Ringing the AI Bell 🔔

Hi friends,

Jerry Seinfeld said something recently that made us laugh out loud:

“We’re smart enough to invent AI, dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing.”

Honestly… fair.

In our house, AI has become such a regular part of daily life that we accidentally invented a new ritual:

The AI Bell 🔔

There’s no physical bell (yet), but it’s a shared signal we give each other whenever someone uses a tool to solve a problem, settle a debate, or make something cool. It’s turned into a friendly competition: “Who thought to use AI first?”

In this week’s episode, we break down how we actually use AI at home in real, messy, kid-chaos life. It all falls into three buckets:

1. Clarify (The Truth Detector) 🧐 We use AI to cut through noise and get closer to reality.

• The Limitless Pin: Greg wears a small recorder that creates summaries of our day. When we forget what we decided on a walk or in the kitchen, we can literally “go back to the tape.”

• Hard-to-find answers: We used AI to dig into Florida education statutes and discovered our son could start kindergarten earlier at a private school. Even the school director didn’t know—policy changed because we showed her the law.

  
  Mini challenge: Next time you say “I think the rule is…”, ask AI to pull the actual policy or statute—and then click through to the original source.

2. Coach (The Neutral Third Party) ⚽️ Sometimes you just need a referee who doesn’t already have an opinion.

• Sibling dynamics: We fed a week of kid arguments (via Limitless) into AI and asked for a summary. It came back with “overlapping dominant personalities” and “power struggles.” Suddenly, we all knew what to look for.

• Guided conversations: When something hard happens at school, we’ll sit with the kids and say, “Let’s ask for a second opinion.” AI acts like a gentle guidance counselor—asking questions, reflecting feelings back—while we’re right there with them.

  Mini challenge: After a rough sibling week, write out what’s been happening and ask AI: “Summarize the pattern and give me 3 kid-friendly ideas to try.”

3. Create – From Consumers to Creators 🎨

We are obsessed with shifting from a "Consumer Family" (passive scrolling) to a "Creator Family" (active building) and AI helps us brainstorm so we can take action.

Yes, we did the wild thing and gave our 8-year-old an iPhone. But:

• It’s locked down as a camera-only device. No apps. No texts.

• We want her to see tech as a tool for storytelling, not endless scrolling.

Some recent “AI Bell” wins:

• Hunter made a video tour of the Kennedy Space Center with AI helping organize her clips and captions.

• For Thanksgiving, AI helped us brainstorm ways to serve our community. We chose a park cleanup, a gratitude sidewalk walk, and a free cookie “Gratitude Table” where the kids interviewed people about what they’re thankful for. See IG reel below.

The Invitation 💌

We’re not trying to build a perfect AI system at home. We’re trying to stay curious, grounded, and intentional. These tools don't have to be scary. They can support our creativity and our values:

• Use tools to clarify reality

• Let them coach us without running the show

• And most of all, create more than we consume

So come hang out with us as we figure this out in real-time. We’ll save a seat (and a bell ring) for you.

Just remember, chatting with AI is not the same as taking action!

👇 Listen to the episode:

TMIT 39: Family AI – The Tools We're Using to Clarify, Coach, & Create at Home
Spotify | Apple | YouTube

Beep boop,
Danielle & Greg

Meta just announced it’s acquiring Limitless. The thing Greg spent 25% of the episode talking about!

The Gratitude Table. AI idea + Neufeld execution.

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