Should children use ChatGPT? EPAM co-founder Leanid Lozner reflects

Leanid Lozner was born in Minsk. After graduating from school, he enrolled in the Physics Faculty of BSU (Belarusian State University), built a scientific career at the Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, focusing on the automation of physical processes. He repeatedly stated that science was his true calling.

However, after the collapse of the USSR, funding for physical science, which was largely oriented towards the military-industrial complex, almost ceased. Therefore, when in 1993 his school friend Arkadiy Dobkin suggested to Lozner that they create EPAM Systems together, he agreed.

In the initial stages, it was Lozner who was responsible for forming the engineering team. According to his own words, he personally hired the first two hundred employees of the company. EPAM's first office was located in the basement of the house where Lozner lived in Minsk, while Dobkin's American office was in his apartment in New Jersey.

Over two decades, the company transformed into one of the world's leaders in software development, and in 2012, it went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Even during the preparation for the IPO, Lozner left the operational management of the company, remaining a shareholder and focusing on new projects.

After leaving EPAM, Lozner engaged in venture investments and educational projects. He invested in several technology startups, supported initiatives in school STEM education, children's robotics, and the popularization of science.

However, Lozner is known not only as an entrepreneur. In the early 1990s, he worked as a DJ at radio "Bi-ei" (Бі-эй) and wrote texts about music for the program "Youth on Musical Art" (Моладзі пра музычнае мастацтва), which aired on the First Channel of Belarusian Radio. Lozner is also the author of the book "The Beatles: A Story in Songs" (The Beatles: история в песнях), dedicated to the work of the legendary band.

In an interview with the "Women in Business" (Женщины в деле) project, Leanid Lozner shared that he now lives in Latvia, is engaged in "vibe coding" (вайб-кодзінг), and actively practices yoga. He believes that even with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, one should not choose a profession solely based on whether automation will affect it. If a person already knows what they want to do, they should dedicate themselves to that very thing — even if it is considered risky from the perspective of possible displacement by artificial intelligence.

"But then you need to give your soul, strength, and energy to it, and strive to become a master of that craft during your years of study," Lozner adds.

Children and ChatGPT

Answering the question of what age children should start using ChatGPT, Leanid Lozner admitted that he doesn't have a definitive answer. In his opinion, today's discussion strongly resembles the debates that took place a few years ago regarding when a child could be given a tablet.

Lozner believes that success in the future awaits those who can combine traditional skills with new technologies.

"The ability to build a hut from branches, light a fire, and survive a night in a winter forest, from my point of view, is just as inherently important for a person as new skills," he notes.

However, Lozner is confident that the misuse of ChatGPT will hinder the development of thinking skills.

Nevertheless, according to Lozner, this does not mean that such tools should be abandoned. He himself regularly uses artificial intelligence — specifically, the Perplexity service, when he wants to quickly obtain necessary information. Therefore, the main thing, in his opinion, is to find a reasonable balance between independent thinking and the use of AI. How exactly to achieve this, Lozner does not yet know.

"The question is very complex. I don't have an answer for it. But I am absolutely certain that knowing the multiplication table and at least generally keeping the table of irregular English verbs in mind is very useful," he notes.

Elaborating on this thought, Lozner refers to the ideas of the French psychologist Jean Piaget. In his interpretation of Piaget's theory, he says that first a child "builds shelves," and only then "places knowledge on them."

"Without these shelves, there will be nowhere to store knowledge. And in this sense, ChatGPT, when understood broadly, is dangerous because these shelves might not be built at all," Lozner believes.

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