Dr Fazal

The fu­ture we are in now be­longs to our chil­dren. Our fears can be­come a cage that makes them doubt their per­son­al the­o­ries and ca­pa­bil­i­ties. They are AI-na­tives. Let them be free to think and cre­ate. They will make lots of big mis­takes. So what? Fail­ure is bet­ter than nev­er try­ing. To do noth­ing is to nev­er fail. To nev­er fail is to do noth­ing.

René Descartes, in his 1637 “Dis­course on the Method”, wrote, “je pense, donc j’ex­iste.”

He point­ed to the idea: “I think, there­fore I ex­ist.” Lat­er, in 1644, in his “Prin­ci­ples of Phi­los­o­phy”, he ex­plic­it­ly pub­lished the Latin phrase “cog­i­to er­go sum” (I think, there­fore I am). Descartes set out to strip away all his pre­vi­ous be­liefs.

He ar­gued that if he could find even the slight­est rea­son to doubt any piece of knowl­edge, he would treat it as false.

But in the fu­ture that is al­ready here, I em­pha­sise that our chil­dren must learn to fail, not just doubt. Er­ran­do et ca­den­do, flo­rere discimus.

On­ly by “wan­der­ing and falling can they learn to flour­ish.” Carte­sian doubt lights the slow fuse of the imag­i­na­tion, but it is not enough in the Age of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI).

Our chil­dren must learn to fail small and re­cov­er fast. They must be giv­en end­less op­por­tu­ni­ties to fail as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, adapt, it­er­ate, and re­cov­er with ve­loc­i­ty. There is no Big Bang! On­ly the next it­er­a­tion.

This is an un­known cul­tur­al oa­sis for for­mer plan­ta­tion so­ci­eties and sys­tems of Ward Schools that cre­at­ed no space for fail­ure.

In pre-eman­ci­pa­tion and post-in­de­pen­dent so­ci­eties, fail­ure con­tin­ues to be as­so­ci­at­ed with shame and stain.

Yet we wit­ness the stream of Elon Musk’s fail­ures, re­cov­er­ies, and ul­ti­mate suc­cess­es. Musk has re­de­fined fail­ure as es­sen­tial. But how does this, Al­bert Ban­dura, “ob­ser­va­tion­al learn­ing” op­por­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness his “fail­ing fast to flour­ish” change the colo­nial Rolodex cur­ricu­lum of our schools and uni­ver­si­ties?

All ac­tion is open to risk and fail­ure. Don’t hold your chil­dren back.

AI has en­cir­cled us, like a ring of white boul­ders around the flag staff, and we can’t find our way out.

There is no sanc­tu­ary. But they know the path. What they have is—lim­it­less naivete, un­af­fect­ed sim­plic­i­ty, and an ab­sence of ar­ti­fi­cial­i­ty.

As the in­fos­phere evolves, the abil­i­ty to de­vel­op AI-based LLM ap­pli­ca­tions is be­com­ing an in­creas­ing­ly in­valu­able skill to nur­ture among the youth. Se­lect­ing the cor­rect lan­guage is key.

Some pro­gram­ming lan­guages are pop­u­lar for their sim­plic­i­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy, and ro­bust li­brary sup­port.

Python is easy for be­gin­ners to learn, while its ex­ten­sive li­brary re­sources al­low ex­pe­ri­enced de­vel­op­ers to build com­plex AI sys­tems quick­ly.

Li­braries such as Ten­sor­Flow, Py­Torch, and Scik­it-learn pro­vide pow­er­ful tools for ma­chine learn­ing, deep learn­ing and da­ta analy­sis.

JavaScript is used to in­te­grate AI func­tion­al­i­ty in­to web ap­pli­ca­tions.

Li­braries like Ten­sor­Flow en­able AI de­vel­op­ers to train ma­chine learn­ing mod­els di­rect­ly in the brows­er.

Python is per­fect for da­ta-loaded projects, while JavaScript is ex­cel­lent for web-based AI ap­pli­ca­tions.

If you want to build ap­pli­ca­tions that use LLMs like Lla­ma, Claude, Gem­i­ni, Grok, DeepSeek, and Com­mand, you will need to con­nect to them us­ing APIs.

APIs al­low you to send re­quests to LLMs and get re­spons­es. Even if you opt for self-host­ing an LLM, you will still need to use APIs to com­mu­ni­cate with it.

Some of the best APIs for work­ing with LLMs in­clude LiteLLM, Groq, Hug­ging Face In­fer­ence API, Azure Ope­nAI Ser­vice and Google Cloud Ver­tex AI.

Google Cloud Ver­tex AI is a uni­fied AI plat­form that helps you to build, de­ploy, and scale AI mod­els, in­clud­ing LLMs.

Rather than pas­sive­ly us­ing tech­nol­o­gy, fam­i­lies can en­gage their chil­dren in imag­in­ing AI projects and even al­low them to test AI-pow­ered smart-home projects, cre­at­ing a shared ex­pe­ri­ence of dis­cov­ery root­ed in din­ner dis­cus­sions, re­source­ful­ness, and trust.

Par­ents can al­low their chil­dren to take them on a com­pelling jour­ney to cre­ate a con­text-aware, AI-pow­ered smart home.

Rather than turn­ing off lights when you leave, AI can study your us­age rou­tine and an­tic­i­pate when a room should be dimmed or cooled.

Smart kitchens can track gro­cery us­age and sug­gest menus aligned with your di­et.

AI-en­abled ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems bal­ance com­fort with en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, cut­ting util­i­ty bills and re­duc­ing your home’s car­bon foot­print.

This shift has re­con­fig­ured home au­toma­tion from de­cree-based com­mand to con­text-aware in­tel­li­gence.

AI-en­abled sur­veil­lance cam­eras can de­tect and track ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty, use fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware, and send re­al-time im­ages to se­cu­ri­ty net­works.

Smart locks can be con­trolled re­mote­ly and in­te­grat­ed with fa­cial recog­ni­tion sys­tems for key­less en­try.

AI will emerge along­side wear­able tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ences, per­son­alised cli­mate zones, AI-pow­ered in­door farm­ing se­tups, and in­tel­li­gent health-mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems.

These ex­pe­ri­ences will on­ly grow as AI reg­u­la­tion and da­ta pri­va­cy mea­sures ma­ture and trust in in­tel­li­gent ecolo­gies flour­ish­es.

Dr Fazal Ali com­plet­ed his Mas­ter's in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He was a Com­mon­wealth Schol­ar who at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Hugh­es Hall; the Provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go; the act­ing Pres­i­dent of UTT; and the Chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is the Pres­i­dent of NI­HERST and an ex­ter­nal ser­vices con­sul­tant with the IDB.