The robots haven't taken over yet, but they're already managing my diet with more precision than I ever could.

Most afternoons, I photograph my lunch and upload it to ChatGPT. Within seconds, it tells me where I stand nutritionally and suggests what I should eat for dinner, giving me a detailed breakdown. 

The advice is often not what I had assumed it would be. I am told to consume more carbohydrates, not less; take a long walk instead of a 5 km run to lower cortisol, the "stress" hormone. 

Six weeks into a programme that it had customised for me, I've lowered my body fat without having to resort to crash dieting or punishing cardio exercise sessions. I feel stronger than I did in my 20s, all thanks to the precision and support of artificial intelligence (AI).

I tell you this because it shapes how I approach the topic of my kids using AI. 

I've seen what these tools can do and I am persuaded by how much they have improved my quality of life.

A recent study found that 84 per cent of secondary school respondents use AI for homework at least once a week. 

The question is no longer whether our children will use it. They already do. The more important question is what kind of thinkers it's turning them into.

My two older children – Truett, 18, and Kirsten, 17 – have been using AI regularly. 

Truett uses it to generate ideas for assignments and explains that his school, Temasek Polytechnic, provides guidelines for using AI tools responsibly. But what excites him most is how efficiently it solves technical problems.

When he was setting up a personal server for an account on the gaming platform Roblox, he turned to ChatGPT to troubleshoot coding issues.

"If I get stuck trying to code, I just describe my problem and it tells me exactly what to do, step by step," he said. "And it works. It saves me so much time trying to find the solution on Reddit or Google."

Kirsten used it while preparing for her O-Levels. She would upload essays and ask for critique. "It gives me perspectives I hadn't thought about," she told me. 

The process was less about copying answers than about debate. She would accept some suggestions, reject others and refine her argument. She used it to interrogate her own thinking rather than copy blindly.

Used this way, AI behaves less like an answer sheet to copy from and more like a tutor. 

It proposes alternative interpretations. It identifies weak logic. It exposes blind spots. 

She still has to do the intellectual work, but she can do it faster and against better resistance.

SMARTER ANSWERS, WEAKER MINDS? 

The worry I hear most often from parents is laziness. It's not an unreasonable one. 

If an essay can be drafted in 30 seconds and passed off as their own, what incentive is there for a child to sit with a blank page and think?  

And, as teachers will tell you, struggle is where learning happens. 

Children naturally gravitate towards the path of least resistance. Most of us do. 

But friction, while uncomfortable, is necessary for learning. Without it, they risk becoming intellectually lazy. 

The issue, then, is not whether children should use AI, but how to use it in a way that strengthens their thinking rather than replaces it. 

In our home, the rule is simple: If you cannot explain the concept clearly without AI, you do not understand it.

I've always told my kids that their human brains are the real asset, which means they have to learn to think with AI instead of letting AI think for them. 

If they submit work they have not wrestled with, their grades may improve, but their brains do not. 

And when they walk into the exam hall, the only thing they can rely on is what they have understood. 

CHALLENGES TO CONSIDER

There are challenges beyond academics. AI systems can fabricate sources and produce polished answers that sound authoritative and credible but are simply wrong. 

For adults who already have a mental model or knowledge of a subject, a plausible-sounding error may trigger a flag, but even then, we are unlikely to catch every mistake.

For a child who doesn't yet have that mental model or knowledge, there is no warning signal. The answer from ChatGPT simply becomes their understanding of the topic. 

This is why children must learn to verify claims, cross-check references and understand that fluency is not the same as truth. 

Then there is the social dimension. Teenagers now use ChatGPT to draft replies to friends, find recommendations for cafes, and even vent when they feel frustrated. 

AI performs these tasks remarkably well. It rarely contradicts and it can be calibrated to affirm. 

For adolescents still forming their identities, a tool that consistently tells you what you want to hear presents its own risks. 

Emotional growth requires disagreement, complexity and the occasional discomfort of human relationships. A chatbot that provides only validation can sometimes do more harm than good.

WHY STRUGGLE STILL MATTERS  

With my younger children, I'm not rushing anything, even though they have friends who are already using ChatGPT to help with homework. 

