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www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 4 COMMENTARY January 9, 2026 Youth Column: Generation AI-Who Is Really In Control? A I or Artificial Intelligence is no longer a futuristic fantasy. It is here and very much part of our daily life, especially those of Gen Z. “Talking to ma- chines” is no longer science fiction. AI quietly powers our daily routines. We ask ChatGPT for essay help, let Spotify pick our mood, and trust Google Maps more than our own sense of direction. The use of AI defines the generation gap. For Gen X and older Millennials, AI is a convenience. For Gen Z, it is oxygen. And all the while news-magazine headlines keep warning about robots taking over normal life. Everyone knows if used limitlessly, that might become true.I and Gen Z: Aarush Tripathi, a high school junior, said AI is “just part of my routine. I use it for homework, music, and even video games.” Yet he admitted that relying on AI for everyday choices can feel strange. “It’s helpful, but it’s also like someone else is making choices for me,” he said. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, nearly 70% of Gen Z respondents use AI tools weekly as compared to 48% of Millennials. Most say it helps them be more productive or creative, but nearly half worry about “losing control over decision-making.” AI AND GEN X: The older generation does not like so much depen- dence on AI. VikramMehta, who is in his 40s, spoke about a world before autocomplete. “We had to figure things out on our own,” he said. “Now students just ask ChatGPT.” Mehta said he uses AI only for quick searches now. “It feels more real when you do it yourself,” he added. AI AND CREATIVITY: A major concern with AI is that of creativity. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube use AI-driven recommendations to shape what users watch and what they create. Seventeen-year-old Aahan Sharma said algorithms often suggest ideas he would never have thought of. “It’s like having a weirdly smart friend who’s always there,” he says. But he remains cautious, he said. “If you rely on it too much, you might lose your originality,” he said. Ac- cording to him, AI is like a friend who just does not keep finishing your sentences, it starts writing them too. AI AND PRIVACY: Another major concern about AI is that of Privacy, which is now a shared concern for both Gen X and Z. Gen Z may love the convenience of AI, but not blindly. A 2023 Deloitte study found that 52% of Gen Z users adjust privacy settings monthly, a higher rate than Mil- lennials. “We know what we’re giving away,” said 18-year- old Shobhit Nayak. “But we’ve learned to manage the trade-offs.” AI raises questions no one quite knows how to answer. Can a Chatbot replace a real friend? “Sometimes I joke that my playlist knows me better than my friends,” said Tripathi. “Yesterday I was sad, and Spotify just started happy songs.” “In my day, if your music matched your mood, that was luck, not algorithms,” Mehta said. AI’S FUTURE: However, everything is not dark about AI. Gen Z’s comfort with AI has also fueled an explosion in digital literacy. They use it to learn coding, practice languages, and brainstorm new ideas faster than ever. What once required a classroom now fits in a text box. Perhaps AI is not making us lazier or taking over. It is just changing how we think. The calculator did not kill math. It changed how we do it. Likewise, AI might not replace creativity, it might redefine it. Nayak rounded up the sentiments when he said, “We don’t just live with AI. It lives with us. The question is how much we let it define us.” Perhaps that will be the paradox of the modern age: the smarter our machines get, the more we have to re- member how to stay human. Devansh Malhotra is a Junior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, NJ. By Devansh Malhotra Photo:An AI photo.Photo:CourtesyPexels Data analysis science and big data with AI technology. An AI photo. I n the early years of the RevolutionaryWar, a Rhode Island man named Jehu Grant joined the Continental Army to fight for the nation’s independence. And for his own, too; he’d escaped enslavement by a Brit- ish loyalist in hopes that an American victory and his personal sacrifice would allow him to be a free man. He discreetly traveled about 100 miles to an encampment where his military service included duties as a teamster and aide to the wagon master. Ten months later, the loyalist showed up at the unit’s supply depot, asserted a property claim on Jehu and demanded his return. The Continental Army - waging war for the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - complied, returning one of its own to captivity. This outcome was certainly a moral failure, but fram- ing it as that alone reduces the issue to one of hypocrisy, unprincipled leadership or expedience. Instead, it was a failure of institutions, which prioritized the nation’s interests over its values. Through this lens, Jehu’s patrio- tism and love of country weren’t in question; they were beside the point and wholly insufficient. Not because he misunderstood its ideals, but because he overestimated the willingness of the nation’s institutions to honor them. This sentiment should feel familiar to Americans today, at the dawn of the nation’s 250th anniversary. President Donald Trump’s use of executive orders - he has already issued more in the past year than in his entire first term - has bypassed the principle of checks and balances established in the Constitution that have contravened public will and civic sentiment. In its more recent cases, the Supreme Court is revisiting mostly settled questions on abortion, voting rights, gun regulations and even birthright citizenship. Congress is on pace for a historically unproductive year with its lowest legislative output in modern history; the dysfunction has been so pronounced that, to date, 44 members - nearly one-tenth of the institution - have decided not to run again. And the country’s current spiteful deportation operations, economic policies that accrue wealth for the few, and underperforming educa- tion, health care and criminal justice systems, all point to acquiescent institutions with little regard for everyday people. The erosion of norms and government institu- tions’ desire for autonomy from the public are not tem- pered by patriotism; they are largely indifferent to it. And it doesn’t matter much which form of patriotism one practices. Trump’s insistence on uncritical patriotism isn’t an ask for the people to love the country uncon- ditionally and ignore its failures, but rather a means to unbridle the presidency from oversight and constraints. Those who run afoul of him are immediately labeled traitors, ingrates and disloyal - just ask Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who had been so targeted and announced in November that she would resign from Congress. Moral patriotism critiques the nation on where and how it has fallen short but does so from a place of respect and affection for it and the people – the sort of moral patriotism practiced by Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., among scores of others. And there is civic or constitutional patriotism, which is based on loyalty to principles, laws and institutions, emphasizing shared values as the basis for national attachment - the version that compelled Jehu Grant to fight for a nation that sanctioned his enslavement. Shortly after the Army gave him up, Jehu Grant was returned to slavery, resold, indentured, and finally earned his freedom decades later. Fifty years after the Revolu- tionaryWar ended, most of its veterans, who had been paid little while serving, were elderly and living in pov- erty. Care for these veterans became a matter of public debate and moral obligation, and in 1832, the Pension Act was passed to grant full or prorated pay for those who’d served more than six months. Jehu, blind and broke and 80 years of age, applied to theWar Department for his pension but was denied and informed that “services while a fugitive from [your] mas- ter’s service” did not qualify. In a somber, unanswered appeal to the government, he apologized for escaping slavery in pursuit of national independence and equal citizenship but explained that his service to the country had been faithful and that God had forgiven him. But the offending institutions had neither been faithful nor forgiving, no matter how much he loved America and no matter how much they said the same. His life is a reminder that the most durable expressions of patriotism didn’t emerge from founding generation’s exemplars or the institutions they designed that have persisted, but from those most harmed by their short- comings – abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights activists, veterans who returned home to unequal treatment, immigrants in search of opportunity. They all understood that loving the country requires confronting it and the institutions that govern it. Our institutions are not self-correcting - they do not inherently work to close the gap between the nation’s professed ideals and its actions. Instead, they must be compelled to change - transformed by a patriotic people who love the country enough to make it work a quarter- millennium after its creation. -Special to TheWashington Post America’s 250th: A Time For Moral Patriotism By Theodore R. Johnson