Should my daughter learn to code?

Hello, and welcome to Raising Generation AI with me, mom of two, Holly Green.

And me, AI expert, Fiona Morgan.

This podcast is all about the complicated world of parenting and AI, because I’m a mom, and I’m a bit worried about it all.

And this week, we’re asking the question, should my daughter learn to code? And later on, we’ll be chatting to the most amazing woman, Anne-Marie Imafidon.

Now, last week, we were talking about AI agents, and this week, I saw Hannah Fry talking about how she made her own AI agent, and it went completely rogue, and it tried to buy a load of paper clips, email lots of people trying to sell them novelty

mugs, and then leaked all her passwords to the internet. What is going on?

You have to remember, though, that when you’re building an AI agent, you’re choosing to give it access to your things. So if you’re not giving an AI agent access to your emails, it’s not going to start emailing people from your email address.

It’s not going to just happen to all of us. But this is a legitimate question about what we give access to technology to. An example, we might have an Apple phone, like an iPhone, and then we might have, let’s say, a Google email address.

Now, they’re two different tech companies that do different things. We probably want to be able to access our Google email on our iPhone.

In order to do that, we have to give the iPhone access to our Google email address and allow us to do things like delete stuff, send emails, like stuff we want to be able to do. So we all the time are giving access to technology to our emails.

But don’t worry, Apple at the moment, I don’t know where they’re going, but Apple at the moment is just a pretty basic program that you send an email, it just allows you to send it through Google.

What Hannah’s done is she’s allowed access to send emails on its behalf. And she’s suggested that the goal is, I don’t know, to make me more money. I don’t know what her goal was.

And it’s thought, you know what, I’ve got a really good contact list here, I’m going to send loads of emails. And that’s kind of how AI agents work. You still choose that goal, you still give the access.

Robot revolution isn’t about to happen, unless you’re building an AI agent and giving access to everything.

I love the idea of having to email everyone and going, I’m really sorry, I wasn’t actually trying to sell you a mug with my face on it, it was my AI agent.

And you don’t expect someone like Hannah Fry to not be making those mistakes.

I love Hannah Fry though.

Have you seen she’s going to be on the next series of Traitors?

I have, I’m so excited. What a lineup. I’m particularly excited about James Acaster.

Did you see him on Bake Off when he did Celebrity Bake Off? One of the funniest bits of TV I think I’ve ever seen.

I feel particularly bad saying this because I then did actually go and see him do a stand-up piece where he talked about this, but he was actually in not a particularly good state because his girlfriend had left him for Mr. Bean for Roman Atkinson.

I know there’s a whole piece around it. He has the most bizarre life, but he was jet-lagged and all that had just happened, and then he was suddenly on Celebrity Bake Off, and it produced comedy gold.

You have to go and find the clips, but it was just one of my funniest moments.

I did not expect that to be the word that came out of your mouth.

I know. I’m a big James A. Caster fan.

I’ve read his books and things like that, so I’m quite a strange hardcore fan. There’s so many good people on that list that I think are just going to be phenomenal. Again, Joe Lysett, another great comedian.

Miranda Hart.

I have history with Miranda Hart.

I used to work at BBC Television Centre, and I saw her coming down the corridor one day and I was like, oh, Miranda, I haven’t seen her in ages. Then she walked towards me, I slowed down to chat to her, and I gave her a big smile and a wave.

Just as she caught my eye, I realized I didn’t know her, I just recognized her from the telly. And she just looked really confused at me and walked off. And you know, just inside when you just want to curl up and wilt with shame, it was like that.

But anyway, it’ll be nice to see her on The Traitors. Anyway, back to the matter at hand, we have got someone very exciting on the podcast today. I am so looking forward to chatting to this guest.

She’s had such a big impact on so many young people’s lives.

And next we’ll be chatting to Stemettes CEO Anne-Marie Imafidon.

