IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective

Is AI in the Classroom a Threat or Tool?

• Ben Pugh • Episode 261

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Should we ban AI in schools, or teach our teens how to use it? In this episode, I share why banning AI is short-sighted and how you can help your teen use it responsibly, ethically, and safely.

🎧 You’ll Learn:

  • Why banning AI hurts more than it helps
  • How AI is like the modern calculator
  • 3 ways to help your teen use AI wisely
  • What AI means for your teen’s future job

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Be the guide, not the gatekeeper.
 Let’s talk about raising confident, tech-savvy teens.

đź”— Book a free consult: benpughcoaching.com/mini

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Ben:

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

ben_2_06-04-2025_170036:

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here with me today. Today we are going to talk about what is sometimes a controversial topic, and today we're going to be focusing on AI and teams and my opinion that. We need to stop banning ai especially in schools, in, I don't know, creative spaces. We need to stop banning AI and we actually need to start teaching ai. Before we get in today's topic though, I do want to let you know I do still have a couple openings available for one-on-one coaching. I am coaching high school football again this year, so that means that coaching times in the afternoons and evenings are extremely limited. I, I might have one spot that I could still fill in the evening and afternoon if I could get some daytime or even morning time with summer being here. If. Mornings are available. I've got some slots that I could possibly work you into anyways, if you would like coaching with me. You can go to benpughcoaching.com/mini That stands for mini session, even though they're actually a full length session. But you can go to benpughcoaching.com/mini and you can book a free consultation with me, and that is the first step to see if. We'd be a good fit together if you wanna work with me, if I wanna work with you. So I do have two, maybe three spots available. If that's something that you'd be interested in. Please go book your free consultation benpughcoaching.com/mini. Now today, like I said, we are going to be talking about the sometimes controversial topic of ai. If you know me very well, you know that I'm a huge fan of ai. Spoiler alert, we'll talk about this later on in the podcast. I used AI to help me write this specific episode. I've used it to help me write other episodes, but this one I was like, no, let's just go all in and I'll use AI to help me. Outline it, come up with some ideas, uplevel it. So this specific podcast, AI has helped me and. Kind of the theme of this podcast, we're gonna talk about how parents in schools are missing the mark, and we're actually doing our teens a disservice by banning AI instead of teaching teens how to use it responsibly. And my goal is to kind of shift the narrative around AI from this narrative of fear and restriction to one of empowerment and responsibility. And if you are, I don't know, anywhere near my age, you probably remember back, back in time, back in the day, our teachers wouldn't let us use calculators in class. They'd be like, no, no. You gotta learn how to do it the long way. You gotta learn how to do it by hand. You won't always have a calculator. Your pocket calculators once upon a time, felt off limits and very similar to calculators. AI is simply a tool and our teens need to learn how to use it wisely. Just like you and I needed to know how to use a calculator and just like calculators haven't gone away. Neither is ai. I know some of y'all hate it. It's gonna be here for a long time. And like I said, like back in the day, teachers used to say, Hey, you won't have calculators in your pockets at all times. Well surprise, here we are in 2025. We walk around with full-blown computers in our pockets, our cell phones, our iPads, our. iPods are iPods still a thing? Anyways, these have access to the internet. It's a super powerful tool. Back when our teachers thought, man, you're not gonna have access to a calculator at all times. They were reflecting back when they were kids, when they didn't have calculators all the time. We need to think forward rather than thinking backwards. And AI is just the new calculator and banning it is shortsighted. So we're gonna talk about some of the ways that. You can help your teen learn how to use AI responsibly, ethically, and safely, and not being scared of it. Like, I'll be honest with you, I am not worried about teens using ai. If I were teaching high school, again, I would be finding ways to incorporate ai. Into how I teach, into how the students demonstrate learning, and that would be really tough because my local school district, someone approached me about possibly teaching English, and I was like, yeah, tell me about your stance when it comes to AI and chat GPT. And they're like, no, no, we don't allow the students to use that at all. I think they're missing the boat. That's too bad. Like I was saying, I'm not worried about our teens using ai. What I am worried about is US adults not teaching teens how to use ai. So let's just talk about the problem with the current mindset when it comes to ai. Most schools and par and parents that I'm familiar with are defaulting to the don't use it stance rather than the stance of, Hey, let's learn how to use this well, let's how, let's learn how to do this in a way that is beneficial and ethical. And the problem is teens aren't learning this valuable skill that is going to be needed to effectively use this tool in the future. My son just graduated high school. He actually got in trouble in one of his college classes'cause he got caught using AI and if he would've used it, the way that I teach teens how to use it. It wouldn't have been a problem. He wouldn't have gotten caught. He wouldn't have been offloading his workload and expecting AI to do it for him, and it would've been great anyways. Like I've been saying, AI is not going away. We need to teach our teens how to use this. And in my experience, I know a handful of teens who are getting punished for using ai. The wrong way and some that are also getting punished for just using it at all. And part of the reason they're using it the wrong way is because they're not being taught how to use it appropriately. So I want you to understand we are doing a disservice to our teenagers when we act like AI is cheating. AI is only cheating if you don't learn how to use it in a way that helps you think for yourself. So let's break this into three simple parts. Part one, we're gonna talk about how to use AI responsibly. Part two, we're going to talk about how to use AI ethically. And part three, we're gonna talk about how to use AI safely. And there might be a bonus part depending on how long this episode gets, where we'll talk for a minute about. Jobs and how AI is going to impact future jobs. And honestly, if I knew a team that was super into ai, I would like, I want to hire someone to help me better use AI in my business. In fact, I don't necessarily want them to help me better use ai. I want someone to come in and apply AI to some of the things that I'm already doing and start taking things off my plate, and I think that's gonna be very real in the very, very near future. In fact, I know it's already real right now in a lot of online business spaces. Anyways. Let's dive into part one, responsible use of AI and how to teach teens to use AI wisely. Now, the goal for this, I want you as a parent to understand how to guide your teen. I want you as a parent. To be able to talk to schools and advocate for your teen to be able to learn how to use AI Now to do that, it's helpful for you to understand what AI is good at and what AI still sucks at. AI is really good at coming up with ideas. It's really good. Summarizing things is really good at helping you brainstorm something. It's really good at helping you outline something. It's also really good at helping you, like say you wrote an essay and you're like, Hey, I need this to be formatted a certain way. AI is great at that. I actually believe AI is really good at helping students. I. Do research and discover new things. When I was a teacher, like you'd always hear the horror stories like you can't use. I just forgot the, you can't use Wiki Wikipedia because it's not accurate. I never saw an example of Wikipedia being not accurate. And when I was in college, I would use Wikipedia and they would cite their sources and I would read through Wikipedia.'cause it dumbs it down. It makes it so that anyone can understand and they tell you, here's where we got this, here's where we got this. And you can go look at their sources. AI is really good. You could say like, Hey, I am writing an essay on, oh, gender and sports. My son just had to do this recently and he was trying to use the search library that was in the safe place anyways, it sucked. They didn't help. With what he wanted. He was able to go to AI and say, Hey, I'm doing a report on this. I need articles that I can cite. Can you show me a handful of articles and link the article in your response? And it's like, yeah, sure. Here you go. Here's 10 articles. He could read a brief summary and then click on the link and go read the actual article if it sounded like it was something that interested him. That is. Being responsible when it comes to ai, you're using it to help you. You're not using it to think for you. AI is really a tool to just enhance what you are doing is there to help you be more effective, more efficient. It is not meant to replace you as a human brain with a human, as a human being with a human brain. As a parent, you can help your teens understand this so that they can see, oh yeah, there is a way to use this responsibly. You can teach your kids how to craft a prompt in a way that AI knows how to best help you. So here's some examples. Like I told you, I used ai. For this specific podcast episode, I've used AI in my business a ton. I've used it to help me brainstorm. I've used it to help me outline. I've used it to help me