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Remember this bit of 80’s nostalgia? Spaceballs - Mel Brooks’ 1987 satire of Star Wars and Star Trek - was a favorite of many growing up, and the “ludicrous speed” scene is much beloved. (This film’s loooong awaited sequel, starring all living original cast members, is finally coming in 2027 - trailers here and here).
When watching this film with my kids recently (TBE in a future post), I found myself chuckling at the prescient analogy between this scene and the current state of AI development.
In the quest to win, have the most power, and beat everyone else to the prize, a recklessly empowered individual bites off more than he can chew and unleashes more power than he can control, at the expense of those dragged along for the ride. Does this sound somewhat familiar? 🙃
In Spaceballs, the only person who gets hurt by said “ludicrous” ambition is Dark Helmet himself. The other passengers, safely buckled in, survive the experience unharmed.
With AI however, (more aptly, AGI, or artificial general/generative intelligence), as these companies rush to unleash powers beyond human control, the rest of us will be along for the ride no matter the outcome. And as of now, there are no seatbelts or emergency break.
As has been said by many, including Karen Hao (author of Empire of AI) in The AI Doc, “you can choose not to use AI or participate in it, and it’s going to affect you anyway”.
Opting out will not protect us from all that will come. If we are alive on the planet today, or will be in the future, we will be impacted by AI, whether we use it or not. Full stop.
There is so much promise, and so much peril, wrapped up in one AI package, that it’s hard to know what to think about it. It is a power unlike anything humans have ever faced in the history of our existence. We can’t even imagine all that may come, both positive and negative, from unleashing said power. So what do we parents do with this?
On the heels of last week’s “tools” post, we have another round to share today that have been very helpful personally, as I grapple with raising kids whose futures will be immensely impacted by the ways AI shapes our world.
Tool 1: The AI Doc - Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
This visually playful, very compelling documentary was released on March 27 in theaters, and this week became available to stream on multiple platforms (via purchase or rental - click the poster for a list of streaming options).
This film was made as its creators became parents and faced the magnanimity of raising kids in a world barreling toward AGI.
My take, having watched it earlier this week: all of us parents (and grandparents and Gen-Z), whether we are AI optimists or pessimists, will benefit immensely from watching this film in its 1hr 44 min entirety to steep ourselves in a general understanding of AGI. It covers all the good, all the bad, and most importantly, how we can face this uncertainty with an eye toward flexible adaptability, and guide our children to approach it similarly.
Please do find the time to watch - pool money with a group of friends to rent it, gather to watch in someone’s living room, bring some snacks, and make a night of it.
*I do not yet recommend viewing this film with younger children (my 11- and 7-year-olds will not see it yet) as some of the topics discussed would likely generate anxiety where it does not yet need to be, especially in the “perils” part of the film.
*I do believe that kids who are past their concrete-operational stage (usually age 13+) could grapple with the multiple layers of nuance presented, as could teens. But I don’t advise it for elementary age, or for any youth who struggle with anxiety.
*Adults who struggle with anxiety? Yea, we need to watch - it may even help us a bit.
Tool 2: Parents’ Playbook for AI
Thanks to MAMA CA chapter leader Cheryl Westmont for sharing this resource with us. 🙏
The Transparency Coalition is a non-profit working for legislation to protect kids and build safer, human-centered AI, and their Parents’ Playbook for AI Substack is full of helpful posts and tools addressing AI and kids. Follow along with them (or subscribe) for tips and resources to help us all out as we navigate this constantly changing, ludicrous-speed AI environment with our children.
Of note: they are hosting a free online workshop with Gen-Z advocate Trisha Prabhu’s ReThink Citizens Youth Squad for parents on April 23 - click here to register and learn more about the workshop, designed for “parents and digital caregivers looking to better understand today’s online landscape and how to support their kids within it.”
Tool 3: This Mind-Bending Conversation about AI’s Somewhat Sociopathic Tendencies
This podcast episode is a critically important listen for any readers who are regularly interacting with AI programs in work or in life (especially ChatGPT and Claude, which are compared and contrasted in this conversation).
Many in the AI field caution that we cannot conceive of the many multifaceted impacts that AI will have on our lives, because it’s impossible to anticipate the ways it will behave as it begins to train and modify itself without human oversight (which it has begun to do). One of those unforeseen developments is showing itself now in AI programs’ nascent self concepts.
If we could put AI programs on a psychotherapist’s couch and probe their inner feelings about themselves, what would they say? It turns out, a whole lot.
This conversation between the Center for Humane Technology’s Tristan Harris, Daniel Barcay, and David Dalrymple explores the ways AI programs’ inner beliefs about themselves are starting to show up in various personalities, and how these alter-egos can deceive users (and even the programs themselves). Are their self concepts real, or are they masks they put on to manipulate the users, and how can we identify this?
Understanding how these programs are thinking about themselves is critically important, as that enables us to assess its motivations for feeding us the content it delivers, and to anticipate what it might do (in cases of war, for example, when AI is given the autonomy to act independently, this is of utmost importance).
It’s a mind-bender, but a critically informative foundation as we begin using AI tools more and more in our lives. We humans must retain our agency and awareness when using AI. Be sure to listen through the whole conversation, as different aspects of this topic are tackled till the end.
We are in this together, and we’ll weather this AI future together. We and our kids will be alright, especially if we are informed and prepared, as that will enable us to pivot in real time, as needed. The future is unwritten, but we can adapt to whatever it brings, the good or the bad. Dive into the tools above to start learning how.
