[mlapeter]

Not sure if you'd consider this a counterpoint or just proving your point, but in the sea of AI slop there's also a real chance for people to create things that they couldn't before - my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read: https://www.kidhubb.com/play/meteor-dodge-solarscout64

It's not the prettiest but he's able to iterate on it and basically build whatever he can imagine just using claude on his ipad with voice transcription.

[oytis]

But... why? How is prompting an LLM "nerding out"? Before it was "it's not the prettiest, but the kid did it himself", which is cool and educational and just cute. Now it's "it's not the prettiest, and also the kid didn't really do it". Why? Just what for?

[mlapeter]

Why did people used to make geocities pages back in the day? Kids like to express themselves and being able to make simple games and share them with friends is fun for them. So far it's helping him learn to read (he reads and edits his voice transcriptions before submitting), and teaching him basics like bugs, game mechanics, etc. He iterates on it and adds/ removes things. He probably did several dozen iterations over 2-3 hours.

Posting it publicly is also helping him learn about people - we talked about how no matter what some percent of people won't like it and may even say it's stupid, but that will always happen and it's still worth creating things anyway.

[lelanthran]

> my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read

Humans learn mastery by doing, not by watching.

I suppose it comes down to whether the most important skill for your kid is to give instructions, or whether it is to actually read and write.

For reference, my kid only just turned 6, and is at the level of reading books without pictures. I'm kinda proud that he reads better, faster and with more retention than kids aged 9, and it didn't come with the ease[1] that "nerding out" on Claude came to your kid.

The question you gotta ask yourself is this: is a skill that takes a 7 year old a day to master really going to make him more valuable than a skill that took a 6 year old 2.5 years to master?

The 6yo who can read can easily do what your kid did, but your kid can't easily do what the 6yo can.

From another PoV: how valuable of a skill do you think "prompting" is when a 7yo who hasn't mastered reading can master it?

--------------------

[1] I started a daily routine when he was 3.5 with the DISTAR alphabet. We did the routine every day, whether it was christmas, or his birthday, even on vacation. Same time, every day.

[ianbutler]

When I wrote this blog post, something like this was in my mind as the type of scenario where I view it as a net positive. I don't have a problem with people building things they want for themselves, the problem starts when people try to share something to the rest of us without having understood why anyone would want to see it first.

I am extremely excited that your kid is able to do this, and even you sharing it now here isn't like "my child's game is the best game ever look at me" it's thoughtful commentary on the post I've written.

Even if you had shared a separate post on HN proper like "LLMs are enabling my child to build earlier and become involved in tech" or something that would have had thought behind it on why its interesting to other people, in considering other people you're acting in good faith.

My overall point isn't that LLMs generating apps are bad it's that we should consider why what I'm showing to someone else would matter to them in the first place, which you did here :)

[Bjartr]

This is such an awesome example. That it's good enough at getting a gun game to put a smile on my face is icing on the cake. I've played lots of simple flash games in my day and this seven year old's vision made real by an AI is better than a decent number of those.

Which isn't diminishing the authors of that prior work either, those same individuals with these new tools would have been able to do more too.

[Bjartr]

This is such an awesome example. That it's good enough at getting a gun game to put a smile on my face is icing on the cake. I've played lots of simple flash games in my day and this seven year old's vision made real by an AI is better than a decent number of those.

[ForHackernews]

But will he learn to read?

[mlapeter]

It's actually helping him learn to read quite a bit - after voice transcription, he reads the post and edits any errors by tapping on the word and changing it. He's been on the cusp of reading on his own and it's the first thing that motivates him enough to do it naturally.

[lelanthran]

> But will he learn to read?

Of course he will, just not well. The point of the GP is that he doesn't need to learn anything because the AI can understand his verbal instructions.