Sam Altman has appeared in the first episode of Openai’s brand new podcast, called Simply The Openai Podcast, which is available to now look at Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
The podcast hosts 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 work and AI-run parents.
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While Altman’s thoughts on Agi are always worth paying attention to, it was his advice about Ai-driven parents who caught my ear this time.
You have to wonder if Altman’s PR advisers have taken the day off, because after being asked the softball question, “You recently become a new parent, how helps chatgpt you with it?” That Altman somehow draws us into a nightmare scenario of a generation of Ai-Breeding Children Parasocial relationship with chatgpt.
“My kids will never be smarter than AI.” Says Altman in a factual way. “But also they will grow up much more skilled than we were when we grew up. They will be able to do things that we can’t imagine and they will be really good at using AI. And of course I think about it a lot, but I think much more about what they want that we didn’t do … I don’t think my kids will ever be bothered by the fact that they are not smarter than ai.”
It sounds good, but then later in the conversation he says, “Again, I suppose this will not all be good, there will be problems and people will develop these problematic or some problematic parasocial relationship.”
In the event that you wonder what “parasocial relationships” are, they develop as we begin 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 is the friendly doctor from is, or from his movie or the Nespresso ad when we have never actually met him and probably never will.
Mitigate the disadvantages
Altman characterizes a child’s interaction with chatgpt in the same way, but interestingly, he does not offer any solutions to a generation weaned on Chatgpt Advanced Voice Mode rather than human interaction. Instead, he sees it as a problem for society to find out.
“The disadvantages will be huge, and society is generally good at finding out how to reduce the disadvantages,” assures Altman Viewer.
Now I have to admit that I am of a more cynical bending, but it seems awful as if he was washing his hands on a problem that Openai creates. Any potential problems that a generation of children brought up interacting with chatgpt will experience, apparently, is not Openai’s concern.
In fact, earlier, when the podcast host brought the example to a parent who uses Chatgpt’s advanced voting state to talk to their child about Thomas Tank Engine, instead of doing it themselves because they are bored with talking about it infinitely, nodd Altman simply and say, “Kids Love Voice Mode in Chatgpt”.
In fact, they do Sam, but is it wise to let your child loosen on chatgpt’s advanced voting state without supervision? As a parent himself (although of much older children now), I am uncomfortable with hearing young children who get what sounds like unattended access to chatgpt.
AI comes with all kinds of warnings for a reason. It can make mistakes, it can give bad advice, and it can hallucinate things that are not true. Not to mention that “Chatgpt is not intended for children under 13” according to Openai’s own guidelines, and I can’t imagine there are many children older than 13 who are interested in talking about Thomas Tank Engine!
I have no problem using chatgpt with my kids, but when Chatgpt was available they were both older than 13 years. If I used it with younger children, I would always make sure they didn’t use it on their own.
I do not suggest that Altman is in any way a bad parent and I value his enthusiasm to AI, but I think he should leave the parents’ advice to the experts at the moment.
