September 11, 2025: What happens when an 11-year-old defines AI better than most executives?

Meet Harper Schmidt, who calls AI "hollow - the absence of life, but also an idea maker." In this groundbreaking episode of Flourish Sound Bytes, healthcare tech entrepreneur Kristen Schmidt and her daughter Harper reveal why we're dangerously unprepared for AI's impact on the next generation. This mother-daughter duo exposes the gap between AI's rapid development and youth preparedness.

The future of healthcare is being shaped by the decisions we make today. Are we preparing the right leaders?

First mother-daughter team. Youngest guest ever. Most important conversation yet.

Listen now.

Key Points:

1. 0:00 Meet Our Youngest Guest Ever
2. 1:00 The AI Classroom Experiment
3. 5:00 The Mom Lens: Who Will This Hurt?
4. 9:43 AI is Hollow
5. 13:05 Dreaming in Biotechnology
6. 16:06 We Thought We Had More Time

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[00:00:05] Sarah Richardson: I'm Sarah Richardson, a principal here at this week Health where our mission is healthcare transformation, powered by community. This is Flourish Soundbites, unfiltered Conversations with healthcare leaders. Let's get real,

Welcome to Flourish Soundbites, where today we are diving into AI from a deeply personal and powerful perspective, what it means to teach our daughters about AI while building it ourselves.

And we are joined by Kristen and Harper Schmidt.

Ladies, welcome to the show.

Yes.

This is gonna be amazing, but let's jump in and really talk about the mother-daughter lens when it comes to artificial intelligence. Kristen, you recently taught a class on AI at Harper School. What inspired you to do that?

So I reached out and offered my time one afternoon, I. Felt as if I benefited more from the time together with the children because it really, Sarah reaffirmed my intuition that the youth are being somewhat overlooked here with this AI movement that's happening. Certainly not in an intentional manner, but because of the speed here of developing AI and the race to competitively position the US here as a global leader within ai, we've not paused long enough to think about future generations that will be impacted.

[00:02:01] Sarah Richardson: and you've had some great results from the students and the teachers, what were some of the things that they said that may have surprised you and may not have surprised you?

Coming from an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, that's pretty profound. The second theme was just a general feeling of uncertainty with ai. What am I supposed to know about ai? How am I supposed to use ai? So those really were the top themes that we pulled out of the surveys, and those responses definitely kind of fueled this call to action here.

It's going to have a huge impact on our children and their children's generation.

'cause Harper, you are a mature, precocious, very forward thinking. Young woman, and it's been really impressive just to even see your involvement in some of these aspects. But what should our audience know about the conversations you two are having?

And I think that certainly, sparked a greater interest. And I'm starting to get asked more about AI and [00:04:00] tips and tricks, for going back to school and just having those conversations with classmates and their families. But what I can tell you about the way that this experience has changed my perspective, Sarah, on this is.

Harper concluded her spring semester on a somewhat triumphant note. So she's been able to advance to the level where this next school year, she's going to pick her passion area of focus, in which the following year she's going to start to enroll in college credits through an affiliation with Oxford.

So this was really, really exciting, but at the same time provided a somewhat sobering reality check for for Mama Bear over here in the sense that I have not. Thought that I was running out of time to prepare her for and equip her with the right knowledge to promote the right usage of AI in her studies.

And so as she starts to demonstrate that she's mastered the basic, understanding of AI will begin to kind of build upon that. But we have to be able to see that she's grasping and understanding the content. So when it comes to querying any kind of, open AI platform, I wanna understand and see her become more, intentional and advance in the way that she's prompting the software.

Who will reshape how we develop, deploy, and govern artificial intelligence systems in the industry that she ends up choosing. So that's kind of been a culmination of what the teaching, and the interaction with her classmates has produced.

And so there's a little bit of a difference in how women are approaching this space. Love that you're leaning into it. Because I'm curious also from your perspective, is how do female or mom led AI initiatives? What do they bring to the table that might be missed? And also what is the risk if we don't face those types of perspectives head on?

The current AI landscape is characterized, by intense competition and rapid development, and rightfully so. There are extraordinary stakes here on a global level, but with this GForce acceleration. There's been less emphasis on safety and collaboration, and I just suspect that this pattern reflects the broader gender differences and how leaders approach strategy and execution in the AI field.

