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Education AI

Silicon Valley Parents Are Sending Kindergarten Kids To AI-Focused Summer Camps 64

Posted by BeauHD from the AI-obsession dept.
Silicon Valley's fascination with AI has led to parents enrolling children as young as five in AI-focused summer camps. "It's common for kids on summer break to attend space, science or soccer camp, or even go to coding school," writes Priya Anand via the San Francisco Standard. "But the growing effort to teach kindergarteners who can barely spell their names lessons in 'Advanced AI Robot Design & AR Coding' shows how far the frenzy has extended." From the report: Parents who previously would opt for coding camps are increasingly interested in AI-specific programming, according to Eliza Du, CEO of Integem, which makes holographic augmented reality technology in addition to managing dozens of tech-focused kids camps across the country. "The tech industry understands the value of AI," she said. "Every year it's increasing." Some Bay Area parents are so eager to get their kids in on AI's ground floor that they try to sneak toddlers into advanced courses. "Sometimes they'll bring a 4-year-old, and I'm like, you're not supposed to be here," Du said.

Du said Integem studied Common Core education standards to ensure its programming was suitable for those as young as 5. She tries to make sure parents understand there's only so much kids can learn across a week or two of camp. "Either they set expectations too high or too low," Du said of the parents. As an example, she recounted a confounding comment in a feedback survey from the parent of a 5-year-old. "After one week, the parent said, "My child did not learn much. My cousin is a Google engineer, and he said he's not ready to be an intern at Google yet.' What do I say to that review?" Du said, bemused. "That expectation is not realistic." Even less tech-savvy parents are getting in on the hype. Du tells of a mom who called the company to get her 12-year-old enrolled in "AL" summer camp. "She misread it," Du said, explaining that the parent had confused the "I" in AI with a lowercase "L."
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Silicon Valley Parents Are Sending Kindergarten Kids To AI-Focused Summer Camps More

Silicon Valley Parents Are Sending Kindergarten Kids To AI-Focused Summer Camps

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  • " to get her 12-year-old enrolled in "AL" summer camp. "She misread it," Du said, explaining that the parent had confused the "I" in AI with a lowercase "L."" These adults probably vote to!

    • Re: Just to funny! (Score:5, Funny)

      by 50000BTU_barbecue ( 588132 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @07:15PM (#64683724) Journal

      Says the guy who can't tell to from too! You probably drive two!

    • They're usually just the kind of parents that don't want to have to deal with their kids being around all summer. For the rest of the year they rely on the schools to act as babysitters, generally voting in favor of making the school days longer when those come up in their district. I really don't think they even care what kind of camp it is.

      • Both parents probably work, and either canâ(TM)t take their entire yearâ(TM)s vacation back to back, or they simply donâ(TM)t have enough. The reality is most households these days require both parents to hold down a 9-5 to make ends meet.

        • If they're just struggling to make ends meet, they probably aren't sending them to summer camp.

          When I was little there were two major subgroups: Those of us who walked or rode the bus home, or those who went to daycare immediately after school was out. We were all the same age and generally similar incomes. The latter group almost always went to summer camps, the rest of us almost always didn't. Outside of school they never really knew us, and we never really knew them.

          • Parents send their kids to summer camp because it is a lot more enriching than hanging around the house watching screens all day.

            My wife and I both work from home and make almost $300K (in a low cost of living area). We send our 8 year old kid to day camp. Why? Oh, I dunno, let's see:

            1). Because we work. Even though we work from home, we can't spent all day entertaining our child.

            2). Without close involvement, our child will most likely piss away the day watching one screen or another.

            3). The other option

            • 3). The other option is to have him roaming free on our street, doing god knows what, in between avoiding being run over by cars.

              So, yes, being the horrible, uninvolved, money grubbing parents we are, we send our child to day camp where he can do a lot more interesting, real-world stuff, than he can at home, while we are working.

              Among other things, we used put on rollerblades and play street hockey. Played video games too, but rarely ever by ourselves. Had trampoline, a pool, exotic pets (bird and a big lizard,) basketball hoop, things like that. Some weekends my dad would take us water skiing. He had a private pilot's license and he'd rent a Cessna now and then. It sounds like a lot today but we weren't particularly wealthy. This wasn't exactly leave it to beaver either, I got into trouble plenty of times. Big trouble. It's just p

              • I guess it comes down to this: I don't see my child having fun at summer camp as a problem to solve.