Holly, today’s guest is someone I’ve admired for years. When I was 16, I moved to a different town to do my A-levels, and I remember walking into my computer science lesson, having no friends and being the only woman.

And at that point, I went straight to the administrators and requested to change subjects. And I honestly think if Anne-Marie had been doing what she does now, when I was younger, then my life would have taken a different path.

I got there in the end, I’m now working in tech, but there are a lot of people probably that haven’t. Anne-Marie founded Stemettes over a decade ago, and now they’ve got tens of thousands of girls excited about steam.

She passed her A level in computing at age 11 and has an Oxford Masters by 20. And last year, she was appointed the UK government’s women in tech envoy.

Now, don’t let any of that intimidate you, because one of the things Anne-Marie is great at is making tech feel approachable. So no matter who she’s talking to, she can make you understand it and get your head around things.

So when we’re asking, should my daughter learn to code, there’s genuinely no one better to talk to. Anne-Marie Imafidon, welcome to Raising Generation AI.

Hi, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Can I say I’m a bit of a fan because I love watching you on Countdown. That was my dream career when I was a kid.

And although I have a master’s degree, I’m actually really rubbish at the numbers questions. We’re not here to do a countdown, though, but I just thought you were great.

We’re not, but I’m just going to say it is important to say that. And I did say that to folks that on your maths degree, you’re not there taking six numbers and trying to make a three-digit number of them.

Like it’s not hilariously, it’s not part of the syllabus or the curriculum. In fact, there’s not very many numbers on a maths degree, as you know. But it’s really funny because I was like, yeah, that like slow maths is also a thing.

And a lot of mathematicians don’t like doing maths at speed on demand.

I really want to come back and ask you about countdown. I’m going to start with the tech questions, but we will come back and talk about it.

Yeah, we’ll get to countdown afterwards, yeah.

So I am not very techy and I have got two young children. My girl is five and I’m at the moment struggling with what on earth I encourage them into and teach them about the world.

I mean, a few years ago, I would have thought, oh, coding is a brilliant thing to do. And now I’m thinking, is it AI can code? Is there any point in that?

So coding is something that is definitely going to, I mean, already underpins so much of what we see in life.

And so having an appreciation or having a literacy or being able to, they call it kind of computational thinking, like there’s so many elements of it that would be useful for your daughter or any sons or any children or any young people that you know

to have and to know. And so whether it’s something that all of them must learn, there’s very few things that all of them must learn, right? They must learn a language in order to communicate. It’s good to be numerate.

But coding being on that must list, because of AI or not, is not something I’d necessarily kind of propose for everybody despite me doing the work that I do.

And we’re about encouraging and engaging and championing girls and young women and young non-binary folk as well into STEM being science, technology, engineering and maths, which is broader than purely the technology.

And also STEAM, which includes art and design in there, because that’s where we believe is the true heart of innovation. And so for us, it’s about building a literacy, building an understanding and exploring these things.

But there’s no compulsion in it. And you’re right, AI, one of the biggest proponents of AI, one of the big companies kind of announced a couple of days ago that 80% of their entire code base now has been written by AI.

And so there are these things that yes, AI is driving so many things, is writing these things. But it’s the same kind of thing. I mean, we would have had this with the typewriter, right?

In previous industrial revolutions where folks are moving to things, oh, you’ll never have to write anything ever again, because now we typewrite it, we put it in the keyboard or we… Remember when the word word processor, right?

It was the biggest innovation that folks were excited about. There’s always going to be a march of technology. There’s always going to be something new.

But there is something of having a literacy, having an understanding, and if she’s curious or wants to know or wants to understand, or is going to be able to use it as an extra tool to understand life, to build agency, to create as she wishes, then

that’s definitely the reason to lean into learning to code, exploring digital making and digital creativity, and leaning into any of those kinds of things. Very long answer to a very short question.

Well, I think there’s so much to say about it, isn’t there? Just going back to what you said about we’ve had so many technical innovations. The trouble with this one is, is exponential change, isn’t it?

