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Brooding<\/a><\/p>\n \n Deep thoughts on modern family life from Kathryn Jezer-Morton.\n <\/p>\n \n Illustration: Hannah Buckman\n <\/p>\n New York\u00a0subscribers got exclusive early access to this story in our Brooding\u00a0newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get it in your inbox.<\/p>\n I guess it\u2019s high time that we asked ChatGPT<\/a> how to talk to our kids about AI<\/a>. I\u2019m kidding! The dull composites that generative AI tries to pass off as \u201cideas\u201d are definitionally average, and since reading Karen Hao\u2019s book Empire of AI<\/a>, the looming real-world ravages of AI infrastructure are no longer abstract to me \u2014 they\u2019re unignorable. As Tressie McMillan Cottom put it back in March<\/a>, \u201cIt is precisely because I use new technology that I know mid when I see it.\u201d So yeah \u2014 I\u2019m not that interested.<\/p>\n My own feelings about using generative AI<\/a> aside \u2014 no, I don\u2019t agree that it\u2019s \u201cfun to use,\u201d grow up! \u2014 let\u2019s not make the same mistake we made the last time we were faced with figuring out how to approach a world-transforming technology <\/a>that its developers insisted was inevitable and also totally awesome. Twenty years ago, we adopted social media with the degree of critical thinking that a toddler applies to putting a LEGO in their mouth. We shared things we shouldn\u2019t have and eagerly accepted our feeds as a stand-in for reality. Later, when it came time for young people to create their own accounts, adults abdicated all responsibility for modeling smart behavior. We let kids do whatever they wanted on social media, on the correct assumption that we didn\u2019t have enough credibility left to establish any controls.<\/p>\n You may recall that there was a time that many adults thought young kids should use iPads because it would give them a competitive advantage in a screen-based workplace. So embarrassing. We shit the bed and kids are paying the price. It feels like we\u2019re on the verge of doing it again. What if we didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n If accountants and movie producers find useful ways to apply AI to their work, I hope people in those fields debate its use first. But my beat is what goes on at home, and what I see is most of the people I know socially, and many of my colleagues in academia, using ChatGPT and other generative-AI apps on a very regular basis. Suddenly people I usually trust are earnestly trying to convince me that I need it. To help me figure out how to be the adult in my own home, I contacted people who have done extensive research on the current and future impact of generative AI, and I asked them how they would talk to kids about it.<\/p>\n Emily Bender, a linguist who co-authored The AI Con with the sociologist Alex Hanna, reminded me that when we talk about AI, we need to be precise. Many tools that use AI \u2014 voice-to-text transcription tools, or tools that will turn a set of text into a study-aid podcast, for example \u2014 are not generating something new; they are combining a single individual\u2019s inputs and making them legible in a new format. What Bender is most critical of is what she calls \u201csynthetic media machines\u201d \u2014 models that create composite imagery and writing, like ChatGPT, DALL-E3, and Midjourney, using massive libraries of existing material to fulfill a prompt.<\/p>\n \u201cThese tools are designed to look like objective, all-knowing systems, and I think it\u2019s important to get kids used to asking, \u2018Who are the people who built this? Who said and wrote the original things that became the training data? Whose artwork was stolen by these companies to produce the training sets?\u2019\u201d said Bender.<\/p>\n For kids too young to connect with those questions, Bender suggests parents focus on the environmental impact. \u201cEvery time you use a chatbot, you\u2019re helping to build the case for the company to develop the next model and build the next data center. Data centers have to be cooled with massive amounts of clean water, and clean water usually means drinking water.\u201d Whose drinking water will be diverted?<\/p>\n Karen Hao echoed Bender\u2019s advice: \u201cParents should not express to their kids that this is inevitable. It\u2019s fully a decision that they can inform themselves in making about how best to integrate these tools into your life, and maybe the right answer is that they don\u2019t want to use them at all.\u201d<\/p>\n But what about college kids, who could hypothetically use AI for every aspect of their schooling and are surrounded by peers doing exactly that? One of my most persistent worries is the effect that generative AI might have on cognitive capacity among young people. I worry about the emergence of an intellectual inequality gap that will become even more deeply entrenched than income inequality. I worry that if some kids are kept reliant on generative tech for completing everyday tasks, they\u2019ll grow up to be less capable of resistance, less sure of themselves, and easier to exploit.<\/p>\n Maybe we\u2019ll get through to college-age kids by appealing to their competitive instincts. \u201cThe best way to guarantee job security and general quality of life in the future is to figure out your strengths and where you\u2019re unique,\u201d said Hao. \u201cUltimately, companies aren\u2019t looking to see if you can use a tool or not. They are looking for something irreplaceable about you that they can\u2019t just swap in for another candidate. If you\u2019re going to overly rely on AI, which is literally based on statistical sameness, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot. You will shortchange your ability to find what your strengths are, and that\u2019s what college is for \u2014 dabbling, trying things out. Some kids rely on chatbots to make life decisions, to figure out how to respond in certain situations, and they\u2019re getting the statistical average, always. It makes you look like everybody else. Your using AI is not going to be perceived as clever. You\u2019re never going to stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n And as far as the idea that students need to \u201clearn the tools\u201d to be ready to use them effectively in the workplace? That is a joke. Beyond the bare fact that these tools are designed for ease of use above all else, they are constantly changing. Using them now will not help you use them in the future.<\/p>\n Although Empire of AI focuses on how tech companies are accumulating the same kinds of power once only wielded by imperial governments, Hao told me that our strongest resistance starts at home, where we should encourage kids\u2019 independence in the outside world. \u201cKids feel that their phones and these tools are a really free space where they are unsupervised. Whereas when they hang out in person, they are so often chaperoned and watched. So even though they might prefer to socialize in person, they would rather have the freedom that comes from being online.\u201d If parents can give their kids that feeling of freedom in their social environments, it could provide a valuable alternative to the lure of the always-on AI companion.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing evidence that long-term use of these tools can lead to decline in mental health,\u201d she continued. \u201cFor parents who are concerned about that, the solution is to just continue being in tune with your kids. Continue being emotionally supportive. Kids or adults ultimately start using these tools when they\u2019re not finding that support elsewhere. The solution is not always about figuring out how kids should be relating to AI.\u201d<\/p>\n And as for ourselves, bearers of the responsibility for modeling thoughtful behavior in a world being manipulated and overtaken by people we wouldn\u2019t trust to babysit our kids for half an hour? Let\u2019s just remember the point of all this \u2014 of caring for people, of caring about the world. We all know, very intimately, that only a fool expects everything to be easy. Our relationship to information should be no different. Emily Bender reminded me that the valorization of convenience, of frictionlessness, comes at a very steep cost to our humanity. \u201cThe idealized world that people selling this tech are selling is that you can have any information at your fingertips. But the friction is the whole point.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for Brooding<\/p>\n A biweekly newsletter delivering deep thoughts on modern family life, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n