              • Among other things, we used put on rollerblades and play street hockey. Played video games too, but rarely ever by ourselves. Had trampoline, a pool, exotic pets (bird and a big lizard,) basketball hoop, things like that. Some weekends my dad would take us water skiing. He had a private pilot's license and he'd rent a Cessna now and then. It sounds like a lot today but we weren't particularly wealthy. This wasn't exactly leave it to beaver either, I got into trouble plenty of times. Big trouble. It's just p

          • I did not say they were struggling to make ends meet. Every household I know has two parents working, they pawn their kids off to the grandparents for a few weeks on summer break, and then send them to day camps for the rest of the time. Very few households nowadays can afford to have only one person working, it is not a choice, it is financial reality. The second pay cheque obviously takes a hit from the cost of the camps, but the rest helps pay for things like the bullshit cost of groceries. It is better
      • My kids leave next week to a summer camp. Youngest one is going fishing. (Don't ask me why, no one fishes in our family, except for the neighbor who he really likes). The oldest one is going rock climbing in the southern part of France. After 5 weeks with me, they really look forward to being with lots of other kids again. I will have a week of peace they will have a week of fun. You can call that dumping the kids, but that only describes a tiny fraction of what it is.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      AL Summer Camp. [youtube.com]

  • We don't have this 'Summer Camp' culture in Australia.
    I'm genuinely interested to know what American/Canadian readers think of summer camp.
    Did you enjoy it and look forward to it? or was it an excuse for parents to get rid of the kids for a few weeks?
    Does it cost a lot?

    I'm not so sure about sending under 8's to camp though...

    • Re:Summer Camp (Score:4, Funny)

      by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @07:28PM (#64683744)
      The best take that I know of is this silly 1963 song from Allan Sherman: Camp Granada Song [wikipedia.org]

    • Did you enjoy it and look forward to it?

      I personally never even went.

      or was it an excuse for parents to get rid of the kids for a few weeks?

      Probably

      Does it cost a lot?

      From what I've heard, per day cost is currently around $80+ for day camps, $180+ for sleep over camps. Somebody earlier suggested that this is for parents who have to have a dual income just to make ends meet, but if that's the case I doubt they're sending them to summer camp unless maybe all of them are less than 9 years old or something. Once one kid hits around that age plus or minus a year, that kid babysits the rest. Unless local laws say otherwise, and you end up w

    • Honestly it's something rich kids do. I never actually did it but it seemed like it would be fun when I was a kid. Sure sure it's a vacation for your parents but also for you to get away from your parents. And yeah it's not cheap. It's not the most crazy expensive thing in the universe but it's not something the majority of Americans could just splurge on even 30 years ago. And I can't imagine it's gotten cheaper but with all the lawsuits in America these days.

      • Where was, camp was just one week, and was pretty much affordable without being rich or even above average. Often counselors were unpaid from high schools. We had a county run science and conservation camp for 6th graders, most of them went, and counselors in each hut were high school seniors. The head counselors and other staff were paid though.

      • Honestly it's something rich kids do.

        Where I live, everybody goes. The public schools send 5th graders to camp every September (which is, technically, still summer).

        Walden West [waldenwest.org]

    • Re:Summer Camp (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Phact ( 4649149 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @08:41PM (#64683876)

      I went, it was some of the best experiences of my life. We weren't as wealthy as most of the other campers but my parents made it work. There were kids from around the world. it was an outdoors focused camp, activities we learned were: camping/hiking, rock climbing, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, sailing, horseback riding, Riflery (22cal), archery, tennis, baseball, soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, other field sports and more, (classic arts and crafts too) They organized competitions with other camps, and took multi-day camping and canoeing trips. Being an outdoors focused camp we slept in big platform tents all summer and had no electronics allowed, except for during the world cup they had to bring in a TV. Along with all that there were too many events and activities to list.
      It's still in operation, but 8x more expensive now so most kids only go for 1/2 season, when i went most kids did the full 8 week season.
      There was an exchange program for the counselors, so guys from Scotland, Australia, Germany, UK, Mexico and all over were our mentors and teachers.
      And yes it was a vacation for the parents. I recall many kids went to private boarding schools also, and some were depressed and felt unloved because they hardly ever saw their parents. I was in public school, my parents deserved the time off lol.

      I don't have kids, but if i did they would go.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For the last two years we have done day camps for our daughter, they generally run from 8:30am to 4:30pm and they take place at various community centers, schools, museums, and other venues. Where we live in Canada they can cost anywhere from $180 to $400 or more per week depending on where it is and resources involved.

      I work and my wife is a full time PhD student. Our daughter is 6 (and a half!), and we also have a 3 year old son but he is in daycare which is year round. Unlike what another poster said,

      • Day camps sound a lot like summer school, except maybe they're a couple hours longer each day. The idea is to get rid of the kids for a bit and keep them from backsliding educationally. But I don't really consider either to be "camp", because you're literally not camping. But I never knew anyone who did more than one week of camp in the summer.

