Conversations/Path A
Path: youth
A season of 4–6 gatherings · Young people, and those who sit with them
Youth are not an audience for adult alarm. They are already living with companions, classroom tools, and feeds. This path starts where they are.
Opening question
What do you already use that an adult in this room does not understand well enough to ask a good question about?
To hold together
- When is a chatbot a tool, and when is it being asked to be a friend?
- What would a fair classroom tool actually do?
- How do you tell a true thing from a fluent thing?
A practice
Let youth set the order of the next three gatherings. Adults listen first. Use the map as a shared table, not as a test.
Concerns to name in the room
Principles to sit beside the facts
Dignity
Every person is a protagonist, not a data point.
Meaningful conversation
Conversation builds the language of a new reality.
Seeing potential
Ask what people could become with these tools, not whom they replace.
Listening
Listen to understand, rather than listen to speak.
Read or watch beforehand
One piece is enough. Save the rest for later.
Sherry Turkle
Professor · MIT
Reclaiming Conversation is the book for groups, especially with youth, who want to talk about companionship, attention, and what a machine cannot hold.
Tristan Harris
Co-founder · Center for Humane Technology
Named how attention systems shape minds at scale, then turned the same lens on generative models in The AI Dilemma.
Justin Reich
Director, Teaching Systems Lab · MIT
Failure to Disrupt is a sober history of education technology. A good companion when a school group is being sold a tutor.
Emily M. Bender
Professor of linguistics · University of Washington
Insists that language models are not minds. A clarifying voice when a group is mixing 'the model said' with 'a person claims.'