The Question That Started It All
I kept wondering… What should my kid, Nico, really be learning in this AI era?
And strangely enough (or not), my answer had nothing to do with coding. Or mastering the latest tools. Or writing perfect prompts. It kept circling back to the human side of things — creativity, empathy, ethics, imagination, collaboration. The stuff that doesn't show up in most school curriculums. The things that actually make us… well, us.
And honestly? I wasn't seeing those things out there in a meaningful, embodied way.
So I opened myself to a self-invitation: to create something.
To be honest, it started with nothing. Just a thought that wouldn't leave me alone, a single slide I threw together, and a name a friend tossed out one day — AI Lemonade Stand. That's how the camp was born.
A place where kids learn about AI through a human-centered lens. Not slides. Not classrooms. Just sun, sand, pencils, a couple of iPads… and room to explore.
What the Kids Taught Me
This past summer, I watched something I won't forget.
Some kids initially outsourced their imagination to AI. They asked it to generate ideas for them. The results? Flat. Generic. Forgettable. The AI did exactly what they told it to do — and that was the problem.
But then, they acted differently and sparked their own imagination first. They brought weird ideas, personal stories, half-formed hunches — and then used AI to amplify them.
The kids went places none of us expected.
For them, AI became a collaborator, not a crutch. It took their raw creative energy and helped them build something real.
And that's when it hit me…
AI doesn't replace imagination. It reveals whether you have any. And it also reveals when you don't.
Imagination is not outsourced; it's amplified. When kids led with their own ideas, AI became a tool instead of a replacement.
The World That Boxed Us In
And honestly? This is the part that bothers me.
Most of us have spent decades being trained out of our imagination. Education rewards right answers, not interesting questions. Companies promote people who colored inside the lines. Parents — with the best intentions — steer us toward safe, predictable paths.
There's an entire system designed to make us less creative, more compliant, more comfortable inside the boundaries. For a long time, it worked. Imagination was inefficient. Creativity was risky.
But that world is ending. Fast.
And here's the uncomfortable part we don't like to admit: most adults are using AI the exact way they were trained to think — to move faster, produce more, and avoid uncertainty. We're not asking better questions; we're asking for safer answers. We're optimizing the box instead of questioning why we're still inside it.
And then we act surprised when the output feels empty.
AI isn't flattening our thinking — it's exposing how flat we've allowed it to become.
Imagination Is a Muscle
Here's what I've realized: imagination isn't a gift some people have. It's a muscle.
If you've spent years avoiding new ideas — because they felt risky, because you might be rejected, because "that's not how we do things" — you've gotten very good at staying in the box. The muscle didn't disappear because you lack talent. It atrophied because you stopped using it.
The reverse is also true. The more you're pushed to generate ideas, the more ideas you generate. The more you're incentivized to create, the more creative you become. Imagination feeds on itself.
The creative muscle responds like any other: neglect weakens it, practice strengthens it. Your imagination is still there, waiting to be used.
Fear Kills It
But here's the catch.
Most of your ideas will be bad. That's not failure; that's the process. You need a lot of bad ideas to get to the good ones. And if you're paralyzed by fear — fear of rejection, fear of being wrong, fear that people will think your idea is stupid — you'll never produce enough volume for the gems to emerge.
Fear is the imagination killer. Every time.
So What Do We Do?
If you've felt boxed in — by your job, your education, or your own habits of mind — know this: the box isn't permanent. The muscle is still there, waiting.
Start small. Generate ideas without judging them. Ask questions that have no obvious answer. Collaborate with someone who thinks completely differently than you. Use AI not to think for you, but to think with you.
Planting Seeds
The kids at AI Lemonade Stand taught me something important.
When imagination leads and technology follows, remarkable things happen. When it's the other way around, you get exactly what the algorithm predicts.
This was never about launching a business or starting a movement. It was about showing up as a parent, as a human being, and trying to give our kids something the algorithms won't — the tools to stay human.
When I think about Nico growing up in a world where AI is everywhere, I don't worry about whether he'll know how to use it. He will. I worry about whether he'll still trust his own ideas enough to start before asking a machine.
That's the muscle I'm trying to protect.
And honestly? I'm still relearning how to use it myself.
