Solving deeper problems

"Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated. -- Fred Rogers"

I am so amazed and grateful to get to use AI to write software. It has probably doubled the speed, effectiveness and enjoyment of my work. Large Language Models (LLMs) have solved the problem of language by mimicking the neural network structure of the human brain. When this problem was solved, a whole host of other problems just end up getting solved because most problems can be decomposed into a “language”. For example, AI can treat the data of DNA, brain scans, biometrics, code, the text of the internet, robotics, videos, images, protein folding, sound and the stock market as language, thus enabling it to understand, reason, process and transform it. All this has me thinking about the level of abstraction of the problems we choose to solve. The deeper the problem, the more valuable the solution.

Last week, I began working on an app to connect parents with their kids screen time. I’ve been excited to get out of bed each morning and the progress so far has literally got me jumping and shouting for joy!

I saw in the broader culture how screens were de-facto teaching children in an unprecedentedly private space. I thought: why should AdTech know more about kids than their actual parents? For years I’ve hated the limitations and complexities of the current options. I just wanted something to keep an eye on what they are doing and let me know if there’s a problem. I just wanted a phone or iPad to be as visible as a TV in the living room. The idea is to block everything except the few things which are safe and expected. If the child needs something that is blocked, they can unblock it by sharing their screen. The screen capture is analyzed by AI on-device which looks for sensitive content and extracts text information. This analysis, along with screenshot summaries are sent to the parent’s web dashboard. The application can be installed via the app store with no special requirements other than that the device needs to be registered to a child less than 18 years old via their iCloud account. (Which should be the case anyway on child devices!)

Perhaps I can share a bit of my motivation here. In most Bibles, you will find a division in the middle with the Old Testament on the left and the New Testament on the right. There was a period of 400 years of silence between them; there was no word from God. The last prophet was Malachi and these were the last words God spoke through him:

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction. (Malachi 4:5-6 NIV).

So people were looking for this prophet. Then the father of John (the Baptist) heard an angel prophesy of John:

He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1:16-17 NIV)

Jesus later confirms this prophesy of the spirit and power of Elijah was fulfilled in John. God cares deeply about children and about discipleship. So much that the last prophecy before Jesus was that he would make it right, and the inauguration of his only Son began with this fulfillment. Parents are the natural ones to disciple their children; when that relationship breaks, God is highly motivated to repair it.

One day Jesus said to his disciples, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. (Luke 17:1-2 NLT)

Why was it important to reconnect the parents with the children?

We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders. (Psalm 78:4 NLT)

Few were literate in biblical times; the education of children about God would come from the parents. If this connection were severed, children would suffer from a disconnection from God, and all the pain, lostness, and devastation that comes with that both on a personal and national level.

Regardless of the relationship you have with your parents, Jesus came to mend this broken relationship with God. Jesus was the one John pointed to, who was the one Malachi pointed to.

For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. (2Corinthians 5:19 NLT)

Indeed, this reconciliation of earthly parent and child relationships foreshadowed the greater reconciliation of our heavenly father to humanity.

For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NLT)