Science has proved that early childhood brain development in a positive manner leads to a fulfilling and successful life. With the world moving towards AI assistants for help, we wonder if AI-powered technologies could be the solution, and maybe a substitute to parents, in raising children.
There are various applications that have released to assist parents in making optimal decisions for their child’s development. For example, Muse is an application that develops traits in parents that leads to better outcomes like emotional intelligence, persistence, self-control, and resilience in their children. Muse understands that artificial empathy is no substitute for human connection, and therefore focuses on helping parents become better at parenting to nurture their children into a fulfilling life. Another application called Bosco assists parents in monitoring digital threats to their child. With factors such as age, gender, and culture considered, the AI of Bosco charts an expected online behavior profile looking at the history. This application is the “eyes and ears” for parents to protect their children from potential red flags. Robots such as BeanQ have been built for stimulation and for a more interactive and dynamic source of engagement for children. The robot is designed like any other toy to grab the child’s attention and is voice powered to facilitate interactions. It is made as another outlet of engagement besides the parents while they are busy with other tasks. Parents say it also features as a “remote babysitting” gadget which tracks the nanny and the baby’s movements and uploads them online for parents to see. It is being used widely in China to capture the important moments in the child’s life.
There has been a growing effort to promote robot “pals” to promote language development and social growth, AvatarMind’s iPal is one such robot that speaks in two languages-Chinese and English, plays games and gives math lessons as well as tell jokes. This educational humanoid robot costs $2499 and a customized version costs $4999. It is seen as an added ingredient to human nannies and not as AI babysitting. Because parenting is more complex than just an interactive program or entertaining the child, even childcare robots lack the human touch necessary for the optimal and fulfilling development of children.
All the above are merely tools to assist parents, not substitutes of parents. There is a need for human parenting to build social skills as this requires human connections. This is also why parents are so important in a child’s development. It is hard to imagine a replica of this level of bonding and connection from a machine.
There is now growing concerns about the divide that will occur between those who have access to AI and are AI-literate and those who are not as fortunate. There is also the question of how reducing parent time using robots and other applications that are now pervasive in our societies may affect the very development of young minds that these AI technologies aim to build and nurture. Some say it is best to nurture a child and their socio-emotional skills free of digital influence while others argue that there are merits in exposing them to technology as early as they can to raise them digital-literate in a world that is increasingly becoming AI-powered.
References:
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/can-artificial-intelligence-help-enhance-the-quality-of-early-childhood-education/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilsahota/2020/06/22/ai-powered-parenting-entering-the-age-of-digital-childcare/
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/28/health/china-ai-early-education/index.html
I really liked your blog and it’s an interesting subject. I also liked that you gave the advantages an disadvantages of digital childcare. Personally I think the disadvantages of the robot outweigh the advantages. I really think that human touch is essential for the development of a child. A robot could never give the same human interaction to a child. The human brain is too complex to rebuild that into a robot. At the same time I would never buy a such a robot due to the privacy and safety of me and my family (especially my child). You can never expect what a robot could do and also I would not trust a robot in my home with cameras on.
This is a very interesting topic! At the end of your post you mention the growing concerns that could arise for kids being Ai literate or illiterate. I think this greatly ties in with privilege and access that certain demographics may or may not have around the world. It was the traditional practice that kids grow up with minimal digital exposure, however this has drastically changed over the last few years. While I still believe that best practice is for kids to be able to enjoy the outdoors, I do believe this practice will be completely eradicated over the next decade.