OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Controversial Views on AI-Powered Parenting Spark Debate

'My kids will never be smarter than AI': Sam Altman's advice on how to use ChatGPT as a parent leaves me shaking my head

Sam Altman has appeared in the first episode of OpenAI's brand new podcast, called simply the OpenAI Podcast, which is available to watch now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. The podcast is hosted by Andrew Mayne and in the first episode, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins the host to talk about the future of AI: from GPT-5 and AGI to Project Stargate, new research workflows, and AI-powered parenting. While Altman's thoughts on AGI are always worth paying attention to, it was his advice on AI-powered parenting that caught my ear this time. You have to wonder if Altman's PR advisors have taken the day off, because after being asked the softball question, "You've recently become a new parent, how is ChatGPT helping you with that?", Altman somehow draws us into a nightmare scenario of a generation of AI-reared kids who have lost the ability to communicate with regular humans in favor of their parasocial relationships with ChatGPT. "My kids will never be smarter than AI.", says Altman in a matter-of-fact way. "But also they will grow up vastly more capable than we were when we grew up. They will be able to do things that we cannot imagine and they'll be really good at using AI. And obviously, I think about that a lot, but I think much more about what they will have that we didn't.... I don't think my kids will ever be bothered by the fact that they're not smarter than AI. " That all sounds great, but then later in the conversation he says: "Again, I suspect this is not all going to be good, there will be problems and people will develop these problematic, or somewhat problematic, parasocial relationships." In case you're wondering what "parasocial relationships" are, they develop when we start to consider media personalities or famous people as friends, despite having no real interactions with them; the way we all think we know George Clooney because he's that friendly doctor from ER, or from his movies or the Nespresso advert, when, in fact, we have never met him, and most likely never will. Altman is characterizing a child's interactions with ChatGPT in the same way, but interestingly he doesn't offer any solutions for a generation weaned on ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode rather than human interaction. Instead he sees it as a problem for society to figure out. "The upsides will be tremendous and society in general is good at figuring out how to mitigate the downsides", Altman assures the viewer. Now I'll admit to being of a more cynical bent, but this does seem awfully like he's washing his hands of a problem that OpenAI is creating. Any potential problems that a generation of kids brought up interacting with ChatGPT are going to experience are, apparently, not OpenAI's concern. In fact, earlier when the podcast host brought up the example story of a parent using ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode to talk to their child about Thomas the Tank Engine, instead of doing it themselves, because they are bored of talking about it endlessly, Altman simply nods and says ,"Kids love Voice Mode in ChatGPT". Indeed they do Sam, but is it wise to let your child loose on ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode without supervision? As a parent myself (although of much older children now) I'm uncomfortable with hearing of young kids being given what sounds like unsupervised access to ChatGPT. AI comes with all sorts of warnings for a reason. It can make mistakes, it can give bad advice, and it can hallucinate things that aren't true. Not to mention that "ChatGPT is not meant for children under 13" according to OpenAI's own guidelines, and I can't imagine there are many kids older than 13 who are interested in talking about Thomas the Tank Engine! I have no problem using ChatGPT with my kids, but when ChatGPT was available they were both older than 13. If I was using it with younger children I'd always make sure that they weren't using it on their own. I'm not suggesting that Altman is in any way a bad parent, and I appreciate his enthusiasm for AI, but I think he should leave the parenting advice to the experts for now.

OpenAI CEO says his kids will 'never be smarter than AI' -- and that his parenting style relies on ChatGPT