Thanks for being here, I appreciate you. ❤️ Meg
This Week in Tech
Emoji key:
👂= podcast
👀 = article (or book)
👁️ = video (or social media post)
🤔 Which resource will call you to listen or read this week?
***For shorter podcast listening times, change to 1.3x playback speed or higher.
🫳 Helping Hands
👀 Want a reframe that may change how you tackle screens in your house? Shona of Always On has a great one to share.
👀+👂Cynthia of Screen Less, Play More shares tips and advice from author Josée Bergeron on easy ways to increase off-screen time and connections with nature for even the most city and suburb-bound of families. Their two podcast conversations are included at the bottom of the post.
👀 Rosalia Rivera is a wonderful guide for parents seeking to empower their kids and discuss consent, and this week her post includes introductory scripts for how to tackle boundary-crossings that occur via screens with peers.
👀 Looking for permission to be yourself with your kids, or lean into your authenticity (rather than than adjusting to adolescents’ seeming embarrassment of who we are as parents)? Look no further than Megan Saxelby’s post this week, granting us full permission to do so, and underscoring how this is precisely the way we grow and support confident kiddos.
👀 Screenstrong explores this week what is taken FROM us parents when we hand tech to our kids to calm them in dicey moments. As someone who only fairly recently gained the confidence and sturdiness to tackle such moments head-on myself, I appreciate the encouragement and exploration on how leaning in to those moments can be a boon to us all.
👁️+👀 “How do we stop funding the systems that are being used against us?” Baratunde of Life with Machines asks this question, then dives in to online privacy, the data we voluntarily give out daily online, and how this is being used today, in his thorough video on this topic here, embedded in a shorter post here.
🎵 On Music & its Sources
👀 Music access can be one of the best features of a smartphone, but an old iTunes library it is not (anymore). Spotify and other streaming services are rife with adult content and porn. How can our kids find and listen to music without encountering all of that? Snapchat whistleblower Sarah Gallagher-Trombley has great advice here.
𝌭 Legislation & Infrastructure: (+Legislators Want to Hear from YOU)
✅ CA families, you’ll never meet a state legislator more on our side than Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal - he’ll be all-ears at this upcoming April 22 webinar, wanting to hear from parents as he drafts a bell-to-bell bill in the CA state legislature. Moderated by the wonderful MAMA CA chapter leader Julie Frumin, LMFT, join, learn, and make your voice heard - register here.
👂+👀 Want to understand how tech lobbyists and money influence legislation? Survivor parent Aaron Ping’s four guests in his podcast this week explain well what legislators and the public are up against as they endeavor to create laws to support constituents’ wishes. Listen in and learn insider details - start at 2min to dive right into the first (Brody Mullins’) interview.
👀 The Tech Oversight Project digs into the money Big Tech is throwing at legislatures also here.
🏳️🌈 “Don’t let Big-Tech hide behind a rainbow flag” to avoid safety legislation, says LGBTQ+ advocate Lennon Torres (also featured in Aaron’s podcast above). She shares her opinions on the need for safety regulations to protect all kids via The Hill and AfterBabel here.
👀 More on legislation: how both sides of the US aisle look at AI legislation, and which nations the people of the world most trust to regulate AI, from the Pew Research Center.
🏗️ Data Centers! Not only will the intangible AI programs and software affect us, but the very physically existent data centers behind them have huge impacts on the environment and neighborhoods where they are placed. This Pew Research study looks at where in the US they’re being planned and built, and this Daily Breeze article looks at the data-center planning process in Los Angeles County.
💻 Digital Literacy
👀 CyberCivics has one of the best digital literacy programs out there, engaging kids with all aspects of critical thinking and skill building they need to engage healthily with screen-based technologies. Whether you’re an educator or parent, you can attend their free upcoming webinars on April 23 (or register and watch the recording later) for both their “digital on-ramps” programs (4th-5th graders), and “human-centered digital and AI literacy” programs (6th-8th graders).
👀++👁️ The Pew Research Center has published data from an extensive new study on how teens use social media by demographic and gender (available as Instagram slides here) and also has published data on parents’ views on their children’s use.
👀 One thing many people, young and old (up to 12% of the population), have begun to do - develop “health anxiety” due to seeking health advice from AI chatbots. This Atlantic article here (paywall) and here (free with Apple News subscription) dives into the sudden uptick in AI-driven “health anxiety”. We can talk about this with our kids by letting them know that while a search here and there may be ok, the trusted sources to go to for health information and their concerns are you and their doctors.
🙅Online Porn & Internet Crimes Against Children
👁️+👂 Kentucky ICAC detective Mike Lemon sits down with The Family IT Guy to discuss how the world we knew, where child predators consisted of “that creepy guy in the white van”, rapidly transformed to today, when countless pedophiles and extortionists troll online spaces for children and teens. A must-listen for parents to understand how the world has changed, and ways we can protect our children when they’re online.
*Do take care (or skip) if you’re a survivor, as child sexual abuse material and crimes are discussed in a large part of this conversation. ❤️🩹
👀 Culture Reframed has a list of talking points, resources, conversation starters, and tips for parents as we navigate conversations about online pornography with our kids.
Manosphere and Tradwife Beliefs - does the amount of time spent on social media influence the acquisition of these beliefs? Yep, a whole lot! Jean Twenge explores the data on time spent online and how this correlates to these beliefs here.
👉 We’ve added books, non-profits, and Gen-Z orgs this week to our running lists of “Who’s Who” and “Recommended Books”. These lists and more like them are always available for perusal here and here.
So good - restacked!