19 Comments
Apr 14, 2023Liked by Arvind Narayanan

Your policy prediction is spot on. The tech majors will pretend no kids use their platforms, and the kids will pretend they're older, and then there will be a panic

Expand full comment
Apr 16, 2023Liked by Arvind Narayanan

Arvind, thank you so much for sharing this. Here is an op-ed my father wrote when I was five about the same topic: https://bit.ly/MacChildPlay92

1. I appreciate your defense of the computers in the upbringing of children, and I think you are right about saying that "screentime" is not a category. I believe a healthy relationship to technology involves some long stretches of "quiet time" — I think Google broke us a bit in two ways: Because we can Google anything, 1) we think all questions are worth asking and 2) we sometimes don't think about questions on our own enough.

2. You are spot on about the risk of addiction when "visual output" is part of the package. I think this is when using the iPhone's grayscale filter will prove useful (bring us all back to the 1990's!): https://www.wired.com/story/grayscale-ios-android-smartphone-addiction/

Expand full comment
Apr 17, 2023Liked by Arvind Narayanan

I think this is great, especially if in the future the parents have more customisability (rather than it being in the hands of OpenAI etc.). In that case, parents might come to trust the AI more than, for example, teachers... as the AI they can programme to be completely inline with their principles rather than those of the ideological teachers (I.E "Come on little Jimmy, don't make a sword from Lego, that's the patriarchy.")

I'd much prefer my kids were with AI whose ideological grounding I programmed.

Expand full comment

I wrote about the possibility of these types of use cases a while ago, and now you’ve done it! This moves so fast...

Expand full comment

Hi. so thank you for sharing your journey. what do you think about making a tool for Dictating to elementary kids? especially with clone of voice of their parents!

Expand full comment

Hi. so thank you for sharing your journey. what do you think about making a tool for Dictating to elementary kids? especially with clone of voice of their parents!

Expand full comment

Thank you very much. Very interesting. I'm sure Generated AI studies in young children's education is an exciting area of research.

Expand full comment

Interesting. Somewhere I came across https://www.getsmartee.com/voicegpt/# and ever since I am glued. Not sure if this would vanish someday --meaning taken away for some reason. But, I am enjoying it, especially when I am driving and jogging.

Expand full comment

Presumably the age 13 restriction is because of COPPA.

Expand full comment
author

In a sense, yes, but of course COPPA doesn't prohibit offering the service to kids; companies have decided it isn't worth the cost of compliance, creating a lose-lose situation.

Expand full comment

Compliance with COPPA requires obtaining verifiable parental consent before collecting any personal information from the child. In practice this is quite difficult. See https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions#I.%20Verifiable%20Parental%20Consent

Expand full comment

Wonderful work! Bravo!

Expand full comment

Great article. Inspiration too. Will try building something similar myself.

Expand full comment

Thank you very much for sharing the story and experience - this sounds very inspiring, expanding my horizon with further view points

Expand full comment

Wow! So cool. I had a Dad who was like ChatGPT - he knew a little about everything - and conversations with him definitely helped me grow cognitively,

Expand full comment

Very cool, I love this! 🙏

Expand full comment

Really brilliant 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

Expand full comment