At the primary school level, the cognitive struggle of doing work the hard way is the whole point. 

They need to tackle difficult math problems on their own through practice and repetition. 

And the experience of sitting with a blank page and not knowing what to write for an essay, then slowly working their way towards a sentence that feels like their own – that discomfort is how writers are made.

Sometimes when they rush through assignments just to hand something in, I remind them that homework exists to build a better brain, not to produce a completed page.

I make them watch the scene in The Matrix movie where Keanu Reeves opens his eyes after a training module and says: "I know kung fu."

That's what I want. When the homework is done, they should be able to close the book, take a breath and say: "I know simultaneous equations."

The goal was never the grade. It was to build a brain that knows how to think, with or without the aid of AI. 

And when they get older, they can use AI to improve themselves like their older siblings, rather than relying solely on it.

Some of my favourite childhood memories of my father begin not with words, but with sound.

Late each night, when everyone in our street had gone to sleep and all was dark, we would hear it: the faint but distinct "tring tring" of a bicycle bell. 

To me, that bell always meant one thing: Appa was back. 

After a busy day spent teaching at school, he usually cycled from house to house conducting tuition classes, because a teacher’s salary alone was not enough to raise a family in a city like Chennai, India.

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He would park the bicycle, take a quick shower and eat whatever food had been kept for him. And then he would sit down again – not to rest, but to read. 

Sometimes he wrote; sometimes he prepared for classes. 

Watching him each night, a pile of books stacked before or next to him, I did not think of happiness or fulfilment – but now, in my 60s, memories of those nights still bring me a sense of peace and comfort. 

THE MAKING OF A MAN

My father was born in 1928 – in a village in Tamil Nadu, India about 200km from the capital city, Chennai – into a large family with very little means. 

As a schoolboy, he delivered newspapers door to door every morning before heading to class. After finishing school, he left home to study languages in another town about 150km away at an institute run by a charity. 

To support himself, he taught students literature in his mother tongue, Tamil, and saved what little he could and gave the money to his mother in his home village whenever he returned on holidays.

When he was 21 years old, he moved from his village Tiruvannamalai to Chennai. The move from village to city was a daunting one in those days, made without safety nets. 

But Appa made it work with quiet determination. Not for luxury, but for forward movement. For education. For a life of dignity.

He became a language teacher, and teaching became both his profession and his passion. 

In his early years, he worked at a school that was little more than a hut, without a proper roof. 

In addition to his regular teaching duties, he organised events and competitions to raise money so the school could one day have a proper building. 

He believed that children deserved an uninterrupted space to learn without distractions or dangers, protected from rain and scorching heat.

Appa was always full of life. He swam. He played sports. He acted in plays with students and fellow teachers. 

And every night, no matter how packed his day had been, he would be home to spend hours more with his books.

Looking back, I can see now that this was the kind of energy that comes from purpose rather than rest – he was building a life aligned with what he valued.

Learning, for him, was not something one finished; it was something one returned to, willingly and repeatedly, with quiet enthusiasm. 

He completed much of his education after marriage, earning postgraduate qualifications slowly and determinedly while managing full-time work and raising a family. 

He never spoke of these as achievements. Only years later did I begin to recognise the remarkable efforts he'd put into learning – not for praise, but for the love of learning itself and a persistent determination to keep up with changing times.

A TEACHER OF LIFE 

In our home, love was not always dramatic or demonstrative. My parents were busy trying to feed and educate six children. There were few dinners out and even fewer grand celebrations. 

Yet joy found its way into our lives in other quieter forms.

The ride to school on Appa's bicycle was often the only uninterrupted time I had with him in his packed schedule. 

Each morning, we would take to the streets of mid-1970s Chennai, a time when bicycles far outnumbered cars and small food stalls lined the roads. 

We wove our way through vendors calling out to breakfast customers, and people pausing in the middle of the street to exchange quick greetings before moving on. It was busy, but not hurried in the way cities feel today. 

As we rode through that gentle bustle, Appa would alternate between telling me riddles or jokes, and narrating stories – sometimes from history or literature, sometimes simply from his own life.

Sometimes he would sing instead – uplifting songs, as if to remind both of us to face the day ahead with courage.