Both are needed, but we can't be too taught heavy with one or the other because then we start to become unbalanced and then that's where we are gonna have real risks.

[00:08:15] Kristen Schmidt: Yeah, that's a great question. Sarah, for Harper, I'm just gonna use her as an example here. There are three areas that my husband and I have agreed that are really worthy of our focus time with her around AI to help her really understand the fundamental. Purpose of AI and how we can be good stewards of ai.

And those three areas are modeling collaborative AI usage rather than, and Harper and I were discussing this this morning, rather than like stockpiling and hoarding the AI capabilities, let's share to promote the fabric of society and to help really, expand our capabilities and achieve bigger and better outcomes.

So that's the second focus area. And then the third is we wanna focus AI on, solving real human problems and not just technical challenges. The industry releases and podcasts and interviews that I'm seeing that are making some pretty, notable headlines are 80% around solving technical challenges and not real human problems.

So I'm excited for Harper to share with you in a minute. One of the things that she's been using AI for, to advance her and to give her a leg up for the fall term.

Now, think about how many phone numbers, Kristen, you and I knew growing up, and how many phone numbers we actually know now because everything is speed dial or voice command, that's it. And it's kind of disturbing over the fact that I've absolutely no idea where some of the things that I used to be really good at, which was the memorization of numbers and patterns don't do as much anymore because we've gotten dependent and very comfortable with the technology.

So the last question for you, Kristen, is what is something you wish you had known about technology when you were Harper's age?

Technology was largely viewed, back when I was Harper's age as. Really solely entertainment versus as a tool that could unlock innovation. And so I really wish that I would've had an opportunity to embrace a higher education in technology. But we take that learning certainly, and, and we've applied that forward here we found an exceptional leadership entrepreneurial academy that is local to my hometown.

That embraces innovation and technology and really preparing our children with real world skills and knowledge that they're gonna need to be good citizens and productive, successful adults. So that's something that, had, I had an opportunity to change at her age, would've been earlier exposure to technology.

[00:12:05] Sarah Richardson: Well, I'm excited too, 'cause Harper, you're up next and let's be honest, I mean, you've got a mom who's built this incredible AI company specific to protecting others, and you have all this exposure in your own, you know, home and school.

But then you're also a bit of an entrepreneur on this side, minus the AI aspect. I'm gonna ask you about, you already have your own candle company and you're 11. Um, and by the way, her candles are awesome. I've already bought a whole bunch of them and give them all this gifts, so I love how you literally are locally sourcing so many elements of your life.

But let's jump into the AI questions for you, Harper. What do you believe AI is in your own words,

[00:12:57] Sarah Richardson: When you consider what would be a good idea or a [00:13:00] bad idea, how do you differentiate and when you see something come up in ai,

[00:13:12] Sarah Richardson: Goes back to using it for the good of humans, which I love.

Harper. If you could create an AI tool to do anything, what would you want it to do?

And then it just does the exact same thing, just different details.

I love that. How do you want to use AI in your job or in your future? Because the job you're gonna have. Is not the job that even exists today and you're setting the pace for a lot of others who are, who are you thinking about the usage of ai? What kind of job would you wanna have and use AI to help you be that much more successful?

And it'll help me, especially since I would like to major in biotechnology

What is our responsibility if we decide to bring something back? Is it a good idea if we can bring back a T-Rex? Should we.

[00:16:32] Sarah Richardson: that's a very mature answer and thank you because if we cause them to go away, what do we have to un cause for them to be able to thrive? And I can see you at the center of like the Diane Fosse and the Jane Goodall conversations, which I'm sure you already researched. Those amazing women and Jane Goodall still with us.

Thank you. And Kristen, no surprise. Just 'cause we're friends and I know how you parent and I'm like, dang, if I could have had a Harper, I might actually had a kid.

But I think the more. We can encourage open communications and conversations, locally, within your schools, within your community, within your families, the more you talk about it, the more you'll understand it. So I would just encourage that as a learning and something that's obviously been beneficial and a value to us as we've prepared for this conversation with you today, Sarah.

And this episode reminds us that AI education isn't just technical, it's generational.

Also, please share this episode with a fellow parent or educator, and tell us how are you talking about AI with the next generation. Again, Kristen Harper, thank you so much. Can't wait to see you both soon and. Those of you listening.

That's all for now.

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