My 8-year-old's first AI project

Hello H.A.I.R. Community,

It’s not often that a Year 4 homework assignment on a Sunday afternoon offers a profound lesson for the future of work, but that’s exactly what happened in our house this weekend.

I get asked a lot by leaders, "How do we prepare the next generation for a world of AI?". I also get asked by parents how to start getting their children comfortable using AI. It’s a great question, but the answer might be simpler and more human than we think.

Let’s dive into it.

It started with a classic school project for my eight-year-old daughter, Edie: create an "All About Me" poster. The purpose was to bring something along that can be used by their new teacher as an icebreaker for the new school year.

Here's the final result:

Now, we could have gone the traditional route with coloured pens and glitter (ugh). Instead, we decided to make AI our creative partner. This small, low-stakes project ended up being a perfect microcosm of how any organisation should approach AI adoption: with clarity, collaboration, and a human firmly in the director's chair.

The Process: An AI-Powered Creative Workflow

We didn't just ask the AI to create images. We structured a three-stage conversation, assigning the AI a specific persona and a clear job at each step.

Step 1: The AI as the 'Teacher's Assistant' First, we needed to understand the project's success criteria. Before involving Edie, I prompted our AI partner to adopt a specific expert persona.

• The Prompt: "Act as an experienced British Year 4 primary school teacher. You've just set the homework 'Create an All About Me poster'. What are the core deliverables? What defines a successful poster for this age group? Break down the key elements you would expect to see."

The AI, now in 'teacher mode', provided a clear brief. It outlined the need for simple text, bright colours, and sections for favourites like animals, hobbies, family, and friends. It effectively reverse-engineered the assignment's requirements. This initial step was about using AI for analysis and scope definition before any creative work began.

Step 2: The AI as the 'Creative Interviewer' With a clear brief, we changed the AI's role. It was now time to gather the raw material from the project's main stakeholder: Edie.

• The Prompt: "Now, act as a fun and friendly creative partner, who’s main job is as a children’s book illustrator. Based on the teacher's brief you just created, your job is to interview an 8-year-old named Edie to get all the information needed for her poster, including her style preferences. Ask her one engaging question at a time to get everything you need to create the poster."

The AI then initiated a conversation. It asked, "Hi Edie! To make the best poster ever, what's your absolute favourite animal in the whole world?" and waited for her reply. It followed up with, "That's brilliant! What about sports, do you love playing any?". This transformed the AI from a passive tool into an active partner, managing the information-gathering process in a structured, human-centric way.

Step 3: The AI as the 'Illustrator' and the Human as the 'Director' Only after the first two stages were complete did we move to generation. Using the information from the AI-led interview, we prompted an image model (Google’s Nano Banana) to create the poster.

Crucially, the final step was entirely human. The AI produced the poster, but Edie (supported by me) was the creative director. She gave the feedback, asked to rearrange the layout, change some elements and, ultimately, agreed the final poster. The partnership was clear: AI managed the workflow and asset production; we provided the final judgment and creative composition.

The Lesson for HR & Talent Leaders

This simple homework project holds three critical lessons for any leader looking to integrate AI safely and effectively.

• Beyond Single Prompts, Build AI Workflows: The real power of AI in business isn't in one-off answers. It's in designing multi-step workflows where the output of one AI task becomes the input for the next. Think about your own processes - onboarding, performance reviews, candidate screening. How could you chain together AI-driven analysis, communication, and task execution?

• Persona Prompting Unlocks On-Demand Expertise: By asking the AI to be a 'teacher' and then a 'creative partner', we accessed specific skill sets. In your organisation, you can prompt AI to be a 'market analyst' to interpret sales data, a 'compliance officer' to review a policy draft, or a 'junior copywriter' to generate first-draft communications. This is how you scale expertise.

• The Human is the Conductor of an AI Orchestra: This model elevates the 'human-in-the-loop' concept. You are no longer just an operator. You are the conductor. You choose the right AI 'instrument' (persona) for each part of the performance, you provide the 'sheet music' (the brief and context), and you bring it all together to create the final, coherent output. This is the strategic, high-value human work of the future.

Preparing people for the future of work is less about teaching the technology itself and more about reinforcing the timeless human skills of critical thinking, creativity, and clear communication.

Building an AI-powered workforce is about teaching your people how to design and manage these partnerships. It's a shift from doing the task yourself to orchestrating the resources - both human and machine - that do.

The goal isn't to build a workforce that can serve the AI, but to build one that knows how to make the AI serve them.

Put the “Responsible” in AI for HR

1. Stay informed with the H.A.I.R. Newsletter: Pragmatic insights and authoritative commentary on AI in HR, straight to your inbox. Subscribe now.

2. Check your EU AI Act readiness with QuickScore: A rapid assessment to show where you stand today, and what you need to strengthen. Take your QuickScore here.

3. Advisory & GRC Programmes: Partnering with HR and TA leaders to design and implement AI governance frameworks that stick. Book a consultation.

4. Build your team’s AI literacy: H.A.I.R. training courses that move your people from “AI curious” to “AI capable.” Explore courses.

5. Assess AI readiness at the talent layer: With genAssess, evaluate practical AI skills internally and in your hiring process. Discover genAssess.

Until next time,

Martyn

H.A.I.R. (AI in HR) 

Putting the AI in HR. Safely.