AI Is Creating a Trust Gap [Raw Session]

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.

I recently, on my vacation back home, was watching my nephews use AI. And it made me realize how differently people are experiencing this whole thing.

Because when adults talk about AI, we talk about it like it is this massive turning point.

I believe it is. I think it is one of the most game-changing technologies we are going to see for a long time. It changes jobs, industry, creativity, trust, and almost every aspect of technology.

Those things might all be true.

But when I watch younger people use it, I do not feel like they see it the same way at all.

00:41 — Kids Treat AI Like An App

They were not staring at it like some miracle. They were not sitting there having a deep conversation about what it means for humanity.

They were just using it.

Homework question? Ask AI.

Need something summarized? AI.

Want to mess around with a picture or an answer or just a joke? Ask AI.

It is not amazing to them in the same way it is amazing to someone else who remembers life before the internet was always in your pocket.

To them, AI is almost just another app.

But the part that stood out to me is that they also do not really trust it.

They know it can be wrong. They know it can make things up. They understand hallucinations. They anticipate it. They know it gives weird answers. They know it can sound confident and still be completely off.

So there is this strange mix happening.

They use it casually, but they do not respect it deeply.

It is useful, but not authoritative. It is convenient, but not trusted.

And I think that is a very different relationship with technology than the one a lot of adults assume kids are having.

02:02 — Leverage, Not Truth

The easiest way I can describe it is that younger people seem to treat AI like leverage, not truth.

Not wisdom. Not a teacher they fully believe.

Just leverage.

It helps them get through something faster. It gives them a starting point. It gets them unstuck.

And to be honest, as I am reading this and talking it out loud, they seem to be using it the way you might use Google or Reddit. You still have to use your mind to decipher what is authentic, what is real, and what has been fudged a little bit.

Sometimes it probably helps them cheat. Sometimes it helps them avoid doing the hard part. And sometimes it is just entertainment.

And I know that can sound like some old person complaining about kids these days, like some back-in-my-day thing where kids are ruining everything.

I do think there are risks there, especially if they never learn the underlying skill.

If every first draft, every explanation, every hard thought gets outsourced too early, something is lost.

There is another video I want to do on that, where we lose the ability to think for ourselves.

But watching the kids use it, I kind of believe there is still a little bit of hope that these kids are seeing it for what it really is.

Not seeing its full potential, but starting from a point of distrust and slowly using it to help them get an edge. Like I said, leverage.

But I also think they are seeing something honestly.

03:42 — Growing Up In A Messy Internet

They are growing up in a world where the internet has always been messy.

They already know that not everything on screen is true. They already know people fake things. They already know apps are trying to get their attention. They already know online realities are unstable.

So when AI gives them an answer, they do not necessarily receive it like truth.

They receive it like output.

And that distinction really matters.

A lot of adults are still shocked that a computer can speak with confidence and be wrong. But younger people seem less shocked by that.

They almost expect it.

And maybe that is good. Maybe that skepticism protects them. And I believe it does.

But there is another side to it.

If everything becomes output and none of it is trusted, then what happens to the idea of actually knowing something?

That is the part I keep getting stuck on a little bit.

04:32 — Older People See The Risk First

Then I think about the older generation, and the relationship can be completely different.

For a lot of older people, and I do not mean my age, I mean older, like my mother, seniors basically, the first thought is not, how can this help me?

The first thought is, how can this hurt me?

And honestly, I understand that also.

They have been scammed. They came late to the technology game. They never know what to trust.

Email scams still work. Text scams still work. Any kind of scam still works.

And AI making phone calls, text messages, follow-ups, and emails better is a constant burden.

If you are already uncomfortable with technology, AI does not feel like a helpful assistant.

It feels like the internet got even harder to trust.

Now the scam emails can be better. The fake voice can sound more real. The fake image can look more believable. Even the videos look real. The text, subtitles, everything can become almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

So you have to come in with skepticism about everything.

It is a sad way to live, but you almost have to assume everything is fake until you can prove that it is not.

The person pretending to be your bank, your kid, or your grandkid can sound more polished than before.

So from that perspective, AI is not a playground. It is a threat surface. It is another open window.

If you already felt like the online world was confusing, AI does not make it feel simpler. It makes it feel like the floor moved again.

06:19 — Fear Is Not Irrational

I think this is where a lot of people in tech miss the emotional part.

We just say, just learn the tool.

But if someone's first experience of the tool is fear, that is not a small thing.

You cannot just explain that away with features, because for them the question is not whether AI can summarize a document or write an email.

The question is whether it can trick them, expose them, impersonate them, or make the world less safe.

And that fear is not completely irrational.

We even have to worry about that. Even young people worry about that. My first instinct is not to trust everything either.

But I still want to have optimism that there are good people and good intentions.