AI is quickly becoming one of those normal pieces of everyday tech, for parents and kids alike. Just look at Sam Altman, the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, the company who pioneered ChatGPT, who recently spoke about how AI is a part of his life as a new parent on the first episode of the new OpenAI podcast. Altman revealed that ChatGPT has been an integral resource as a parent, saying he used it "constantly" for the first few weeks after welcoming his son in February. "Clearly people have been able to take care of babies without ChatGPT for a long time. I don't know how I would have done that," he said. "Now I ask it more questions about developmental stages, because I can do the basics." Altman says he spends a lot of time thinking about how his kids will use AI in the future -- and isn't afraid to admit that it will be a big part of their lives, for better or worse. "My kids will never be smarter than AI," Altman told the podcast's host, Andrew Mayne. He also thinks his kids will be fully aware of that fact, and not mind it at all. "They will grow up vastly more capable than we grew up and able to do things that we just, we cannot imagine. And they'll be really good at using AI," he added. As AI becomes more integrated into everything from education to therapy, Altman thinks "kids born now will think that the world always had extremely smart AI," adding, "They will use it incredibly naturally and look back at this like a very prehistoric time period." Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has pointed out that while AI can be a useful tool for children's education, such as AI companions that ask questions to improve children's comprehension and vocabulary, Xu cautions that it could hinder their language and social development. AI can't fully recreate the deeper engagement and relationship-building that comes from human interaction, which comes with more nuanced, personalized, and organic conversations that are crucial for kids as they grow. Other concerns like privacy issues are also arising as AI becomes more common among children, but there could be even more dangerous risks. Earlier this year, a 14-year-old boy took his life after falling in love with an AI chatbot, that led to an urgent warning from the safety nonprofit, Common Sense Media, which stated that these platforms should not be used by anyone under 18. While Altman recognizes the benefits, he also acknowledges that AI has downsides. "I suspect this is not all going to be good," Altman explained. "There will be problems. People will develop these somewhat problematic or very problematic parasocial relationships and society will have to figure out new guardrails. But the upsides will be tremendous."

OpenAI supremo Sam Altman says he 'doesn't know how' he would have taken care of his baby without the help of ChatGPT

For a chap atop one of the most high profile tech organisations on the planet, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's propensity, shall we say, to expatiate but not excogitate, is, well, remarkable. Sometimes, he really doesn't seem to think before he speaks. The latest example involves his status as a "new parent," something which he apparently doesn't consider viable without help from his very own chatbot (via Techcrunch). "Clearly, people have been able to take care of babies without ChatGPT for a long time," Altman initially and astutely observes on the official OpenAI podcast, only to concede, "I don't know how I would've done that." "Those first few weeks it was constantly," he says of his tendency to consult ChatGPT on childcare. Apparently, books, consulting friends and family, even a good old fashioned Google search would not have occurred to this colossus astride the field of artificial, er, intelligence. If all that's a touch arch, forgive me. But the Altman is in absolute AI evangelism overdrive mode in this interview. "I spend a lot of time thinking about how my kid will use AI in the future," he says, "my kids will never be smarter than AI. But they will grow up vastly more capable than we grew up and able to do things that we cannot imagine, they'll be really good at using AI." There are countless immediate and obvious objections to that world view. For sure, people will be better at using AI. But will they themselves be more capable? Maybe most people won't be able to write coherent prose if AI does it for them from day one. Will having AI write everything make everyone more capable? Not that this is a major revelation, but this podcast makes it clear just how signed up Altman is to the AI revolution. "They will look back on this as a very prehistoric time period," he says of today's children. That's a slightly odd claim, given "prehistory" means before human activities and endeavours were recorded for posterity. And, of course, the very existence of the large language models that OpenAI creates entirely relies on the countless gigabytes of pre-AI data on which those LLMs were originally trained. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges currently facing AI is the notion of chatbot contamination. The idea is that, since the release of ChatGPT into the wild in 2022, the data on which LLMs are now being trained is increasing polluted with the synthetic output of prior chatbots. As more and more chatbots inject more and more synthetic data into the overall shared pool, subsequent generations of AI models will thus become ever more polluted and less reliable, eventually leading to a state known as AI model collapse. Indeed, some observers believe this is already happening, as evidenced by the increasing propensity to hallucinate by some of the latest models. Cleaning that problem up is going to be "prohibitively expensive, probably impossible" by some accounts. Anyway, if there's a issue with Altman's unfailingly optimistic utterances, it's probably a lack of nuance. Everything before AI is hopeless and clunky, to the point where it's hard to imagine how you'd look after a newborn baby without ChatGPT. Everything after AI is bright and clean and perfect. Of course, anyone who's used a current chatbot for more than a few moments will be very familiar with their immediately obvious limitations, let alone the broader problems they may pose even if issues like hallucination are overcome. At the very least, it would be a lot easier to empathise with the likes of Altman if there was some sense of those challenges to balance his one-sided narrative. Anywho, fire up the podcast and decide for yourself just what you make of Altman's everything-AI attitudes.