Tech Explained: Sam Altman says parenting without AI is impossible. This technology writer was prompted to disagree in Simple Terms

From the lens of a parent, nothing beats the human touch. Ditto for any human-to-human relationship; it’s in the word.

For nearly two decades, I’ve been apart from my only child because that made the most practical sense for my family. Save for my vacations and their visits, I’ve missed some of my son’s formative years and milestones, but never in his 19 years have I deviated from my responsibility to him, even from 7,000km away.

Technology has been and will always be an enabler. The ways of communication played a huge part throughout those years. Beyond the digital keypads and screens that served as our pens and windows to each other, though, we were there.

So when I heard Sam Altman say parenting is now “impossible” without artificial intelligence, I winced. Selfish, I thought.

The OpenAI boss is, in Larry Ellison’s words, one of the “smartest engineers”. And while Altman is not formally an engineer, I agree with that sentiment, in the context of how he has engineered the generative artificial intelligence mania.

To myself, AI is today what fire was when it began burning in the Old Stone Age; a hot new thing that can be controlled, but good luck trying to contain it when it goes out of hand.

I have no idea if Altman’s answer to Jimmy Fallon was bravado for being on late-night TV for the first time, or a calculated, rehearsed response to prop up his $500 billion business. Or, it could be an exaggeration, which is always a good way to generate buzz. Any PR is still PR.

There are certain tasks we can automate altogether, to varying degrees of agreement. Cleaning bots at home instead of sweeping? Sure. Flippy the fry cook flipping burgers? Why not. Elon Musk’s planned army of Optimus robots? TBD.

I just don’t get the point of how AI can, as Altman implies, replace or in its absence cripple one of the most critical and formative responsibilities a person can ever take on.

This isn’t the first time Altman has touted ChatGPT for parenting, but his appearance on Fallon’s The Tonight Show was the first time he used the word “impossible”, which begs the question that, should his ChatGPT access somehow conk out, would he just stop being a parent?

That’s a stretch. I am confident the proud father will still perform his duties towards his surrogate son, even sans his own creation helping him out with highly detailed, carefully curated content from the web.

That’s why his “impossible” messaging leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

As a no doubt very occupied person, Altman must have hired some help – human, hopefully – in tending to his son while he and his partner are away. Is he also mandating that these nannies use ChatGPT, when one would assume they are professionals who know their craft, tech-assisted or not?

When he asked ChatGPT for parenting advice, Altman of course said the chatbot did a terrific job. Makes me wonder: what if it had gone rogue? Maybe it has sometimes, but, of course, he won’t let the world know that.

Would Altman allow his son to go through the stages of his early life surrounded by machines instead of humans? I’m sure he doesn’t lack the basic common sense to go down that rabbit hole, but his “impossible” claim makes it sound like anything is possible – so long as his AI works fine.

It is not impossible; we just tend to use conveniences as an excuse to not do what’s possible.

OpenAI bestowed upon the world ChatGPT and the subsequent AI rush; you cannot go looking at something on the internet without thinking twice if said content is genuine or some carefully curated AI slop that has been flooding cyberspace and is being forced on us.

And let’s not forget the litany of the now-ubiquitous dangers of AI, and its potential psychological impact, especially on young and vulnerable users.

Where are the guardrails these AI companies so proudly tout? Surely, one of those hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions, of tokens ChatGPT is trained on should’ve realised something very dangerous and, literally, life-threatening.

As the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy put it aptly in August, persons who are vulnerable and in need of mental health support turning to AI chatbots instead of actual human therapists could be “sliding into a dangerous abyss”.

One of the ironies in all this is that, despite working the technology beat, the only time I have used GenAI is when comparing certain recipes. I’m sorry, but I find it lazy. I’m old-school like that. I do acknowledge the impossibly immense benefits and potential AI has, but I’d rather sweat it out and stay sharp rather than potentially lose my edge and sense of reality.

And should I make a mistake, then that’s on me. After all, it’s hard to point a finger at something that is still training and learning. Relying on it for parenting tips and truisms? Not for this techie father, thank you.