Therefore, I think so much harder to get a sense of what the future will look like and what kids will be doing in the future.

So it is and it isn’t, right? So it definitely is exponential change. It’s not going anywhere.

It’s not a fad, right? So we also had this thing when, I don’t know, the web was becoming more and more ubiquitous, folks saying it’s a fad, it will never last kind of thing.

So we’re not saying that necessarily, or I’m not saying that necessarily by AI. But I think we do have to remember that there is, and you’ll appreciate this actually Holly, life is more complicated than maths.

There are things that the AI can do and will touch, and then there will be elements of life that AI is not going to center and won’t be central to.

So I think folks should take heart in communicating with other people, connecting with people, collaborating with others is still going to be something that will be needed, will be wanted, will be happening.

It’s not that everything will completely shut down now because AI is there and same way that everything didn’t completely shut down with the Internet. So it will change, it will transform.

However, what it is to be human, that human experience, feeling pain, feeling joy, like those things will still be here, will still be a part of what’s going on, will still be things that you can incite and you can encourage in others.

So I think it’s important as a parent to consider, this is why we lean into the STEAM so much, is that these skills, this creativity, this critical thinking, this collaboration, this communication, will still be skills that are needed, no matter what

happens next with the AI, or quantum, or, in a certain name, of whatever the, you know, the raising generation, goo goo gaga, right, will be the, in six years’ time, will be the next big thing that folks are excited about. And so I think it’s

important for us to remember that as we’re raising our children, as we’re engaging with youth, as we’re preparing people for a world that we don’t know what happens next. There are things that we know have always been and will always be, and so let’s

So there are skills that regardless of technology will always be highly valued.

I wonder too if, I mean, you talk about the arts there as well. I wonder if it’ll be the case that human created things become that much more prized because they’re not done by machines.

And so I wonder if we’ll go down that route of actually human created art, human created music will become especially idealized. I don’t know.

Artisan, you know, you have artisan, artisanal software, right? That’s definitely hand coded. I mean, we’ve seen this, like, yeah, like you’re saying, we’ve seen this with so many other things.

I think there’s also a sense of, so much of what we’re seeing with AI is repeating things, right? Or rehashing what’s existing. Whereas again, as humans, we’re able to synthesize, we’re able to feel, we’re able to experience.

And so there are still new things that need to be created that the AI won’t necessarily have the data sets for, or won’t necessarily have the explained logic for.

And you can kind of see that already in the way that AI is being used, let’s say, in the workplace, or in particular, it’s being used for processes that we know that have already been repeated, right?

And that we’re able to say, this is simple enough, or we’ve codified this, or we have a model that represents this in a way that we can reliably say it will make that decision again and again.

And when you really look at it, there’s a, currently there’s an aero band, but that only expands so much, because there’s some things that we will never know. Judging human beings is always, and has always been, something that’s been tough.

And even more so now, folks are using AI for recruitment here, there, and everywhere, and we’re seeing how it’s still making the same mistakes that a human would have made. So we as humans haven’t been able to perfect recruitment.

So how would we be able to train technology to do something that we can’t do? And so I think there’s still those opportunities.

The other thing I will say, so I have a number of hats, Stemettes, and I’m also involved with an organization called the Institute for the Future of Work. And we’ve been looking specifically, this Fourth Industrial Revolution.

So again, it’s not just AI, there are other kind of technologies that are bubbling up, that are changing life as we know it at the moment. We zoom in on work.

And one of the things that we’ve done recently and everything we do is kind of free for folks to access and engage with was around jobs. So we did a big analysis of jobs and job descriptions and kind of open roles at different intervals.

And we’re tracking and seeing what skills are becoming more and more common across job roles. What are the ones that are falling away? And these things that we would and recognize esteem.

