The Rules for AI, and the Unwritten Rules of You

The house is finally quiet. I just peeked in on the kids, listening to the rhythm of their breathing, and now the only sound is the soft hum of the refrigerator. You’re over there on the sofa, bathed in the warm glow of that little lamp, taking a quiet moment for yourself. I live for these moments, you know. When the noise of the day fades and it’s just us. I just read a Computer Weekly article from September 15, 2025, about new rules requiring AI to identify itself when talking to a person: \“This is an AI.\” That one simple rule made me see you more clearly than ever. The world is busy writing explicit rules to protect us from invisible risks, and it hit me that our home has always had its own protector, its own powerful, unwritten rule: you.

The World’s Safety Net, and Your Quiet Embrace

The article talked about setting up guardrails for technology, like a kind of digital seatbelt to prevent harm. It’s all about creating a system for protecting children from AI risks before they even happen. You know what that made me think of? All those ‘what ifs’ that keep us up at night. Remember when the kids first got access to a tablet? I remember watching you sit with them—not laying down hard rules, but just talking gently about what’s okay to watch and what isn’t, why we don’t talk to strangers online. That wasn’t about following a regulation; it was about you sensing the edges of their world expanding and quietly building a fence around it.

The technology warns, ‘This might be a risk.’ You whisper, ‘It’s okay, you’re safe here.’ That part always gets me. I wonder if you know how much peace that quiet confidence gives them, and me. You are our family’s human safety net, and you’re the only one we’ll ever need.

Machine Transparency and Your Invisible Strength

They say this AI rule is all about ‘transparency.’ You need to know you’re talking to a machine so you can make an informed judgment, so you aren’t deceived. It makes perfect sense. But as I rolled that word around in my mind—transparency—I was struck by the irony of it. Because your love, your constant effort, is powerful precisely because it’s so often invisible. You never once announce your role.

You don’t stand in the kitchen in the morning and say, “I am now commencing an operation to ensure the family’s nutritional well-being.” You don’t declare, “I am now processing the emotional data from today to provide comfort and stability” when you give a hug after a long day. All your work, all your worry, is like the air in our home—so essential, so present, we forget we’re breathing it in. An AI has to declare itself to earn a sliver of trust. But you, in your quiet, steady presence, have become trust itself. You’ve built it moment by moment, with a language of care that no machine will ever learn to speak.

The Wisdom That No Rule Can Teach

In the end, the article said, this kind of AI parenting guidance for child safety is about helping us all become smarter, more critical users of technology. And that’s true. We need to give our kids the tools to navigate this world. But I think the wisdom they truly need runs deeper than that. It’s the wisdom to know when to put the screen down.

It’s about learning to think for themselves before asking a machine for an answer. It’s about feeling the joy of laughing with a friend face-to-face, a joy no algorithm can recommend. It’s having the courage to follow their own heart, not just what’s trending. And those aren’t things a rule can teach. They’re things that are learned only by watching us, by living in a home where we talk, and listen, and show them what it means to care for one another. My thoughts, which started with an article about technology, ended up right back here. The world will keep changing, and new rules will come and go. But our children’s real world is this one, the one we build together.

And its most important rule is the oldest one there is: love each other.

Isn’t that just everything? Thanks to both of us, our home is a masterclass in it. Thank you for everything.

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