How ChatGPT is joining family conversations
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Busy parents have been prompting ChatGPT for help almost since its launch, but here's how some parents are using the voice feature to let the bot talk to even the youngest of children.
Why it matters: Using generative AI in a supervised environment could introduce kids early to a technology that will most certainly be a facet of their future, but we don't know yet how it will affect their developing brains.
Case in point: Preston Trebas, an academic strategist at Western Governors University in Utah, has two kids, ages 4 and 6. "Not a day goes by where I don't use AI in some way with them," he told Axios.
- His most common use is to help them create stories. "They'll tell me what they want [the story] to start with, or what they want it to end with, or they'll describe their characters, or sometimes I'll have the voice feature ask them questions about the story," Trebas said.
Between the lines: Chulhee Kim, a recent graduate from Columbia's business school in NYC, says he let his 4-year-old daughter use the ChatGPT voice tool. "She found it fun immediately," Kim told Axios in an email. But she wasn't able to continue using the app because it wasn't built for kids. (OpenAI's terms of use say you must be 13 and over to use it.)
- Kim says his daughter needed time to think about what she was going to say during conversations, and ChatGPT didn't wait for her, which "was a bit frustrating."
- Trebas said that when the bot interrupts, he uses the mute button to let his daughters talk.
Zoom in: ChatGPT recognizes the voice of his daughters and answers a little differently when it speaks to them, Trebas said.
- They only use ChatGPT on his phone. He never lets them use it without supervision and he has age-appropriate talks with his kids about what ChatGPT is and what it isn't.
- "We have conversations constantly about how, even though it sounds like a real person, it's not."
- Trebas said he's glad they've spent so much time talking about the productive ways to use AI, "because they're not being shown any of this in school."
"I know a lot of folks are against AI ... they say it's going to kill creativity. And for me, it's just like anything else. It's a tool. And so it's been really cool to see how we've used it to amplify their imagination, never replacing it, using it as a family creativity tool."
- Kim also noted that when his daughter talked to ChatGPT, she came up with "more creative or silly questions" than what she normally asks, like "How can airplanes fly without the wheels?" or "How can milk change to a different color?"
- But ChatGPT would respond logically, which also frustrated his daughter.
- As a parent, Kim said he'd be interested in an LLM voice tool customized for children's conversation, to help them develop language.
Yes, but: ChatGPT will sometimes tell his kids what they want to hear, even though it may not be true, an LLM quirk known as sycophancy.
- "I often do that with my own children," Trebas said. "You know where they will ask me, 'Am I safe?' And in the back of my head, I'm like, none of us are safe. But I say, 'You're absolutely safe, you'll be fine.'"
Go deeper: Chatbots' new job: minding tots