So that collaboration, that critical thinking, that communication, that creativity are still things that are wanted and are desired. Even as something like AI or kind of data proficiency is also kind of appearing quite a lot across those roles.

So I think we should cling to what are the things that bring us joy, if you wish? What are the things that we’re able to create? What are we able to synthesize?

And the AI or the technology will always be behind us, always be enabling us to do those things. It’s never going to be able to fully, truly replace those things because it’s never felt love.

So it’s only rehashing what others have said of love rather than it genuinely being in love.

Feeling love, yeah.

And then writing music and producing art based on being in love.

We have specifically called this episode, Should My Daughter Learn To Code? Why is it important that we’re asking that question about girls specifically?

It’s incredibly important because we in the technology industry, which is not purely about coding, there’s a lot of coding that does go on inside the technology industry.

For decades now, I’ve had quite a serious problem with representation of women in roles of any kind. Leadership roles, entry roles, technical roles, non-technical roles, we’ve had a really big problem in terms of that representation.

Given that technology itself has driven so much of what life is like, of our experiences, of the products that we have, of the services, of the way that power is managed, is distributed, is held, not having women in that room has meant that so many

decisions are made by people who have never experienced things that a woman might have experienced. Therefore, aren’t able to build products or services that reflect our experience, our existence.

There are a lot of women in the world, in that constituency, maybe half, some would say 51% depending on where you take your figures from.

But the idea that we’re not then taken into account means that often we have substandard products and services that don’t solve problems for us, and actually more critically, it ends up being dangerous.

There are all manner of examples that we can give of something like seat belts, which is tech and engineering adjacent, where you’re much more likely to be harmed in an accident by your seat belt.

You’re wearing one because the safety standards are based on 50th percentile male.

To medical equivalents of the symptoms that you have before you have a heart attack as a woman are different to what you have as a man, before a man has a heart attack, and so that we’re then not diagnosing.

To something like endometriosis, which predominantly affects women. There are so many areas and spheres of life that this technology is taking things forward and is progressing.

But if it’s missing out half of the population, or if it’s not taking them into consideration or valued their experience, then those products are going to end up being substandard, or harmful, or dangerous, or just rubbish.

I mean, one of my favorite ones to talk about, and again, this is overlapping with women’s experiences, but not all of them will necessarily align with this in the way I’m going to tell it.

But every couple of years, the health tech industry discovers the period for the first time. And it’s my favorite one on tech stages, and just say periods, periods, menopause, pregnancy.

You know, dramatic, pregnant, if you want, pause before going into this. But you discover the period for the first time, every kind of four years, okay?

And the example I gave, which I talk about in my book, actually, She’s in Control, is of one company who discovered the period for the very first time, and then allowed people to track 10 days of their period.

Okay.

Which again, I always pause and leave it there. If folks are watching this, they’ll probably see Fiona’s face. And sometimes Fiona’s face is, while she’s still talking about periods, how did we get here?

This is why we don’t give women the mic, right? It’s 10 days on a period. What’s the connect?

What’s the… And so you have to ask yourself the question, in this health tech company, was it that they didn’t have a single person who ever met anyone who’d ever had a period?

So hang on. Why? I’m so confused.

Why are they tracking periods for 10 days?

Just because it might have been that they didn’t have anyone that ever met anyone that ever had a period that worked on those teams or released those, or was it that there was a couple of people maybe in the building as those meetings were happening,

as that developing was going on, as the marketing campaign was being put together, as it was being pushed out to all these people on this device, because they were a consumer device that lots of people have, and at least one of you is probably

Wow.

You have to ask yourself the question, if you’ve met someone who’s had a period before, which most of us have because of how biology works, and we were literally talking about periods, and your input wasn’t valued, what are the other things that you

know that should have been heard in those rooms on several things that have then got in the way of true innovation? Because of course, 10 days is nonsense.

This is why it’s very important that if your daughter wants to learn to code, or if you want to explore that journey with her, that you do lean into it.

