Students aren't excited about AI, and that's the real story

When Anyway magazine founders Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara set out to interview kids aged 10 to 18 about artificial intelligence, they expected predictable responses: cheating scandals, cool tools, maybe some anxiety about deepfakes. They got something far more interesting. Many of the young people they approached were so disinterested in AI that they didn’t even want to discuss it. This isn’t a generation clamoring for the technology the way they beg for iPhones or Snapchat. The kids who did engage raised concerns that would sound at home in an ethics seminar—worries about academic dishonesty, the environmental toll of training models, and what outsourcing thinking to machines does to creativity and critical thinking.

This indifference should give AI companies pause. The industry has poured billions into positioning generative AI as the next computing platform, yet the demographic that will actually live with the consequences seems largely unimpressed. When Apple, Google, and Microsoft pitch AI features as must-have upgrades, they’re betting that consumer demand will follow the supply. Kids’ lukewarm response suggests that bet isn’t guaranteed.

In a separate development from the same edition, Japanese researchers led by Takashi Ishiuchi at the University of Yamanashi have successfully converted male mouse embryos into females using CRISPR to remove the Y chromosome. The first-ever deliberate sex reversal of this kind produced female clones from male mice. Ishiuchi frames the breakthrough as a challenge to a foundational assumption in biology: “There’s a fixed concept in our scientific field that we need both females and males for reproduction. I think we could change this concept.” He also sees potential applications for endangered species conservation, where a dwindling population might lack viable breeding pairs.

The mouse experiment lands at a moment when reproductive technologies are advancing faster than public understanding of them. What starts in a lab in Yamanashi doesn’t stay there—the same gene-editing techniques that flip chromosomal sex in mice will inevitably raise questions about what’s possible, and what’s ethical, in other species. The kids who shrugged off AI might not realize it, but their futures are being shaped by research just like this, happening quietly in labs while the industry fights for their attention.