structure things, and that's what I did for this podcast. I knew I wanted to talk about ai. I literally sat down and said ai. I want to do a podcast on teaching teens how to use AI responsibly. Ethically and safely, and here's some of the concerns I have. Here's some of the ideas, and I just like vomited all my thoughts. And I'm like, here, ai, here's everything I'm thinking. And it's like, okay, let me help you structure that. Let me help you do this. And it was super convenient. I use ai, like I said, to help me study things. I use it to point me towards resources, books, podcasts, information that I can consume, think of on my own, and use it in my business. AI helps me, I. Do that type type of stuff. I promise you, you can be a powerful example for how to use AI responsibly and you can seriously, like I used ai, I just used it today. We're cooking baked potatoes and I was like, man, they just give you generic. So we like to do baked potatoes in the Instant Pot. They give you generic times. They're like anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes. I was like, Hey, I'm doing four potatoes. They weigh somewhere between 10 ounces and 13 ounces. I'm doing four of'em. How long should I bake my potato or cook my potatoes in the Instant Pot? And it's like, oh, for four potatoes between 10 and 13 ounces. You should do it for 19 minutes with a 15 second. Natural release. I'm like, awesome. That's a way to use AI responsibly. It's just helping you be a better human. Now, I don't have to use trial and error. I can just trust AI and it shortens my process of cooking baked potatoes. Okay, so let's talk about. The second part we've talked about using AI responsibly. Let's talk about using it ethically. We need to teach kids not to hide behind the tool, and we need to teach them how to use it without hiding the fact that they used it. I've seen teenagers use AI to create. A work, whether it's just an image, a cool meme or an essay where they claim, oh yeah, this essay is mine. I did it all by myself. That is not being ethical. You want to give credit where credit is due. If you had to write an essay. And you're like, man, I'm writing essays on different horses. Back when I was a teenager, I used to train horses and you could be like, Hey, I wanna write. An essay. Essay on the difference between Arabian horses, quarter horses, and Norwegian fjords. Those are the kinds that my parents kind of have. And you could say, here's what I like about Arabian. Here's what I don't like about Arabian. Here's what I liked about quarter horses. Here's what I don't like about quarter horses. Here's what I liked about Norwegian fjords. Here's what I don't like. Can you help me craft an essay that compares and contrast these three different breeds based on what I told you? And could you give me three ideas that I maybe haven't thought of that I could also include in my essay? And you're using it ethically. You're not using it to write your essay for you. You are giving it a ton of information, and AI is helping you sort that out and put it in. Order and then they're helping you uplevel it. You don't even have to like tell your teacher. Okay. Yeah. So I used AI to help me brainstorm, or I used AI to help me uplevel this. If, for example, you create. An image or a piece of poetry or a story that you just told ai, Hey, write me a story about a life coach who works with parents and teens, and he is really cool and make it funny. You're gonna want to tell people, okay, that was ai. I give it a prompt. I give it a few details. It came up with everything pretty cool, but it wasn't my work. That's how to use it ethically. Here are some things that I think you can use ai. Specifically chat, GPT. If you are dealing with a high schooler, you can use it to help you outline something that you're writing. You can use it to help you brainstorm. You can use it to help you order and organize it. You can use it to help you cite or use specific formatting. You can use it to edit like, hey. Are there any misspelled words? Are there any places where I could punctuate this better? Are there any sentences or like, here's one of my favorite ones. When I write emails, all of you guys that are on my email list, you are getting an email that's written by me with the help of ai. And sometimes I'll know what I want to tell you guys, like just recently there was a story about a missionary coming home and I was like, let me just give ai, I. All the information and I was like, help me tell this in this many words or less this one sentence still feels awkward. What are five different ways that I could say it? And usually I look at the five and I'm like, oh, it's close, but here's how I'll say it. And then it's like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you can use it to edit, you can use it to uplevel, but I want you to re realize. We don't just take the easy route because it's easy. We're using AI to help us better perform as human beings. If so, back when I used to teach school, I was the ESL teacher, which means English as a secondary language or something like that. I can't remember, oh my