So this is something she has the agency and is able to step into her power in engaging in these conversations in a meaningful way using her coding knowledge. If she doesn’t though, she’s not interested, that’s completely fine and totally fine.

But what is important is that she doesn’t see that her not knowing how to code means that she’s of less value in whatever direction the world goes in next, because as someone that can code, it’s not the be or it’s not the end or it doesn’t mean that

I’m a better person than anybody else and than other people. Again, that’s almost a controversial take for me to say out loud in some circles. So yes, there we go. Should she learn to code?

Go ahead, give it a go. But if you don’t, if she doesn’t, she’s not interested, she’s got to know that doesn’t make her worthless or less than.

That’s it, isn’t it? It’s the freedom to do what it is you want to do and follow your passions. Even at the age of five, she’s already saying to me, she said to me the other day that being an astronaut was a boy’s job.

I was like, Christina Cook, she wasn’t paying attention. I know, I know. I was like, where have you got that idea from?

Because you’re certainly not getting it from this house.

Yeah, get Hidden Fingers on pronto. There we go.

Don’t worry. I’ve been doing what I can to rectify the situation.

Nice one.

I thought, they must be the conversations they’re having at school. Because that’s the only other place that she’s getting thoughts and getting. And I assume it’s not coming from a teacher, so it must be coming from other children.

But I just thought, how sad is that at the age of five, you already think certain careers are not for you?

It’s incredibly sad.

I mean, I’m sure you’ll have had the Let Toys Be Toys folks on at some point or you’ve heard of them or seen them, but it’s in the toys, it’s in the clothing, it’s in so many subliminal and not so subliminal messages that come through to our girls

and to our boys, to everybody is shown that this is what astronaut looks like, this is what doctor looks like, this is what entrepreneurial business man looks like, not business woman. It’s in the imagery that we have, it’s in the storybooks that

they’re reading. We’re really fortunate the folks are waking up to this and they’re starting to do the do in opening up Stem Toys and making sure that they are gender neutral, in having different books that Rosie Revere has done really well as a

series. There’s quite a few of those kinds of books now that folks are putting together, they’re buying, they’re having subscriptions, putting into libraries. We’re able to tell those stories as well of the women that do these things.

But yeah, how frustrating. It’s frustrating also because learning to code is like learning to write. It’s also that it’s not in the coding itself, it’s in what you build and what you create.

One of my favorite things about our events is when we do have the really young, so we start as young as five, but we have the really young ones in. It doesn’t matter what the brief is.

Normally for a hack, we’ll have a tool that they’re learning some element coding that they’re doing, and we take them in and we assume nothing, and we normally set them a brief.

One of my favorite things is no matter what the brief is, the five-year-olds will also always have unicorns as part of the app. Not all of them love unicorns, but many of them love unicorns. So it’s really nice to be like, okay, like, okay, fine.

Astronaut meets a unicorn probably would solve that problem.

That is a good idea. Funny enough, I’m currently in the middle of planning a unicorn birthday party.

Of course you are.

Of course you are.

Unicorn is a billion pound, a billion dollar tech company. So we’ve got to, we’ve got to, someone’s got to work on that. I’m giving the idea for free to our listeners.

Do you think there’s an age then is too young, to have anything to do with tech?

Or do you think there is an age that it’s appropriate to start introducing it?

So I don’t think there’s an age. I think it varies by the child. It varies by the context.

It varies by the support that you’re able to give as an adult to your young person. And it also varies by what the tech is. Some tech is built responsibly and well for children.

And there are other tech like social media that just wasn’t built for children. Children weren’t in mind in how it’s been put together, what it’s been built to do, the marketing. And all of those kinds of things.

So I don’t think that there’s one age and I don’t think there’s a blanket for… I also don’t think my mother-in-law should be on Facebook. You know, like…

Oh, don’t get me started.

I don’t know if that’s an age thing.

I don’t know if that’s a tech thing.

