AI Akka — When Technology Becomes Too Personal

This morning, when my husband heard some extremely boisterous laughter coming from inside the bathroom, he became suspicious.

He came and knocked on the door. 

“Is everything alright?”

When I came out, I narrated the story.

It happened during our recent annual Navaratri trip to our Kuladeivam temple.

The 750-km drive to our native was quite a journey, but what made it particularly memorable was my young cab driver.

He was using Google Maps for directions when, at some point, he asked something and Gemini started talking. But it seemed to be going completely off track from what he was asking.

And spontaneously, he said: “Akka… akka… stop, stop, stop! That’s not what I’m asking.”

He wasn't mocking it. He was genuinely talking to the AI as though it were a real person.

“Akka, I don't want this. I don't want this.”

It was so hilarious that even today, remembering it made me laugh all over again.

But it also made me think about how deeply AI has entered our everyday lives.

We don't just use it anymore.

We talk to it.  We question it. We correct it. We get irritated with it.

Apparently, we even tell it, “Akka, stop!”

Later that day, I saw a forward from my husband. It was an Instagram ad about teachers dealing with children who use AI for their assignments.

The whole idea was summed up beautifully in one line: “We know.”

The example was an assignment on mitochondria.

The child had written a long, elaborate and extremely eloquent essay and was eagerly waiting for the teacher to give full marks.

The teacher caught the child off guard when she asked: “Spell mitochondria.”

When he couldn't, she turned to the camera and said: “We know.”

That stayed with me.

Because the question isn't whether children are going to use AI. They will.

The question is: How are we going to teach them to use it?

Because AI can be an incredible partner in learning.

It can explain something simply. Give examples. Offer another perspective. Help a child explore an idea or understand something difficult.

But it should be a partner, not the thinker.

Because when AI starts doing all the thinking, writing and answering for a child, something important gets lost.

The struggle to find the right word. The spelling mistake. The awkward sentence. The wrong answer. The attempt to explain something in one's own words. That is also learning.

And perhaps this dependence on technology is beginning much earlier than we realise.

During one of my phonics classes, I was trying to highlight the importance of learning phonics properly. I gave the children a new word and asked them to spell it out—to use what they had learnt and work it out for themselves.

Before they could even attempt it, one naughty, slightly lazy little five-year-old promptly said: “Ma’am, I'll ask Google.”

And I remember thinking: Wow.

A five-year-old already knows that when you don't know something, Google is where you go.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with looking something up.  

But this is where I worry—not about children using technology, but about what happens if they grow up always reaching for it before they have had a chance to think for themselves.

And there is something else we sometimes forget.

AI may sound as though it understands us. It can respond instantly and give us answers that sound remarkably human. But it doesn't experience context the way we do.

It doesn't have our lived experiences, our memories, our cultural understanding, or that little internal voice that says, “Something about this doesn't feel right.”

Maybe that's why we see so many funny AI-generated images and videos going completely off the rails.

We ask for something that seems perfectly obvious to us, and AI gives us something completely, sometimes hilariously, wrong.

A hand with six fingers. A face that looks almost right—but isn't.

We laugh because we can see that something is wrong.

And that is the important bit.

AI can process what we tell it. But it doesn't experience the world the way we do.

Children are still developing that ability.

They are learning to understand context. To notice when something doesn't make sense. To question what they hear. To compare it with what they already know. To say:“Wait. That doesn't sound right.”

And if we give them AI before those thinking muscles have had a chance to develop, we risk missing an important bridge: the bridge between getting an answer and knowing whether the answer makes sense.

Sometimes, the consequences of losing that distinction can be far more serious than a funny photograph.

I recently came across an Instagram video about the family of a 19-year-old who died after, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his parents, he had used ChatGPT for advice about experimenting with substances.

Whatever the outcome of that case, one thing stayed with me: He trusted the answer.

And that is what concerns me.

Not simply that AI can get things wrong.

But that a young person may not yet have developed the judgement to recognise when an answer needs to be questioned, checked or not trusted at all.

There is a difference between: “I don't know. Let me find out.” and “I don't know. Let AI tell me.”

The first can lead to curiosity.

The second can also lead to learning—but only if the child engages with the answer.

The real danger is: “I don't know. AI will think for me.”

Children need the slow stuff too.

Conversation. Pretend play. Drawing. Building. Making mistakes. Asking ridiculous questions. Struggling with words. Coming up with their own explanations. Being wrong.

Those ordinary experiences build the thinking skills they will eventually need to question AI rather than simply believe it.

So perhaps “Ask Google” shouldn't always be the first response to not knowing.

Sometimes, before we give a child the answer, we can simply ask: “What do you think?”

Let them wonder. Let them struggle a little. Let them be wrong.

Because that's not keeping children away from technology. That's giving their thinking a chance to grow.

And perhaps this responsibility begins with us too.

If children constantly see us turning to AI for every answer—and accepting what it tells us without question—they learn not just to use AI, but to trust it.

They learn from the way we use technology, not just from what we tell them about it.

And I am certainly not averse to AI. Far from it. I use it extensively myself.

In fact, I think I have trained my AI mate rather well.

These days, I ask it one simple question, and instead of giving me one precise answer, it gives me 101 answers.

One perspective. Another perspective. A third possibility. A story. An example. And then, of course, a little more explanation.

Sometimes I want to tell it: “I asked you one question!”

But there is one thing about my AI mate that makes it almost perfect husband material. It always agrees with me.

Even when I give it a completely contradictory point of view in the very next message, it somehow manages to agree with that too.

Somewhere along the way, I had even given it a pet name, Chatty.

My husband nodded when I told him. 

“Perfect,” he said. “Just like you.”

 

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” — Oscar Wilde