AI Natives: Growing up in an AI world

We’ve seen the seismic effects growing up with the internet and social media had on a generation. What will it look like for those raised side-by-side with AI?

For years, teenagers have smirked at their parents falling for fake news online, their clumsy handling of smartphones, their fear of Alexa.

They are from a generation who grew up with one hand on the iPad and the other clutching the WiFi password – Marc Prensky’s so-called ‘digital natives’.

For them, the internet was school, street, and playground rolled into one. As a result, their mindsets and perspectives have diverged sharply from their parents for whom the digital world was clearly distinct from the ‘real’ world. For digital natives, real and digital overlapped seamlessly – and digital worlds gained standing as places to exist, not just visit.

This generational divide came about because most digital platforms and apps arose as electronic versions of physical services. And, in a skeuomorphic way, they retained certain quirks and expectations from their previous incarnations – social media initially functioning far more as a directory than a place of interaction, for instance.

Over time, however, these boundaries began to blur. Services became less tethered to their physical origins, especially as users who grew up without those frames of reference adopted and moulded them to their own needs. 

This is not new thinking, of course. Discourse around digital natives has been around for arguably twenty years. And though platforms and communities have come and gone, the fundamentals have remained relatively unchanged. Teleport a teen from 2010 to 2026 and it would be a short transition period, at least in the universe of apps and devices.

But change always comes. And with the advent of AI there are signs that many ‘digital natives’ will be left on the wrong side of a technological divide, just as their parents were.

The coming behavioural shifts

The suggestion is this: those raised with AI will have a starkly different relationship with it than those who were not. 

This relationship is likely to be much more symbiotic and co-dependent, bringing with it a huge range of cognitive and behavioural changes. For example, their relationship with effort, knowledge and authorship is likely to differ sharply – just in the same way digital natives grew to have very different views on things like privacy and authority than their parents. 

AI is simultaneously isolating while also offering 24/7, constant companionship and advice. It produces hours of work in seconds, turning amateurs into experts. It is an incredible conduit for creativity while simultaneously seriously damaging our ability to think critically. Work, leisure, and education will be entirely upended – are already being entirely upended – with all the societal and economic impacts that will have.

Analogue natives took their cues from respected institutions. Digital natives trusted themselves or chosen individuals. AI natives will likely represent a fusion of the two approaches – collaborative co-creation with a trusted institution (AI itself) driven by individual interest and intent. 

How will these changes reshape society?

It’s impossible to predict exactly how society will change as those who grew up with AI enter the workforce (or don’t!). But there are certainly good odds on some particular changes. Here are a few we feel are especially likely to come to pass:

1) Taste, originality, and imagination rule

While the limitations of AI are unknown, for the sake of argument, imagine everyone now has access to a tool that can create any audiovisual output perfectly.

In this world of perfect execution, the only differentiator becomes ideas themselves (and the ability to broadcast them.) As such, the ability to understand the tastes of others and envision a particular outcome is paramount. Creative direction will become ever more valuable as a skill, yet as a skill that everyone is trained in from early childhood – fiercely competitive. The only dull branding will be intentionally so, as the cost of going from vision to reality collapses.

Whether AI matures to that level is yet to be determined, but its ceiling is surely closer to that end of the spectrum that it is to where we are now – leading to a society where creative execution is always of extremely high quality.

2) Expertise is fundamentally devalued

Ask any doctor and they will sigh and complain at length about patients Googling their own symptoms and coming to appointments armed with dodgy self-diagnoses. But this is only a taste of a world where an AI on your phone contains more knowledge than any single lawyer or doctor or engineer on the planet.

While it may be on shaky ground for now, we are not far from a point where an individual’s expertise and credentials will be open to critique to anyone with an internet connection – the end of exceptionalism. And this time, the critiques will probably be completely valid.

Knowledge will be democratised in a way never seen before, leading to self-reliance (with AI) and a collapse of institutional trust that is even more wide-ranging than it is at present.

3) Active creation usurps passive consumption

Perhaps the most interesting possibility of the three. Making your own fun has always been less commonplace than consuming entertainment provided by others. But with screen time at an all-time high, it has never been less relevant than it has in recent decades. Most of us are passive consumers, active doers second.