Having had the privilege of attending his Tamil classes, I can also say that Appa was, quite simply, one of the best language teachers I have ever known. 

His classrooms often held more students than were officially assigned, as pupils from other classes would drift in just to listen. 

He recited Tamil poetry and English verses effortlessly. He was a great storyteller, bringing even difficult ideas to life with colourful analogies and metaphors.

His discipline with time was legendary. Classes began each day exactly on the dot. 

He taught without books. He remembered precisely where he had ended the previous lesson, as though the text lived inside him. 

He was a champion of care through consistency. Years later, when his students became accomplished doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers and senior police officers, they still spoke of him with affection. 

Many called him the "best teacher" they'd had. Some could still recite memorable quotes from him. 

It was as if his voice had continued within them, long after he had finished speaking.

WITHOUT COMPLAINT, WITHOUT EXPECTATION

Appa's giving extended beyond classrooms. 

Social work mattered deeply to him – child welfare, adult education, the kind of quiet initiatives that are never meant for applause. 

He believed that knowledge must eventually return to society as service. He lived by a simple principle: do the work fully, without complaint and without expectation.

He also believed that dignity lay in living within one's means and so, he was frugal out of necessity, but also by choice. Even in difficult times, he avoided borrowing. 

He often expressed to us that expectations create pain. It was far better, he believed, to do what is right and let outcomes take care of themselves.

And yet, when it came to education or health, he spent without hesitation. He believed in choosing what truly mattered without regret.

Even as age made him frail, he refused to stop being himself. 

He continued reading, writing and speaking. When his hands weakened, he steadied one with the other and kept writing. His memory remained sharp. 

His work ethic never softened. He prepared for every task as if it mattered deeply – and perhaps it did as time grew more precious. 

He often quoted from the classic masterpiece Thirukkural by the great Tamil philosopher-poet Thiruvalluvar: "To the wise, a day is a sharpened sword / cutting steadily through the span of life." 

Appa gave 200 per cent in everything he did – not because someone was watching, but because that was the standard he had always set for himself.

APPA'S LEGACY

In 2012, my father had a fall and was unwell for a brief period, with his movement restricted. 

For our family, it was a quiet but difficult adjustment to watch someone who had never rested, who had always kept going, forced to slow down finally. 

Whenever I called to check on him, he would say, in his calm, steady voice: "I'm very fine."

A few months later, he died peacefully at home, surrounded by family, listening to his favourite rhymes recited by his two loving granddaughters. There was much grief and sadness, but also a dignified sense of closure – a fitting end to a life lived completely.

Even after Appa's death, we were still discovering his steadying wisdom and guidance. 

When my siblings and I grew up and went abroad, we each began sending home whatever little money we could to Appa for his expenses. 

Only years later did we discover that Appa had never spent a cent. 

Instead, he had been saving all of it for my mother, so she could live comfortably after he was gone. Even in death, he was still taking care of her.

Today, I live and work in a different country, in a very different time, at a very different pace. 

Yet I find myself guided by the lessons my father taught me – not through advice or verbal instruction, but by the life he had led. Live with purpose, work with integrity, care for people, serve quietly, waste no time, expect nothing in return.

And now, when I hear a bicycle bell in a quiet street late at night, I pause. The sound still brings forth memories of my father returning home after another long day spent living out values of compassion and consistency – just as it did all those years ago.

A steady, grounding joy fills me, the way it did when I was a child watching my father sit down to his books each night. It reminds me of who I am and where I come from.

And so, when that soft trill rings through the darkness, I smile with gratitude.

Prakash Natarajan is the co-founder of Sustainable Gaia, a sustainability consultancy.

If you have an experience to share or know someone who wishes to contribute to this series, write to voices@mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.

Recently, a colleague asked me if I've ever used artificial intelligence (AI) to manage my money, as she shared how her husband had started using ChatGPT to analyse and advise him on his spending.

He fed ChatGPT his expense data and asked it to analyse his personal spending patterns and tell him what to cut if he wanted to boost his savings by 20 per cent.

The answer? The AI chatbot told him to cut down on taking private-hire Grab rides and to eat out less often.

I laughed and said: "Isn't that what you, as his wife, could have already told him … without him even having to spend so much time inputting his expense data in the first place?"

