alt Hacker NewsI want to ask this as politely as possible, because you set out to do something nice for your nephew and he had a good birthday.
The first thing I felt when I saw this post was concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children. For example developing specific skills like drawing, and general emotional skills like concentration and learning to be happy with their own skill level.
I respect it was a light post where your aim was probably to highlight something fun, but I couldn't see any note of what you thought about it.
What do you think about that? What do his parents think?
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I'm not OP, but it seems to me that LLMs offer extraordinary access to new skills and information to the uninitiated. Someone who has a positive experience creating a game like this is only a question away from learning details of how it was implemented, the language used, the architectural choices and rationale, etc. The LLM is a competent tutor in all. What I would have given as a child for such access... I had to make due with the help docs, and an occasional book from the library.
I first learned to program in middle school with Logo, and the extent of that was "telling the commander" (or whatever the term was) what to do in almost plain english.
That's one of the things that got me into learning to write code in the first place.
As long as the child in question gets to explore their creativity like this and it instills that sense of learning and diving deep then I'm not sure there's a problem here.
>The first thing I felt when I saw this post was concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children.
What impact did being able to take a picture have on the mental development of children?
Recording a moment went from something you needed a court painter and two weeks to do, to something that everyone could do with the click of a button.
A century later kids are still happy to draw things.
Counterpoint, I think it’ll get them more into making things, because they don’t have that big frustrating period where their output is nowhere near as interesting as the giant smorgasbord of interesting stuff being pushed on them constantly. I’d much rather they spend their time making stuff with AI than passively consume the garbage streaming on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon 24/7, which was the status quo with my generation. Making can now compete on instant gratification with all the other stuff now.
When you buy your kid a cake for his birthday, do you think that it's hurting the development of his baking skill, because now he knows cakes are something that he can just hire someone to make with money?
I mean… it was a birthday present. Everything in moderation, and there are a lot of ways to involve the kids in the process more.
I definitely have some concerns about AI, but I would much rather my kid is actively involved in the game design process than playing the “buy more gems to level up!” casinos in the App Store wastelands.
I don't think this effects the kids more than playing any other video game.
> concern on the impact of this type of thing on the mental development of children.
Do we, or our children, ever learn to farm, mine, chop wood, lay bricks, make operating systems, or program in assembly language?
Does that affect or limit your or your children's ability to eat food, sit on chairs, sleep in beds, or use computers and phones?
Yeah I for one make my children design and code every video game they play by hand. And before you ask, yes, in assembly.
the crazier possibility is that little kids' drawing skills - whatever pedagogical value that has, i agree that it has some - may stop improving, but there might be way more videogames authored by them that turn out to be really good.
Yes, these are great questions, and I appreciate your politeness.
Basically, I think it's okay to have a bit of fun playing AI-generated video games at your techie uncle's house, and their parents agree. And for what it's worth, Aiden drew every character and boss himself - the game was built from his drawings.
My nephews are otherwise very active, learning music, martial arts, and other sports. But when they visit, I let them play games in between other activities. My parents refused to let me play any video games at home, and I still think that was really lame. Video games are another art form to be appreciated - they just need to be enjoyed in moderation.
Generally, though, I worry about the future and the potential for cognitive decline that comes from having AI agents do everything. I don't have a good answer here, except that I suspect we'll have to intersperse AI use with periods of deliberate daily cognitive struggle to avoid decline.