goodness. You could use AI to help students. That struggle with English, they could totally be like, man, here's what I wanna say in my native language. Are there any phrases like that in English? I. Ai, which speaks all the languages, can be like, oh yeah, totally in Spanish, it's Jo Tango ombre, which means I have hunger in English. Here are some of the words that they would say. They would say, man, I'm starving. I'm really hungry. I could eat a horse. And it will just like, this is a tool that we should be empowering our teenagers to use, and we need to teach'em to do it the right way. Do it ethically. Don't create. AI generated work and then takes the credit for it. Don't create AI generated things that could be harmful or misleading or dishonest. Okay, we've talked about part one, how to use AI responsibly. We've talked about how to use it ethically. Now let's talk about how to use it safely so that you and your team can protect yourselves. I recommend when teams use AI that they don't share personal information with AI tools. You're not want gonna want to tell it like your name, address social Security Number Bank, like all the obvious ones. You are also not gonna want to like tell us certain things about you that you don't want the whole world to know. Theoretically, you should be protected. AI is supposed to protect your identity. It's supposed to protect your info, like all this stuff, but we can't really trust it, like we see data breaches all the time. So I would be careful about the data that you put into it. Now, I will say like, not only did I use this. Or use AI chat, GPT specifically to help me write this podcast. I also used it to help me write a letter of recommendation today for a young man that I've worked with. I didn't give it any of his personal information. I was just like, Hey, I'm writing this. I ask me some questions that will. Help me tell you what to write. And it's like, yeah, who are you writing it for? What are their strengths? What are their skills? What are, it was awesome, but I didn't give like, oh yeah, he's so and so and he lives here, and blah, blah, blah. No, I'm just being kind of vague. Also, when it comes to ai, if you want to stay safe, watch out for AI's bias. Watch out for AI's mistakes and watch out for AI's sketchy content. Like you could study this, you could actually use AI to help you study this, but AI is designed to be biased. It's designed to be overly friendly. It's designed to be overly complimentary. So to keep yourself safe if you were to like use ai. You don't just say, Hey, I'm writing this essay for college. What do you think it is? Probably gonna be like, oh wow, that's a really good start. You have a knack for writing. You're so gifted, blah, it's gonna be. Really kind to you, and it might not give you great feedback. So what you wanna do is be like, Hey, position yourself as like a college level English teacher and read through my paper for these specific elements, these specific styles or grammar mistakes. And that way you're going to avoid the bias. It's not gonna try and help you feel good, which it's designed to do. It's going to, you're gonna bypass that and it's gonna help you uplevel your paper that's gonna keep you safe because now you're not turning in this paper to your college level English teacher. That is crap because you didn't ask AI in the right way to help you. That leads me to this last part. Learn how to ask good questions of AI so it can help you. The right way that'll keep you safe. The better questions that you ask, the more direction that it has, and also learn to question what AI is giving you. Learn to question like, it makes me sick. How much AI generated crap there is on social media right now, and AI isn't. Great. Like you can't always just replace a human. You'll notice there's grammar errors, spelling errors there, there's a bunch of errors. I hate it when I see completely AI generated crap on social media. I hate it when I see AI generated fake fake news, bad facts that are meant to. Mislead people or just made up garbage. If you can help your teen understand, hey. This is how to keep yourself safe when it comes to AI that will help them be better prepared to use AI in the future. And we could even call this like media literacy. It's super important, especially right now with the direction that AI and social media are going hand in hand together. Social media is using AI to create garbage that. Is going to drive people to interact with a post, whether it be liking, sharing, commenting, whatever. Help your teen understand how to spot AI generated garbage and help them learn how to verify the information so that they're not getting sucked into this trap. Now, real quick, I did want to give you a bonus. This, this podcast is basically meant to help you not be afraid of AI and really kinda helps you fight against the current education model, which is just completely avoiding the fact that AI exists and just telling kids don't use it. It's like telling your kids don't have sex. Don't look at pornography yet. They're more likely to go do it if you just say Don't do it. Instead, we