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The joke was harmless. But the question behind it wasn't. 

What, exactly, are we outsourcing to AI when it comes to our money? And should we be telling AI everything about our financial lives?

ARE AI-GENERATED INSIGHTS ACTUALLY HELPFUL?  

To be clear, I'm not dismissing AI.

These tools are impressive. They can sort data quickly, identify patterns and present information in ways that are easy to understand. 

But when it comes to tracking expenses, I couldn't help but wonder whether AI is solving a problem that had already been addressed a few years ago.

Thanks to the development of digital banking and Singapore Financial Data Exchange (SGFinDex) – a platform that lets you see your financial information from different institutions in one place – most banking apps in Singapore can already categorise our spending automatically. 

If you spend mostly with debit or your bank's credit card, your bank's app can show you what items you've spent on, classify your expenses into neat segments, and even show month-on-month comparisons to help you understand your spending patterns.

And when it comes to advice on how to save more, often the AI offers "insights" we already know: Cut back on ride-hailing. Reduce dining out. Watch your discretionary spending.

Most of us already know where our money goes and what we ought to do better. The harder part is adjusting habits when we're tired after work, when convenience feels justified, or when small indulgences feel earned.

Managing money isn't just about knowing the right thing to do. 

Whether you use AI or your banking app, the advice means little if you don't do anything about it. 

AI CAN'T MEASURE YOUR RISK TOLERANCE 

The stakes rise significantly when AI moves from advising you on your budget to advising you on your investments.

Recently, CNA reported on the growing trend of investors turning to ChatGPT for stock market ideas. As one expert noted, just as not every analyst gets it right, neither does Gen AI. But because AI speaks with fluency and confidence, its clarity is often mistaken for competence. 

Recently, I was having lunch with a friend when she shared with me a list of stocks that she had asked ChatGPT for. She had prompted it to suggest companies that were "fundamentally sound" and likely to rise over the next few months.

As I scrolled through the names, a few red flags jumped out at me, such as weak cash flow, pricey valuations and tough industry conditions. Curious, she decided to allocate a small amount into what she jokingly called her "ChatGPT portfolio" as an experiment.

Months later, most of those stocks were down. One had fallen close to 80 per cent since the point at which she entered the market.

Meanwhile, the other stocks we had discussed during that same meeting (which were not from ChatGPT) did not experience anything close to that kind of collapse.

Yes, AI is excellent at generating lists. It can analyse market trends, summarise earnings reports and spot promising themes.

But investing is not just pattern recognition. Markets move in cycles. Cheap stocks can get cheaper. Smaller companies can be hard to exit when liquidity dries up. Management teams can say the right things while acting in their own interests.

And no algorithm, however smart, knows how you will react when a stock drops 20 per cent in a week.

Most importantly, it does not understand your risk tolerance.

It does not know how you will sleep at night if your portfolio halves in value. It does not sit with the consequences. It simply generates an answer and moves on.

So when things go south, who do you blame? And more importantly, what do you learn?

If you hand over your investment decisions entirely to AI, you may save time. But you are not building judgment. And without judgment, it is hard to become a better investor.

THE PRIVACY TRADE-OFF

Then, there is the privacy question.

To get tailored advice, people are feeding these tools everything from bank statements and income tax filings to spending patterns, investment holdings, and even their net worth.

Most of us hesitate to share all our numbers with a human financial adviser. Some of us won't even tell our spouse about every account we hold.  

So, why are many of us so comfortable with handing over our data to a machine?

Ms Jennifer King, a data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, has cautioned that sensitive information shared with large language models may be collected and used for training purposes, even if it feels like a private conversation. 

We are often reassured that safeguards exist. Yet, do we really understand how long our data is stored, how it may be used in future product development, or how it could influence the ads and content we see later on? 

Now that OpenAI has announced plans to incorporate ads, it is not unreasonable to ask how financial information shared today might influence what is shown to us tomorrow. 

At the same time, legal frameworks for AI data privacy are still catching up. 

Regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), along with emerging AI-specific rules, attempt to address these concerns. But there is no single global standard governing how sensitive, personalised data shared with AI tools is collected, stored or used.

