Editorial illustration for Kids Compare Current AI to the First Car or Airplane
Teens View AI Like Early Cars and Planes
Kids Compare Current AI to the First Car or Airplane
Ask a room of teenagers about the last election or the price of concert tickets, and you'll get an earful. Ask them about artificial intelligence, and the response is more likely to be a shrug, a "meh," or a flat "bruh" that ends the conversation before it starts. That's roughly what happened when we talked to kids aged 10 to 18 about AI, expecting the usual split: some admitting to using it to cut corners on homework, the way earlier generations leaned on CliffsNotes or a TI-82, others eager to describe some clever use they'd found for it.
Instead we got something messier. A number of kids didn't want to engage with the topic at all, either bored by it or outright opposed. One teen brought up classmates using AI for papers they know they shouldn't.
Another said she avoids it entirely over its environmental cost. Others compared where AI stands right now to the earliest cars or planes, clunky, unproven, not yet worth the hype. Most, though, copped to using it at least occasionally, even the skeptics.
In a survey published in February 2026, the Pew Research Center found that 57% of teens in the US had used chatbots to search for information, 54% tapped them to help with schoolwork, and 47% had used them for fun or entertainment. Only 12% had used them for emotional support or advice. Teens are over four times more likely to be using AI in innocuous ways than potentially harmful ones.
Why this matters
For those of us building and funding this stuff, a kid's line about the first car or first airplane is worth sitting with longer than another benchmark chart. That comparison isn't hype and it isn't doom, it's a judgment about maturity. Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen topped out around 10 mph and the Wright Flyer flew for 12 seconds.
Both were real breakthroughs and both were unsafe, unreliable, and years from being useful to ordinary people. Teenagers using ChatGPT for homework are making the same call about the tools we're shipping now: impressive, not yet trustworthy. That should sting a little.
We keep talking about AI in terms of capability jumps, but the people actually living with these products day to day are describing something rougher and less finished than our marketing decks suggest. Founders and researchers should treat that gap as signal, not noise. The users who'll be here in ten years are already telling us, plainly, that we're still at the prototype stage.
Worth asking who's timing the next flight.
Related Reading
Market Trends AI drives three initiatives to accelerate global action for planet protection
Market Trends Akamai data shows AI training bots and content‑fetching bots rise since July
Market Trends NVIDIA and Google Cloud let developers scale AI from prototype to production
From Archives NVIDIA NeMo Switchyard Routes AI Agent Workloads Across LLMs
From Archives OpenAI Slashes GPT-5.6 Luna AI Model Price by 80%
Common Questions Answered
What percentage of US teens use chatbots for schoolwork according to the Pew Research Center survey?
According to a Pew Research Center survey published in February 2026, 54% of US teens have used chatbots to help with schoolwork. This represents a significant portion of the teenage population actively incorporating AI tools into their academic activities, similar to how previous generations used study guides and calculators.
How do teenagers compare current AI to historical technological breakthroughs?
Teenagers in the article compare current AI to the first car and first airplane, suggesting that AI is in its early, immature stages of development. This comparison implies that while AI represents a real breakthrough, it is still unsafe, unreliable, and years away from being truly useful to ordinary people, much like the Patent-Motorwagen and Wright Flyer were in their time.
What is the ratio of teens using AI for harmless purposes versus potentially harmful ones?
According to the Pew Research Center data, teens are over four times more likely to be using AI in innocuous ways than potentially harmful ones. The survey found that only 12% of teens used chatbots for emotional support or advice, while significantly higher percentages used them for information searches, schoolwork, and entertainment.
How did teenagers respond when asked about artificial intelligence in the article?
When asked about artificial intelligence, teenagers responded with indifference rather than enthusiasm, offering responses like a shrug, 'meh,' or 'bruh' that ended the conversation before it started. This contrasted sharply with their more engaged responses when asked about topics like elections or concert ticket prices.
What were the performance limitations of early automobiles and aircraft mentioned in the article?
The article notes that Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen topped out around 10 mph and the Wright Flyer flew for only 12 seconds. These examples illustrate how breakthrough technologies were initially unsafe, unreliable, and impractical for everyday use, similar to the current state of AI technology.
Further Reading
- An Analogy For The State Of AI - Rodney Brooks
- Artificial Intelligence education for young children - ScienceDirect
- Artificial Intelligence for Kids with Hod Lipson, Professor, Columbia Engineering - YouTube
- ChatGPT is our Wright Brothers moment - LessWrong
- A Kid's Guide to AI: What “AI” Really Is - Medium