I don’t know if that’s something about my mother-in-law.

And she’s great, by the way. But her and Facebook, I feel like would be a lethal cocktail. And so I think…

The generation above us, sorry, anyway, go on.

But I think the generation above us struggles more with the addictiveness of social media than our generation or the generation below us. But anyway.

They do, it’s true. And again, we don’t want to have broad sweeping. The grandma on the other side is incredibly technical, right?

My mom is really lent into elements of technology. My grandma has lent into technology in ways that we wouldn’t have even kind of imagined.

And so I think it boils down to the person, but I think there is, we do need to reflect on the choice that people have. And that’s why I love what you’re doing, Holly, of it is a choice. Like none of this should feel inevitable.

None of this should feel like you have to be using AI to do everything at work. None of it should feel like your child starts secondary school and must have a smartphone.

I think it’s great for folks to have the agency to lean into those choices and to make the choices that are right for them, their child and their family.

It’s been amazing to chat to you today Anne-Marie, it really has. If there’s one thing you’d like people to take away from our conversation today, what would it be?

The main thing would be that you’re human. You are trying to raise a good human.

And as much as you lean into what it is to be human, that creativity, that collaboration, that critical thinking, the communication, the citizenship, the connection, then you’ll do all right. And things will change, things will come and they will go.

There’s always going to be a new technology. Your mind will be blown in 40 years time what life will be like.

And so you’ve got to do the best you can with the knowledge that you have and don’t hold yourself to anything higher than that, especially on this AI side of things and tech in general, actually.

And Anne-Marie, if people are looking to follow what it is that you do, where can they find more information?

The Stemettes. So Stem, S-T-E-M-E-T-T-E-S.

We have a Parents and Guardians newsletter, which often will not just point you to the events that we’re running, but different resources that you can read up to skill up and have great conversations at the dinner table or on walks or in the car or

whatever it would be about different things that are happening in the Stem world that would interest a young person or have an impact on them. So I’d say definitely kind of subscribe to our newsletter, at least a free newsletter, at least to kind of

just get those resources and like a monthly update on things to consider, how it relates to the curriculum, all the rest of that kind of good stuff. Everything we do is free, it’s fun and there’s always food. So come along and brothers are welcome.

Come as a family, people do it as like a family day out on a half-term or on a weekend. So come and explore and it’s always so interesting.

Learning along with your young person, how many folks have ended up being career changers maybe because they’ve seen, oh, is that what it is? I can do that. This whole coding malarkey, it’s not as hard as they make out.

That sounds amazing.

I will have to come along. I’ll bring my two along. That sounds brilliant.

Thanks so much.

It was amazing. Really appreciate you coming on.

Thanks for having me.

How good was Anne-Marie?

I thought she was absolutely brilliant. Do you know what? I know we’re talking about celebrity traitors earlier.

Wouldn’t she be good on celebrity traitors? Couldn’t you just imagine her head to head with Hannah Fry?

I think it would get quite meaty. I think they’d both be really competitive and into it. It would just be so good.

Also, because everybody is so smart, they’d come up with all this evidence.

I just think that would be amazing. Do you know as well, I got so into the conversation, I completely forgot to mention countdown. All my countdown questions will have to go unanswered.

We’ll have to bring her back and have a special countdown episode.

Countdown special.

That’s our final episode for this half term, isn’t it? What are we calling it? This season?

Yeah.

Next week, we’re taking a break. We’re aligning to how the schools are. So it’s a perfect chance to catch up on any episodes that anyone’s missed.

We’ve had some really great stuff in this half term. On our first episode back, we’re actually going to do something a little different.

We are going to do a bit of a wash up, is that right? So we’re going to have a little analysis of how it’s gone so far. Yeah.

What we learned, how we feel and what questions we really want to answer before we reach the summer holidays.

Yeah.

And thank you so much to all our listeners for listening this half season. And we will see you in a couple of weeks.