06:58 — The Middle Group

Then there is the group in the middle.

This is where I sit. This is probably where most of my time is spent thinking about it.

Old enough to remember life before all of this, but young enough to know I cannot just ignore it.

I use AI. I build with it. I think with it. I code with it. I shape ideas with it. It helps me move fast. It makes me a little lazier sometimes. It gives me clean answers that still need my judgment.

And sometimes I ask it something and realize the important part was not the answer. It was me figuring out what I actually meant to ask.

That is the weird middle place.

You can see the opportunity. You can also see the cost. You can understand why younger people use it so casually. But you can also understand why older people are scared of it.

And I do not think the answer is to be blindly pro-AI or blindly anti-AI.

That is too easy.

The harder thing is learning how to stay awake while using it.

08:00 — Staying Awake While Using AI

The real danger for me is not that AI exists.

The danger is that it becomes so convenient that I stop noticing which parts of my thinking I am handing over and which parts I am doing myself.

This is where the school example becomes interesting.

If a kid uses AI to finish homework, did they learn?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It depends what happens in their head.

If they use it to understand the problem, compare explanations, test their own answer, or get unstuck after trying, that could be useful.

But if they use it to skip the part where their brain had to struggle, then they got the result without the formation.

And that is not just a school problem.

Adults do this too.

We use AI to write the email before we know what we want to say. We use it to summarize the thing before we have sat with it. We use it to make the plan before we have felt the constraints. We use it to sound clear before we actually are clear.

I am including myself in that one.

I use it a lot to help me form text messages, emails, and responses in general. But I use it to help me pause in most cases and reflect.

There have been plenty of times where AI helped me in that situation.

But there have also been times where I could feel myself reaching for it too early. Not because I needed help, but because I did not want to sit in the messy first part of it. I did not want to waste my time, in a sense.

And that messy first part is usually where the real thinking is.

That is the part where you find out what you believe. That is where you notice the contradictions. That is where you realize the first version of the idea was too simple.

AI can help after that.

But if it replaces that completely, I think something starts to weaken.

09:39 — The Real Generation Gap Is Trust

So maybe the generation gap is not really about who uses AI and who does not.

Maybe it is about trust.

Kids use it, but they do not trust it.

Older people often do not use it because they do not trust the world around it.

And the middle is trying to figure out when trust is earned, when skepticism is healthy, and when fear is just keeping us from learning something useful.

That is a harder skill than prompt engineering.

Knowing when to believe an answer. Knowing when to check it. Knowing when to ask better questions. Knowing when the output sounds good but does not actually match reality. Knowing when speed is helping and when speed is flattening the work.

That is the skill I think people underestimate.

Because AI makes output cheap.

But judgment does not become cheap just because output is cheap.

If anything, judgment becomes more important.

When everyone can generate text, images, code, summaries, plans, and opinions, the valuable part becomes knowing what is worth keeping.

And that is the slow work.

That is attention, taste, context, and lived experience.

That is being able to say, this sounds right, but it is not actually true.

Or, this is technically correct, but it misses the point.

10:52 — Playground Or Prison

That is why the playground-or-prison idea keeps coming back to me.

For some people, AI feels like a playground. You can make things faster, explore ideas, build tools, learn new skills, and turn a blank page into something you can react to.

For other people, it feels like a prison.

More scams. Fake content. Pressure. Job fear. Confusion. More systems they do not understand, but still have to live inside.

And I do not think either reaction is completely wrong.

The same tool can open doors for one person and create anxiety for another.

The same tool can help someone learn and help someone avoid learning.

The same tool can make work better or make work thinner.

This is why I do not want to talk about AI like it is automatically good or automatically bad.

I think the real question is: what kind of relationship are we building with it?

Because if the relationship is just convenience, that has a cost.

If the relationship is just fear, that has a cost too.

And somewhere in the middle is a more difficult path, where you use the tool but keep the judgment active.

11:50 — Keeping Judgment Active

I do not think my nephews are wrong for using it casually.

I do not think older people are wrong for being cautious.

And I do not think people in the middle are wrong for feeling conflicted.

That might actually be the honest place to be.

Because this technology is useful and it is risky. It can help you think and it can help you avoid thinking. It can make things more accessible, or it can make the world harder to trust.

So maybe the goal is not to pick one simple position and defend it forever.

Maybe the goal is to stay aware.

Use it, but do not worship it.

Question it, but do not hide from it.

Let it help with the work, but do not let it replace the part of the work that changes you.

That is the part I keep coming back to with Slow Builds Lab.

The output matters.

But the person being shaped by the process matters too.

And if AI is going to be part of the process now, then I think the challenge is learning how to use it without disappearing inside of it.

Alright, thanks for watching.

Hope you liked this one. Bye.