    • Re:Summer Camp (Score:4, Interesting)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @10:38PM (#64684044)

      Summer Band Camp (where we played musical instruments) was amazing. It was mix of:

      * Theory
      * Hands on personal instruction
      * Concert Band Practice
      * Jazz Improv
      * Quartet Practice
      * Concert
      * Chance to make new friends

      How much did it cost? No idea.

      Was it worth it? Yup, every penny.

      • For a couple years ours was at a normal scout camp, with huts and whatnot. Then two years it was at a mountain high school that had boarding dormitories for students; because a high school in the mountains meant that most students lived a long ways away. I loved it - decent beds, decent cafeteria, a bowling alley, a theater to watch scary movies like the old Tales from the Crypt or Taste the Blood of Dracula (Christian camps _never_ would have allowed that).

        I wasn't a serious musician, and I think my oboe

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
        This one time at band camp....

    • We don't have this 'Summer Camp' culture in Australia. I'm genuinely interested to know what American/Canadian readers think of summer camp. Did you enjoy it and look forward to it? or was it an excuse for parents to get rid of the kids for a few weeks? Does it cost a lot?

      Canadian here - I never went to summer camp and don't remember having any friends or schoolmates who went. My entire experience of summer camp comes from American TV and movies - which I watched a lot because we lived in a border town. (We only had rabbit ears as an antenna, so the closer American stations came in clearly, while the more distant Canadian ones had poor reception).

    • On the west coast, all the summer camps I knew of were one week only. I was surprised when east coast literature or movies had vastly longer camp durations.

      Now things like AI camp is just dump; even coding camp is stupid. Just have the kids in a perfectly normal kids will be kids camp, with nature, and horses, and archery, and stupid songs, and stupid craft projects. Well, maybe band camp is ok. Other than that the educational camps all seem to be about the parents' insecurity.

    • Summer camps come in two varieties:

      1). Day camp - you come home at the end of the day
      2). Sleep away camps - you come home after X weeks

      I've never gone to either. We send our kid of a day camp.

      I imagine the sleep away camps offer opportunities not otherwise available and provide the child with a chance to learn some independence from their parents, make new friends, etc.

      Haters gonna hate. No getting around it.

      Yes, both camps are rather expensive, in the overall scheme of things. If you're not willing to spen

    • Did you enjoy it and look forward to it?

      I went one time when I was 12, back in the 80's. It had its good times (some of the activities were fun and interesting), and it had its bad times (sick kid threw up in my cabin, another kid got his head cracked open by a swinging log on the first day). After it was all said and done, I was glad to go back home. I never went again, and didn't miss it one bit.

  • Because they want to brag to their chums about sending their kids to some "exclusive place that's on the bleeding edge". It would be better if the kids were sent to a 'less chic' regular computer camp where they will get actual skills that will help them through their professional lives. In fact, I think it would be MUCH better to just send them to an ordinary camp where they are taught some outdoor survival skills. This Tulip Mania is about at it's peak and it's going to mature and quiet down, and why the

    • ... It would be better if the kids were sent to a 'less chic' regular computer camp where they will get actual skills that will help them through their professional lives. In fact, I think it would be MUCH better to just send them to an ordinary camp where they are taught some outdoor survival skills ...

      AFAIC, better still to let them hang around with friends during the summer and learn how to keep themselves amused and sort out their differences without so much scheduling, organizing, and adult intervention.

      Kids' lives are too structured and scheduled these days - they don't get enough of a chance to explore their own likes and dislikes, to learn to deal with boredom, and to be self-sufficient. Learning to make a living is important, but so is learning to live, and to be alone with oneself.

  • I live in silicon valley (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @07:14PM (#64683720) Homepage Journal

    You can find every possible kind of camp here. A lot of my friends would send their kid to music camp. A one found a vegan and health camp, I guess the kids could do yoga and stuff too. A lot of kids go to coding camp, robotics camp, etc. A few forced their kids to go to a disconnect camp. Just like a normal pre-Internet camp. No smartphones. No computers. Kids can get permission to call home (number on an approved list) a few days a week. Most of the kids act like they are being tortured, my friends son looked forward to it each yet. Said he didn't have the will power to put his phone down.

  • ... redneck parents are sending their kids to camps where they learn to shoot guns.

    In due time, the AI-savvy overlords will take away ALL the rednecks kids' jobs.

    And that's about as far ahead as I've thought through this scenario.

