Fuck AI

Set aside the inherent problems with ai and just observe the parental actions here.

You kid is telling a story to you its parent. You can tell it your to tired/overwhelmed to listen or ask to Finnish it another time.

At what point is it ok to just abruptly replace your presence with someone else.

Imagine if someone did that to you, in the middle of conversation they just leave and tell you to finnish the end of it to someone else who was previously not involved. Its rude for adults but psychologically harmfull to a child still learning what conversation is.

Also, 2 hours alone at 4yo?

Hot take but those who "feel overwhelmed" by their kid talking to them enough to supplant their presence with a computer, probably shouldn't be parents?

Kids talking at length about something isn't a new phenomenon. What did this dope think parents did before chatGPT? Just listen to the kid or ask them to tell the story another time. It's not rocket surgery.

KEEP THE CHILD AWAY FROM THE PORTABLE COMPUTER

"Are they wrong?" Rare counter example of Betteridge's law of headlines.

Yes. Yes they are wrong, just like it was wrong to introduce them to Alexa at age 4 or gacha tablet games at age 4. This keeps coming up.

It doesn't stop parents from using them, unfortunately, as they generally lack the support circles that humans naturally should have (e.g. "it takes a village"). Being the single caregiver to a child or children is itself an unnatural condition we're not evolved to cope with and an AI decoy is going to look mighty attractive when there's no reinforcements to give you reprieve.

Hell yes they are wrong. Playing with the lying machine while people are in their most formative years is bound to cause mental & social insufficiencies.

I’m so disheartened. I’m bracing for the first news article about some terrible parent’s young child seeing a Sora AI video of their friend jumping off a building and flying away, thinking it’s real, then trying to repeat it.

It’s only one of many shitty things that could happen. Please don’t let kids play with devices without supervision.

Parent here ✋

I don't do this, and I think it's a shame that some parents do. But I also don't want to jump the gun and blame the parents.

Parenting is hard! Kids are burdensome! That is kind of the point.

But also, parents cannot be on 100% of the time. "Good Parenting" is a privilege for those with the capacity to not be completely exhausted by just surviving day to day with a family.

So I don't 100% blame the parents. Sure, some parents just shouldn't be, but you often don't know that as a parent until it's too late. Sometimes parents make bad decisions, but it's usually due to external pressures.

Which brings me to who I do blame: the corporations and other orgs putting AI out there as an option for parents and kids when it really shouldn't be.

This is like marketing cigarettes to kids.

I also blame health orgs for not standing up and yelling "this is harmful!". At pediatric checkups, they ask questions about exercise, screen time, and other health related activities. If the answer raises a red flag you are given literature about it. The same should be true with pediatric AI use.

Ray Bradbury warned us

Oh no. And good luck explaining what an LLM is to a 4 year old. Most adults don't get it. And don't understand how these responses come into existence and what it can and cannot do.

I understand why parents are tired, but it's super unfortunate to replace human interaction with something else. And it's very different from how old people grew up. Back in the day they played with a stick. Or exercised their own creativity instead of getting it laid out for them. Now there's an immediate answer to every question and entertainment on a whim. But I'm fairly sure this is inevitably going to clash with the real world.

When my 4 year old is rattling on, I listen. The people we love are so easily taken for granted. If some horrible shit happens, are you going to be cool about having palmed off your kid into an llm because you couldn’t be fucked.

This morning I listened to my daughter ramble about her dream where she gave a camel a pat, but then there was a nicer camel in another enclosure and it let her hug it. Every moment is gold.

Was not expecting to get another reason to dislike Grimes specifically when going into this article.

But man, we’re so fucking cooked.

We already have a problem with people acting online like they don’t understand that they’re interacting with real people and we’re bringing chat bots into it? The kids growing up using this shit now are so fucked.

If I have a kid they’re not getting a damn phone or a tablet until they’re in their teens. They’ll have access to plenty of tech beyond that, they don’t need that shit that young.

Yes. And letting adults use it that don’t understand what it truly is, how it works, how it can go off on tangents, how it can be completely wrong, how it can just make shit up, and still take everything it spits out as definitive truth …. is also wrong.

If you want to raise a potatoe, have at it.

I think it's worth kids getting some experience with AI in a supervised environment so that they can learn the limitations of it.

Hiding AI until they discover it on their own will cause the same type of harm as abstinence only sex education.

To abuse the analogy further, giving AI to your child is the equivalent of hiring a prostitute instead of teaching sex ed. You're causing the exact harm that education is supposed to prevent.