Financial data is among the most sensitive forms of personal information. And once it is shared digitally, it is impossible to take it back.

That alone is reason enough to pause and be extra cautious.

USE AI, BUT KEEP YOUR JUDGMENT 

None of this means AI has no place in personal finance.

In the last year alone, I've increasingly used AI to support my research and analysis. It can be helpful for understanding otherwise complex financial concepts, summarising annual reports or organising my thoughts before making a decision.

But information has never been the only barrier to financial success. If so, the people with the highest IQs would be the richest.

As legendary investor Warren Buffett says: "Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ."

Discipline matters. Risk control matters. Your self-awareness matters.

AI can support our thinking, but we cannot afford to let it replace our judgment. 

As more people experiment with AI in their financial lives, the question may not be whether we should use these tools, but whether we understand their limits and how to use them in ways that serve us rather than harm us.

After all, building wealth has never been just about processing information. 

It is about the combination of decisions we make over a long period of time – where our judgment is shaped by experience, mistakes and reflection.

And that is something that we might want to think twice about before we count on AI.

Dawn Cher, also known as SG Budget Babe, is the bestselling author of Take Back Control of Your Money. She has been running a popular blog on personal finance for the last 12 years.

If you have an experience to share or know someone who wishes to contribute to this series, write to voices@mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.

It has been more than two decades but I still remember the feeling when the nurses handed my firstborn to me for the first time.

Many a book, movie or well-meaning friend tells you that you will have these magical maternal feelings the moment you meet your child. But as I looked down at my baby, what went through my head was not: "Oh my, what an incredible feeling!" 

It was more like: "Oh boy. What have I done?"

There were many, many more such days over the next few years, which also saw us welcoming a second child. 

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A sick baby draped across our chests; fighting the half-asleep, half-awake fog; dealing with forgotten books and teachers' notes; multiple trips to the doctor's; hand-wringing and heart-wrenching over grades. Moments that sound unremarkable on paper, but consumed us completely as we were living them.

And yet, here I am, saying – proudly and honestly – that motherhood is the best thing to have happened to me. 

I have never known a love so profound, a joy so intense, or a disappointment so deep. It made me a different person.

Admittedly, these days when young people tell me they'd rather spend their money on cars than have kids, I feel a pang of grief. 

But here's the thing: I do not blame them for seeing things this way. They inhabit a world so arduous – a world they had little part in building but must live in – that they have decided, quite reasonably in my view, that they don't want to bring a child into it.

In 2025, the total fertility rate in Singapore hit a new low at 0.87. On Feb 26, Ms Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, announced yet another workgroup – this time, to figure out how to tackle this "existential" crisis.

I am not the first and certainly will not be the last person to say that money is a limited solution. Many others studying this problem point to core structural issues: the arms-race education system, the cost of living and the small flats. 

It sounds like these are disparate factors but in my mind, they are all interconnected on a much deeper systems level. This, in turn, feeds into the lived realities of young people, shaping their decisions.

LIVED REALITY NO 1: THE SYSTEM BREAKS YOU YOUNG

In Singapore, one in three young people reports anxiety, stress and depression. 

One child psychologist told me she has patients as young as five who exhibit perfectionist traits. The age band for reporting begins at 10. 

It's no coincidence that intense preparation for the dreaded Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) begins, for most children, at age 10 – from Primary 4 to Primary 5. 

Cortisol levels start to build up here, and from then on, every Singaporean knows the story: endless revision and enrichment classes, practice papers and poring over past mistakes.

Once the daunting hurdle of PSLE is cleared, what awaits is not rest but several more hurdles – N- or O-levels, then polytechnic or A-levels, then university (still seen as a necessary step for polytechnic graduates), then work.

Having had to supervise or mentor several young women as interns or trainees, I always made a point of asking them about their lives outside of work. 

Almost always, it quickly became clear that there was very little space for dating or the thought of settling down and having children. I used to playfully tell them that one of their key performance indicators (KPIs) was to go on dates.

But I've also noticed a more cynical thread to their reasoning: "We hated the stress of being in the system. We refuse to inflict this on another human." 