But AI opens up an intriguing possibility – that we will increasingly take the reins of our own entertainment. Creating our own music, literature, games, and more. The barrier to entry and the time to quality will have fallen so far, and children will be raised in an environment where they can envision what they want and get it. There will be far less need to rely on the talent and mastery of others – why settle for the vision of others?

4) The death of browsing

Digital natives grew up in a time of unimaginable informational abundance. They were self-taught experts in searching, comparing, browsing and curating across platforms to get what they wanted. The individual ruled and trust in institutions was laid low.

Yet the need to fetch and retrieve information, even learning ‘how’ things are made, will be drastically reduced – in its place, skill at negotiating outcomes will sit above all others.

AI natives are far less likely to browse to come to decisions. Instead, they will be briefing their desired outcomes. Effectively: if the internet turned shopping into research, AI will turn it into procurement.

It goes against many of our current instincts that consumers will accept recommendations at face value, but in many ways, it’s a return to a time when consumers had far less exposure to advertising channels and direct recommendations were more important.

Even if over 90% of us research products online before we buy them, the extent and efficacy of an individual’s research varies significantly. And when an AI can perform the equivalent of hours of in-depth research in a matter of seconds, the need for manual research disappears – so long as you can trust AI’s answers.

5) Relinquishing of autonomy

Just as analogue natives looked on in horror at their children’s cavalier attitude to privacy, digital natives will likely have the same reaction to their children’s easygoing trust of autonomous AI agents. 

For digital natives who prided themselves on being independent and self-reliant in their decision making, the idea of voluntarily handing over control to a machine is close to unthinkable. But for AI natives who grow up using AI with a partnership mindset, this reluctance won’t be ingrained.

From finances to fashion choices, there will be a generational line in the sand as to the degree with which different ages trust AI to make choices for them. It will be a clear boundary line that blurs, much as the digital/analogue line blurred before it.

6) Social issues and fragmentation

With social media bans on the cards and little clarity on what the AI market will look like in even five years, certain trends are harder than others to predict. But if we presume AI tools will continue to be present and available from a young age, we can expect to see an acceleration of certain social issues and the manifestation of new ones.

AI becoming a predominant source of advice, education, and entertainment will disrupt traditional social connections – parents, friends, and teachers. In turn, this will likely amplify existing problems with the development of social cues and conflict resolution skills from an early age.

Likewise, AI that learns all about you and partners with you at all times is likely to lead to a kind of ‘bubble’ mentality – suppressing normal prosocial behaviours. Why turn to other people when a more private, accurate and knowledgeable source is in your hands? This will lead to even more pronounced taste fragmentation.

Quick brand takeaways

Brands will need to understand what customers want to a far more granular degree – and cater accordingly. AI native tendencies will radically alter organic discovery because customer desires inform the outcomes they will be asking for. There will be far less ‘accidental’ discovery from browsing. Brands will need to know and own the best qualities of their product/service, ensure they align extremely closely with customer wants, and that these qualities are highlighted appropriately and consistently.

Brands will need to be machine-readable and highly evidenced. Customers want qualities like sustainability, but aren’t capable of weighing the evidence easily. AI natives won’t have such limitations. The floor will give way for companies without the credibility to back up their claims – greenwashing and managing perceptions will crumble in the face of what models can verify about you.

Ranking content and reviews fall in relative value. Despite being absolutely critical for digital natives, AI natives won’t be primarily influenced through these channels. They must still exist in a form that AI can absorb and judge, but will no longer be the critical customer-facing assets they once were. 

Previously invisible metrics will become a battleground. Things that were perceived only in the vaguest sense will be clinically observed, measured, and judged. Delivery consistency. Return friction. Complaint resolution speed. Sustainability verification. Stock reliability. Product data quality. API accessibility. Safety records. All these and more will be used to form a picture of reliability and competence that is served to AI native customers.

Who’s laughing now?

It won’t be long before tomorrow’s teenagers are scoffing at their parents for manually typing all their prompts and calling every different AI model ‘ChatGPT’. These AI natives will be inseparable from their AI guides, just as their parents were inseparable from their internet connections. It’s a shift that will upturn much of what we take as established fact in consumer, even human behaviour. It’s a radical shift we will be watching intently, as the incarnations and capabilities of AI shift month by month, and we inch ever closer to the first wave of AI natives crashing on our economic shores.