneurship camp, innovation course, coding bootcamp. This is certainty served on a platter, for parents who can afford it.
One generation later: a move to Bangkok
Invest in Uncertainty
Certainty is not a good target for decision-making, but how to manage uncertainty is.
On an obvious level, tolerating a higher level of uncertainty is evolutionarily useful: it allows us to explore new, uncharted territories, meet new people, even learn more effectively from our mistakes. Tolerating and navigating uncertainty is an important part of social-emotional maturation and interpersonal growth, too.
Moreover, as it turns out, better decision making isn’t about reducing uncertainty. This is particularly true when we look at decision making at a neurological level. In a recent conversation with Kigumi academic advisor Dr. Josh Gold, a neuroscience professor at UPenn, he emphasised this growing area of neuroscience, noting that there is increasing evidence that, in principle, the brain doesn’t need more (or even better) data to make optimal decisions; instead, it needs to self-regulate and discern what amount of energy is worth expending in data gathering (i.e. when to stop intaking sensory inputs) and then - most relevantly to our topic today - act based on the level of uncertainty it is willing to tolerate.
Change the Question You Ask as a Parent
Being able to blindly tolerate a huge amount of uncertainty in every situation isn’t the end goal. Importantly, our brains (and personalities) may have different levels of tolerance of uncertainty, and that’s okay.
But what we’re starting to understand better about our brains is that certainty and uncertainty aren’t opposites: they’re two complementary halves of a balancing act that we’d benefit from understanding as we think about what skills we want our children to cultivate in themselves.
Instead of focusing on the question “How can we ensure our children aren’t replaced by machines” we need to focus on the question “How can we ensure our children can tolerate a higher level of uncertainty with courage, humor and hope?”