One young woman, bright and beautiful, told me she's sworn off the prospect of children because she looks at her younger cousins and how their parents pour in time and money to just keep them afloat, and she thinks: "Is this the life I want? A life of endless striving for my child, after a life of striving for myself?"

LIVED REALITY NO 2: THE COST OF OPTING OUT IS TOO HIGH

More than 20 years ago, I decided to step away from full-time work to focus on raising my two boys. 

I'll be honest: If I hadn't done so, I would have grown a much bigger nest egg and probably risen higher up in the ranks at work. 

Again, it's no coincidence that the people at the top in many workplaces are overwhelmingly either men whose wives shoulder the bulk of the childcare load or women who don't have children. In 2024, a report by global research firm MSCI showed that while more women are leading as chief executives in Asia Pacific's large and mid-cap companies, Singapore is bucking the trend, recording a drop in that metric from 13.6 per cent in 2022 to 12.5 per cent in 2023. 

My decision was in part driven by the fact that our family could maintain a decent standard of living on one income. 

Our home in a public housing estate was a four-room flat, which we bought in the early 2000s for, believe it or not, under S$200,000 (US$157,000). If my spouse had been unable to cover all our costs during those years, I would have chosen quite differently.

Today, even couples who could get by on one income are opting not to do so for the sake of raising kids.

And why would they? So many young men and women are talented and educated. Some are in their mid-20s and already in the top income bracket, something that took my generation a decade to achieve.

They worked their butts off getting there. Why give it up?

And even if they could, the corresponding drop in lifestyle would be too much to bear. Once you get accustomed to living a certain way, it's tough to voluntarily let go.

LIVED REALITY NO 3: PUNISHING WORK CULTURE 

We have accepted that in our hyper-competitive, growth-driven, money-focused society, sacrifices must be made.

Work-life balance is still, for the most part, a suggestion. Flexible work policies are encouraged, not mandated. Even if your company does have a flexible work policy, your boss probably sets the terms for what "flexible" truly looks like. 

By and large, if you want to be both a parent and a working adult in Singapore, it's practically a given that you need to hire or engage external help, max out your childcare leave, show up exhausted for the Zoom meeting and frantically fix that 25th edit on the PowerPoint presentation because someone more important than you has to present it to another very important person the next morning.

Not only have Gen X adults my age accepted it, but we have also spent years teaching and training the next generation to accept it, too. 

A young mother once told me she was very stressed about the impossibly high KPIs her department head had set. 

I did my best to talk the achievement-oriented Singaporean instinct out of her and encourage her to simply do her best at work and then switch off. At the end of the day, her children have only one mother – and no one dies when a KPI isn't met. 

But that can sound simplistic and easy to do when, in reality, you cannot switch off because your job demands it. 

So with limited freedom of choice over how much and how long they work, it makes sense that young people will want to exercise their control over the one choice they do have: Whether or not to add kids into an already fraught mix.

AND YET, ONE CAN STILL HOPE

As my boys navigate adulthood, I still hope they will eventually choose to have children of their own. Not because they may get free childcare, bigger baby bonuses or much more leave, although these will be important.

I hope they will choose children because bringing new life into the world is an extraordinary thing.

Parenting is very hard. But somehow (and maybe this is the famous "parent amnesia" talking), I find myself wishing I had more time with my boys when they were younger.

Because all my favourite memories reside there, in that space when they were innocent and utterly adorable. 

The beautiful days were the simplest days – baking cookies, playing in the sand, the sheer delight in their wide eyes when they saw a bathtub in a hotel room, the tight hugs and slobbery kisses.

I hope my children can experience this someday – this profound, irrational, exhausting, life-altering love. 

I hope they can want it for themselves. Choose it freely, without cynicism or dread. Experience how it can change them as people and give meaning to a life beyond being products of a successful system.

But I also know they may not. And if they don't, I can't blame them either. 

Their choice won't be caused by selfishness or apathy. It will be the entirely logical conclusion from having watched their parents and everyone around them grind themselves down to fit the mould of a "normal life".

Crispina Robert was formerly an executive editor at CNA. She is now the founder and host of the Type A podcast.

If you have an experience to share or know someone who wishes to contribute to this series, write to voices@mediacorp.com.sg with your full name, address and phone number.