{"id":4246,"date":"2026-07-04T13:05:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T13:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4246"},"modified":"2026-07-04T13:05:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T13:05:38","slug":"gen-z-isnt-happy-about-ai-even-when-mom-helped-invent-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4246","title":{"rendered":"Gen Z isn\u2019t happy about AI. Even when mom helped invent it."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jana Amin, who graduated from Harvardlast year, calls herself a strong AI skeptic. After witnessing too many fellow students using the technology as a crutch, she rejected AI and helped found a cafe in Cambridge to encourage people to enjoy activities like music performances and plain old conversations, away from their digital devices.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Many of her peers are wary of AI, worried about the technology\u2019s impact on thinking and writing skills, job prospects, and the environment. <\/span><\/p>\n

But in Amin\u2019s case, it feels almost ironic. That\u2019s because her mother, Rana el Kaliouby, is a pioneering scientist in AI who is well known in technology circles. Sheruns a venture capital fund called Blue Tulip Ventures, investing in AI startups, and previously cofounded Affectiva, an MIT Media Lab spinout now owned by Swedish firm Smart Eye. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Amin\u2019s younger brother, Adam Amin, has followed more in his mom\u2019s footsteps to become an AI power user. The Milton teenager founded an artificial intelligence club at his high school, built an app with AI to help translate Arabic documents, and used the technology to advise on his squash games and training.<\/span><\/p>\n

The siblings reflect the opinions of Gen Z, which is split sharply over AI. About half of thoseage 14 to 29 use AI at least weekly and say they are curious about the technology, according to a recent Gallup poll. But almost one-third are angry about AI and 40 percent say they are anxious. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really worry about who gets to play in this AI world, either by building it or by using it or investing in it,\u201d el Kaliouby, 47, said during a family sit-down with a Globe reporter. \u201cAnd then I came home and I was like, oh my god, this is actually playing out in my own family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On a hot June day, the family gathered in their living room to talk about their different perspectives on AI. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m probably the most AI-skeptical of our family,\u201d Jana Amin, 23, said. \u201cI\u2019ve watched how people turn to AI to stop themselves from writing, and as a result, I think a lot of the critical thinking that comes through the process of writing, like the development of new ideas, or making new connections, is being lost,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her brother saw it differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the things we think about at the AI club and at school is how AI can benefit our learning instead of taking away from the learning experience,\u201d the 17-year-old said. \u201cI\u2019d say I\u2019m probably the biggest user of AI in our family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

El Kaliouby\u2019s kids grew up in the same house, where the single mom encouraged them to explore digital technologies along with analog pursuits like sports and music. They had plenty of tech gadgets, such as an Arduino computer, 3D printers, and a Jibo home robot that could recognize faces and conduct simple conversations. But Adam Amin also developed into an avid squash player, and his sister plays the harp and tutored writing. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy philosophy as a parent has always been to expose the kids to technology, not just as consumers, but with a building\/critical thinking perspective,\u201d el Kaliouby said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Adam Amin, a rising senior at Milton Academy, said he was always intrigued by the tech, using the 3D printer to make things around the house and getting sad when the localcompany that made Jibo went out of business and the robot\u2019s servers shut down. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a little kid, my dream job was to move to an island and be a robotics engineer and build an island full of robots,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s terrifying,\u201d his sister responded. <\/span><\/p>\n

While the kids were growing up, el Kaliouby would bring home her research endeavors onusing AI to analyze human emotions, first from MIT\u2019s Media Lab and later from Affectiva,which developed AI systems to track people\u2019s emotional reactions to ads and other content. Sometimes Jana Amin was a test subject, watching television while hooked up to instruments to monitor her brain waves and vital signs to gauge her responses.<\/span><\/p>\n

She\u2019s hardly a technophobe. An earlier wave of technology was perhaps most important to her growing up: social media. <\/span><\/p>\n

The whole family moved from Egypt to the United States when Jana was in fourth grade so el Kaliouby could stop traveling back and forth to Boston and be closer to Affectiva full time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jana Amin was allowed to use Instagram at that young age so she could stay in touch with friends back in Egypt. \u201cTechnology has allowed me to bridge almost my world here in Boston [and] my community back home in Egypt,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s been really special.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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When ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022, Adam Amin was in eighth grade and his sister was in college. <\/span><\/p>\n

He was intrigued and got permission to use the app to assist with a science paper. Unfortunately, the early version of the app made up all its citations, giving mom an opportunity to discuss AI\u2019s downsides (an \u201camazing learning moment,\u201d el Kaliouby calls it now). <\/span><\/p>\n

At Harvard, meanwhile, there was no clear, campus-wide policy about using AI at first, Jana Amin said. She witnessed how some kids used AI to write papers, seeming to avoid doing their own critical thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since graduation a year ago, she has been looking for a job in communications and event planning. Friends using AI have applied to dozens of openings at a time, while she has not used AI and only applied to a handful, writing all of her applications and cover letters herself. <\/span><\/p>\n

El Kaliouby said she is \u201cnot putting any judgment on either approach.\u201d While applying to far fewer jobs, Jana\u2019s gotten interviews from all her applications, she added.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lately, Adam Amin has been using AI to explore documents housed at the American University of Cairo about archeological excavations from the 19th and 20th centuries. Written in Arabic and including hieroglyphics, the documents are hard to parse for typical AI systems, so he created an app that adds context from researchers to help properly decode the writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs we keep moving into a digital world, how are we going to bring our history into the future?\u201d he asked. \u201cAI is going to make it accessible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While he dabbles with the latest AI models, he mostly uses one app called Manas, which uses a variety of different underlying companies\u2019 AI services, to advise him on daily life tasks, like his health and fitness routines.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just took all my Whoop data and downloaded it,\u201d he said, referring to the Boston-based fitness tracker. \u201cThen I gave it to my [app] and I asked it to find the most important trends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you know that\u2019s all your health data, like, you just uploaded to an AI,\u201d Jana Amin warned from across the living room.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adam Amin is going to Egypt to visit his grandmother this summer. He plans to use his translation app on handwritten letters his grandmother has from her mother, containing family recipes. \u201cI want to digitize those using the app I built and see what comes out of it, and what can I learn from that,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you can actually make the recipes,\u201d his mom suggested, as his sister laughed since cooking would pull her brother out of his AI world and into hers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jana Amin is getting ready to reopen her Cambridge cafe, Minara, which closed for renovations in March, for another season of in-person events. She has used social media and flyers to advertise but is counting on a more traditional methodto get the word out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s word of mouth and people feeling like, wow, there\u2019s a place where I can go and feel held, that brought more people through the door,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their mom sees a way to unify both sides of the family\u2019s activities, as AI performing more and more tasks may make people want more in-person events. As AI spreads, \u201cpeople are going to be doubling down on these human experiences and human connections,\u201d el Kaliouby said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rana el Kaliouby’s son founded an AI club at his high school, while her daughter, a recent Harvard grad, avoids the technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nGen Z isn\u2019t happy about AI. Even when mom helped invent it. - Boston Relocation Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4246\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gen Z isn\u2019t happy about AI. 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