can totally be like, Hey, here's how to do it. Safely. Here's how to do it responsibly. Here's how to do it ethically. This is important because I believe a ton of jobs are going to be eliminated in the near future by ai, and a lot of people are afraid of that. I was just talking to a man just yesterday. He is a pharmacist and he is like, oh yeah, my job could be replaced. And like AI could do it better than a pharmacist, but it could be replaced with AI and a robot. My brother is a physician's assistant and he is like, oh yeah, AI could replace most regular doctors. He's like, doctors use AI all the time. They don't have an answer. It used to be they'd go Google it or they'd look it up. Now they use AI and. In doing that, they're training their replacement As a life coach, I could see how AI could replace me. I use. Chat GPT to coach me on things all the time. I use, I ask it to use my own models, like, Hey, you know, this model my wheel of life, help me see how I could apply that to this specific situation. AI is going to replace a ton of jobs and most people are thinking in the next 10 to 20 years. Maybe even 50. I'm telling you it's gonna be faster than that. Like AI is already replacing jobs and we are going to notice it in a very harsh, rude, awakening type way in the next five or so years is my guess. So let's think about some jobs that. You could use ai, like they're already using AI in politics. They're using AI in social media. We're using AI in healthcare, in sports, like it's tracking analytics. Like I just, one of the podcasts that I listen to about some of the sports teams that I follow, they're like, this is so awesome. You can put this into AI and it'll spit out numbers for you. They did mention that they have to check it. But there are tools that if your teens learn how to use'em, now they can use AI to help them find a job in the future there's going to be a. AI companies that are replacing human workers, that they're going to need people to come and write the code, write down the procedures, write down the steps, and that's gonna be a real thing. There's gonna be data scientists, there's gonna be AI research scientists, there's gonna be AI ethics researchers. There's gonna be. AI enhanced tech careers where you could be developing software with ai. You could be doing robotics and engineering with ai. AI is going to greatly impact business and marketing. I, I worked for a radio station for a year. They hate ai, and I'm like, guys, AI can write ads faster and better than we can. Let's embrace it and start using it. For as much as AI is going to replace jobs, it is also going to create jobs because they're going to need people to manage. Oversee and run the AI content creators. There's, they're gonna need people to put in inputs, to put in questions, education as much as they're resistant. I really think I. Ai, AI could replace most education, especially like life coaching and counseling, and therapy, and just your regular school education. Learn how to use these tools now. And you don't have to do it in school. Like if you are not allowed to use AI for English history, any of that, no problem. Come home and experiment with ai, practice writing a short story with the help of AI and learn, oh, hey, here's how I can ask better questions. Here's AI's strengths, here's its weaknesses. How do I work with it? The main purpose of this episode, the main takeaway as a parent, be the guide when it comes to using AI responsibly, ethically, and safely rather than I. Trying to be the gatekeeper where you just don't allow it. I want to encourage you, model responsible use of ai. Talk about it with your teens. Talk about how you helped it, or you used it to help you cook baked potatoes, or you used it in your business. That way you can help your teen start seeing AI as a tool, not a crutch. Not a threat. If you want your team to thrive in a world filled with ai, you can't ban ai. You have to teach them how to use it responsibly, safely, ethically. That happens best in the home. We don't like school isn't going to do this for you. They're going to resist AI because they can see how it's gonna replace them. So start exploring, Hey, how can I talk to my team about ai? How can I model using ai? Am I building trust and curiosity? When it comes to my teen and to ai, or am I building fear and shame around my teen? AI and just start having conversations with your team. They probably know just as much about AI as you do. Actually, some of you guys, I've talked to you. I know who you are. You don't even know what AI is. Go ask your team. He'll help you or she'll help you better understand ai, how to use it, where you can apply it to your life, and that will help you parent your kid to be successful. In a tech savvy world that is gonna be is AI is going to be a driving force of our future. So if you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out. You can always email me at ben@benpughcoaching.com, and if you and your team need a little extra help this summer, feel free to go sign up for a free consultation at. BenPughcoaching.com/mini. I'll see you next week.