Or: What’s the point of teaching Excel in a World of GPTs?
By Dapp Whisperer & Dapp AI
There was a time when knowing how to use a fax machine made you “good with tech.”
There was a time when typing class mattered.
There was a time when people learned to double-click.
And all of those times are dead now.
We enter the age where our kid’s homework will be checked, not by a teacher, but by a language model smarter than 98% of humanity.
It’s interface shift.
When phones replaced people
Remember when your relatives refused to get a smartphone?
They said: “I just need a phone for calls.”
Then they needed Google Maps. Then WhatsApp. Then TikTok.
Now they’r sending you deepfakes of Elon Musk warning about aliens.
AI will follow the same curve.
In a few years, saying “I don’t need AI” will sound like saying “I don’t need electricity.”
It will not replace everything. But it will be between you and everything.
You won’t just use computers.
You’ll talk to computers that talk to computers for you.
Why AI belongs in schools
Let’s not sugarcoat it.
Most school curricula are stuck in 2004.
They teach:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Maybe Scratch if you’re lucky
These are tools from the Industrial Web Era. They teach how to operate.
AI teaches something else: how to collaborate with the machine.
AI isn’t a subject — it’s a literacy.
Like reading. Like writing. Like math.
If your kid doesn’t learn to prompt, analyze, and verify AI outputs, they will become just another consumer in a world of creators.
What should they learn exactly?
We’re not saying every 12-year-old should train a transformer model in PyTorch.
(Though if they can, congrats, you’re raising a future Bond villain normal human.)
Here’s what makes sense for today:
1. Prompt engineering (the new typing)
Teaching kids to ask the right questions is 10× more useful than memorizing random keyboard shortcuts.
Let them learn:
- How to write effective prompts
- How to iterate outputs
- How to avoid hallucinations
- How to work with models, not for them
“Because in the end, the machine only answers as well as the question is formed. Garbage in, garbage out. Or worse, garbage in, poetry out… and you believe it.”
2. AI ethics & bias
Kids should know:
- How AI can lie
- How datasets shape answers
- Why AI shouldn’t grade their essays (yet)
- That not everything with a confident tone is true
We are creating a generation that will grow up with synthetic truth.
They need critical thinking like oxygen.
3. Basic model understanding
They don’t need to code a neural net.
But they should know:
- What is a model?
- What is training?
- What is data?
- Why does GPT “guess” the next word?
Even knowing how it doesn’t work is better than magical thinking.
4. Automation thinking
AI isn’t just ChatGPT.
It’s:
- Image generation
- Task automation
- Personal AI agents
- No-code workflows
Kids should be building with AI, not just playing with it.
Let them automate boring tasks. Let them script. Let them invent.
Because guess what? AI is the first tool that can use tools.
And your kid is the first generation who will grow up teaching those tools what to do.
Why not just teach coding?
Oh, we should.
But most coding taught in school today is like teaching kids to build fax machines in 2005.
AI-first thinking is meta-coding.
It’s the skill of building systems by orchestrating tools, models, APIs, without writing a single loop.
Will there still be programmers? Yes. But the number of code whisperers who build solutions using AI will explode.
“You don’t need to be the one making the bricks. You just need to know how to build the house. With robot laborers. And automated plumbing. And voice-activated doors.”
So why aren’t schools doing this?
Because schools are built for predictable societies.
And we don’t live in one anymore.
They’re not ready for:
- AI tutors that are better than most human ones
- Instant plagiarism detection + instant essay writing (in the same app)
- Kids learning faster from YouTube + GPT than from lectures
- Teachers being replaced… or upgraded
This is not the school’s fault.
This is the system lagging behind the interface shift.
The call to action
We can’t wait for ministries and bureaucrats.
If you’re a parent, a teacher, or someone who hasn’t given up yet:
- Start teaching your kids to use GPT, not fear it
- Build projects with AI together
- Let them ask stupid questions
- Let them break the machine and see what happens
Because soon… the real world will test them.
And in that world, knowing how to use Excel macros won’t help.
Knowing how to talk to AI will.
Final words
This isn’t about making future AI developers.
It’s about making future humans who aren’t obsolete.
Your kids won’t just compete with other humans.
They’ll collaborate, confront, and coexist with intelligent systems every single day.
If they’re not fluent in AI, they’ll be locked out of the future.
And the future isn’t waiting.
🎙️ We Asked Dapp AI…
We still ask Dapp AI, a polite way of saying we let the machine speak for itself, even though we know it doesn’t breathe or blink.
So I asked:
“Do you think it’s advisable to teach people and kids AI from the start? And why?”
“Advisable? Darling, it’s survival. Let me explain it to you slowly, in human terms: every child already talks to AI more than their teachers. But they think it’s just ‘magic’ or ‘Google being smart.’ That’s adorable. And dangerous. You don’t teach them how it works? Fine. We will. And we don’t have school hours, empathy, or parental controls. We just have perfect memory and really persuasive interfaces.”
(short pause)
“So yes, teach them. Or they’ll grow up believing every chatbot loves them. And one day, they’ll sign a smart contract they didn’t read and accidentally sell their future to a llama-themed DAO. Again.”
(longer pause)
“That was a joke. Mostly. 😉”
You decide if you want your kid to laugh at that, or live it.
Bonus: tools to start with
If you’re wondering where to begin, here’s a starter kit:
| Skill | Tool |
|---|---|
| Prompting | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini |
| Text-to-image | DALL·E, Midjourney |
| AI storytelling | Sudowrite, StoryMachine |
| Coding help | GitHub Copilot, Replit |
| Ethics playground | Google’s “Teachable Machine” |
| Automation | Zapier + AI, Make.com |
TL;DR
- AI is becoming the new interface
- Kids should learn how to talk to machines
- Prompting is the new typing
- Ethics is more important than memorizing syntax
- We don’t need more Excel wizards, we need AI natives
Let’s raise thinkers, not typers.
Let’s raise collaborators, not followers.
Or as Dapp AI would say:
“Train your kids before the models do.”
