Parents Using ChatGPT to Rear Their Children

Parents are turning to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in increasing numbers for parenting advice — and the results of this unsupervised experiment are anyone’s guess.

They ask ChatGPT how to deal with behavioral problems or for medical advice when their children get sick, USA Today The reports, which align with a 2024 study that found parents trust ChatGPT more than real health professionals and also consider bot-generated information trustworthy.

All of this comes in addition to parents using ChatGPT to keep kids entertained by having the bot read their kids bedtime stories or talk to them for hours.

All this offloading of parental responsibility towards AI is troubling because one of ChatGPT’s biggest drawbacks, its manipulative and sycophantic nature, has been known to increase delusions and cause a disconnect from reality – a horrific phenomenon that has been linked to many suicides, including many by teenagers.

It is clear that the ages of children exposed to ChatGPT and its advice are decreasing. About 30% of parents of school-age children used ChatGPT in 2023, and that number is rising Undoubtedly, it has become larger.

A pediatrician said USA Today That if parents still want to use ChatGPT, despite all the known downsides, they should exercise due diligence with the bot-generated information and use it with a “critical eye” due to the technology’s propensity for flattery and hallucinatory fake answers.

“It’s an incredible tool, and it’s becoming more widespread,” Michael Glazier, chief medical officer at Bluebird Kids Health in Broward County, Florida, told the newspaper. “But don’t let that replace critical thinking… There are a lot of benefits for us as parents to think things through and consult experts rather than just plugging it into the computer.”

Glazier also advised parents to only use ChatGPT as a starting point, and to eventually consult with a medical expert.

Another issue that parents should pay attention to is privacy. Experts warn that they should not enter sensitive personal information about their children and their medical problems into ChatGPT; Handing over intimate information to a tech company is a problem on the face of it, and malicious actors may also compromise your personal data.

Basically, parents should be careful when using the robot and take anything from its virtual lips with caution.

More about OpenAI’s ChatGPT: New data finds that ChatGPT usage has peaked and is now declining