    • If the shit really goes down, and a nuclear conflict or even a really nasty Carrington Event takes down the modern infrastructure for a lot more than a few days, I would rather have gone to "redneck camp".

      • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday August 05, 2024 @07:38PM (#64683762) Homepage Journal

        Not a redneck myself but I sent my kids to camps where they learned to shoot among other things. Because it's fun.

        Fun is serious business for kids cognitive and social development. You can always learn to code or stuff like that later, but if you miss the opportunity to make friends just hanging around having fun at that age, you don't get a second crack at it later in life. It's not a step function, it just gets less and less likely year by year. And if civilization falls the social skills they develop will be more important than the shooting skills, because that's how humans survive. We're pack animals, like wolves.

        Another issue is this: I wanted my kids to choose their own direction, not necessarily become a software engineer like me. They both learned to code well enough as part of the professional fields they chose. They weren't handicapped by not having spent their summers learning to code or getting extra academics shoved into them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      In due time, the AI-savvy overlords will take away ALL the rednecks kids' jobs.

      Not if the redneck kids shoot them first.

    • "the AI-savvy overlords will take away ALL the rednecks kids' jobs."

      Unlikely. They haven't yet built an AI that can pick a strawberry. Number of AIs that can change the oil on a car? AI that can run a backhoe? AI that can drive a tractor through an orchard while spraying? AI that can prune a cherry tree? Hell, AI that can hang the laundry on the line? AI that can pump a septic tank? AI that can drop a tree, trim the branches, then convert it to firewood?

      First of course is you need the AI that can run the po

      • Hmm. Which begs the question, how many AIs does it take to change a light bulb?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Evtim ( 1022085 )

          Which begs the question, how many AIs does it take to change a light bulb?

          None. AI does not need light bulbs.

  • Camps with no computers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by InterGuru ( 50986 ) <(jhd) (at) (interguru.com)> on Monday August 05, 2024 @07:17PM (#64683726)
    I urged my son to send my grandchildren to camps that have no computers or phones of any type. Future success is much more dependent on soft people skills than academic skills. Screens and phones take away from the time needed to develop people skills and will leave them missing these skills. We have a whole generation of over-anxious teens who live on their phones and have no idea how to work or play with others.
    • Good call. I have kept my five year old away from all that shit too. I already see negative personality traits developing in the children of my friends who have let them engage with âappsâ(TM) and iDevices. Watching a six year old glued to a screen for three hours at a time is truly distrubing.

  • Silicon Valley tech bro, infinite growth grindset, disrupt everything, we're smarter than everyone else culture is a mental illness, and the end result is Elon Musk, the world's most divorced asshole, and this kind of stuff.

    • Having been here a long time, I think everyone talks about tech bros but they're actually pretty rare.

  • Seriously. This is a great way to fleece parents with too much money. I love it. Wish I'd thought of that idea.

  • "But the growing effort to teach kindergarteners who can barely spell their names lessons in 'Advanced AI Robot Design & AR Coding'

    ... my SO is a teacher, and I've seen first hand just how panicky and disconnected parents can become when they fear their kids may miss out, almost always to the kids' distinct detriment.

    Early education is very much an inexact science, full of heuristics and common sense approaches, but: the home is everything. School fills the gaps and does the boilerplate. It can't make up for a lacking home.

  • Plain and simple. Not the ai re-education camps, but simply existing as the child of a person that lives in silicon valley.

  • had a high schooler as an intern this summer.

    Let me tell you, four years is a world of difference even at 18 to 22.

    Perhaps with the ego and grade inflation going the way it is, we will have a kindergartener intern in the near future. But only the ones that went to ai camp. Gotta have some standards, after all.

  • We'll find out in a few years whether these kids are geniuses or drooling morons who can't tie their shoes.
    Actually, we already know they can't tie their shoes. Who the fuck needs laces anymore?
    I doubt very much these poor experimental subjects will be able to function or be smarter.
    People are lazy. Kids are lazier. As the tools become more powerful, they rob the user of fundamental knowledge.
    My money is on them turning into drooling idiots.
  • They'll churn out mediocre kids who can spout slogans and jargon, relying on family connections to get jobs, and accomplish nothing else. Same as it ever was.
  • ‘After install iDownloader [integem.com], you can install iCreator®, iPlayer®, iCamera, iHuman, Python, and other necessary software from the cloud and install.

    Note: when install in a Windows machine, if Windows remind you that it is from an unknown provider, please click “continue”.’
    --

    Holographic AR Online Private Lessons [integem.com]

    “Students (ages 8-18) can take our online private Holographic AR coding, art, AI, STEM, animation, and game design courses online with 1:1 private inst

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