Subj : My kids will never be smarter than AI: Sam Altmans advice on how To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Thu Jun 19 2025 16:30:07 My kids will never be smarter than AI: Sam Altmans advice on how to use ChatGPT as a parent leaves me shaking my head Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2025 15:28:15 +0000 Description: Sam Altman has some advice on AI-powered parenting in the new OpenAI podcast. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Sam Altman has appeared in the first episode of OpenAIs 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 Altmans PR advisors have taken the day off, because after being asked the softball question, Youve 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 theyll 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 didnt. I dont think my kids will ever be bothered by the fact that theyre 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 youre 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 hes 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. Mitigating the downsides Altman is characterizing a childs interactions with ChatGPT in the same way, but interestingly he doesnt 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 Ill admit to being of a more cynical bent, but this does seem awfully like hes 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 OpenAIs concern. In fact, earlier when the podcast host brought up the example story of a parent using ChatGPTs 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 ChatGPTs Advanced Voice Mode without supervision? As a parent myself (although of much older children now) Im 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 arent true. Not to mention that ChatGPT is not meant for children under 13 according to OpenAIs own guidelines , and I cant 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 Id always make sure that they werent 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. You might also like Google Geminis super-fast Flash-Lite 2.5 model is out now - heres why you should switch today 5 ChatGPT Plus features that I use all the time and now I cant live without YouTube Shorts is getting a huge free Veo 3 upgrade that might just make me leave TikTok and CapCuts behind ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/my-kids-will-never -be-smarter-than-ai-sam-altmans-advice-on-how-to-use-chatgpt-as-a-parent-leave s-me-shaking-my-head --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .