Paul Rand: We know how crucial the earliest years of a child’s life are to their overall development, especially the connection they build with their parents or their primary caregivers. But now with technology and AI, some experts worry about how that might impact a child’s development.

Dana Suskind: While AI has huge potential for human flourishing, for closing opportunity gaps, for giving all children the right first start and supporting all parents in their powerful role, it could also result in human connection becoming a luxury good where these technologies that suddenly are responsive that humans get connected to can be pitched, whether it be they be in homes or in schools as sort of the good enough replacement.

Paul Rand: That’s Dana Suskind, professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, where she also co-directs the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health. She’s the author of the bestselling book, 30 Million Words, and now she’s published a new book, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity and Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI.

Dana Suskind: At every stage of human life, we are fundamentally building the human brain. Building a child’s brain is like building a computer. Those first years of life are like building the hard drive, the memory, the RAM. I think of K-12, which is super important as sort of software updates, but those early years where you’ve taken this helpless infant and built that brain, it is fundamentally who we are.

Paul Rand: Research consistently shows that the best way to build a baby’s brain is through human interaction. But Suskind warns that if we hand parenting over to AI from smart baby monitors and cribs to Chromebooks and AI teachers, we risk creating what she calls artificial attachment.

What is artificial attachment?

Dana Suskind: My concern is now with artificial attachment that if children are raised or partially raised by these perfectly responsive technologies, they will not learn what it is to navigate the human world where people are inconsistent, have their own thoughts and feelings, et cetera. They’ll expect everybody in the world to be always responsive.

Paul Rand: So how should we navigate this new era of AI in our children’s lives? And is there a way to balance the pros and the cons of the technology?

Dana Suskind: Believe in the power of technology, but let’s use it to enhance us, to enhance our connection, to allow human flourishing, but not to replace that powerful connection that we have as humans. But those early years, because the brain development is so important and so large, we need to be really thoughtful. I hate to say it, but a low-tech childhood is almost the best way for getting ready for a high-tech future.

Paul Rand: From the University of Chicago Podcast Network, welcome to Big Brains where we explore the groundbreaking research and the ideas that are changing our world. I’m your host, Paul Rand. Join me as we meet the minds behind the breakthroughs. On today’s episode, how we can preserve early childhood in the age of AI and how society should help kids navigate their high-tech future. Bold and curious. These words describe the guests that you hear on Big Brains who are shaping the future of research. The University of Chicago is launching a new campaign called Chicago Minds to further advance this kind of groundbreaking work and expand the university’s global impact. 

Paul Rand: Most of our listeners of course know the name Jeffrey Hinton, who many people think of as the godfather of AI. And he made a comment not that long ago when he said that the only way to make AI safe is to embed maternal instincts into it and he doesn’t know how.

I bet that jumped out to you.

Dana Suskind: Yeah. No and it was a pretty powerful idea in that I expanded to parental instincts, mothers and fathers, because I’ll tell you, I have been caring for children and therefore their parents for several decades now. And there is a fundamental truth that parents will go to the end of their earth for their children. And it’s almost incomprehensible. There’s nothing else in nature where something so small and helpless commandeers the energy and the heart of something bigger and stronger. And so I thought it was a really interesting point. And I think there’s an AI play to really understanding how do we make sure that our technologies don’t inadvertently sort of squish us as they’re building skyscrapers sort of like ants. But I thought it also spoke to the fact that parents are not just the guardians for their own children’s lives, but really in some ways society as we enter this new age.

Paul Rand: Well, you talked kind of like the central puzzle of the book is a little bit of what you’re talking about, but you called it the helpless infant paradox. And go on a little bit about that if you would.

Dana Suskind: Yeah. I mean, the amazing thing, I mean, anybody who’s had a child or knows somebody who has had a child knows that those early years are so hard. They are so incredibly hard. It’s like the biggest design flaw at some level when you think about it. But there’s an evolutionary reason for it that those early years children are so helpless because they come out of the womb with a brain only a third the size of the adult brain. And those early years are when they’re building the brain and unlike any other species. And that’s the origins of humans’ brilliance. And at this point we’ve been the most brilliant of species. Obviously AI is turning that around and how we’ve never sort of recognized it and invested like that, but that is the origins of our brilliance and why parents and caregivers have to work so hard and we have to be so thoughtful in the supports that we give them because it is so hard and if we don’t do it right, we’ll be in trouble.

Paul Rand: Well, if we think about again, the role that AI is playing and again, as we mentioned, Hinton wants AI to have maternal instinct. And you have been, as you’ve been describing, spending a lot of your career studying parental instinct in human. What is it that machines don’t have? What don’t they have today? What have they gained and what may they never have?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. I mean, the incredible thing is that AI has those hard skills that we’ve worked so hard to optimize in our own children. Suddenly AI has all those hard skills from the math and the cognitive, even some of the reasoning. They can simulate empathy, all of those things. But what they don’t do, what they can’t do is care. They can simulate caring, but they don’t stay up at night worrying about the human on the other end or the child whose potential has been lost because of the lack of investment. And I think that’s a fundamental difference that is sort of a crux of the book’s argument that we need to lean into our distinctly human capabilities that AI is not and cannot replace.

Paul Rand: Well, let’s go on to this idea of connecting a little bit. And I’m thinking about Patricia Kool and she talked about something called the social gate, which really kind of starts this thinking. Tell us what the social gate is and what did we learn out of it?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. So part of the discussion in the book is we need to think about AI entering our lives at every stage of human life, but there is something fundamentally different in the early years. We are fundamentally building the human brain. It’s not tweaking it as it is later on that we are building the infrastructure for all our thinking, feeling, how we navigate the world. And up until now, the only thing that actually helped wire up the brain fundamentally was human interaction. It’s the basis of all of my work, the talk and interaction. Literally every second a million new neural connections happen. And the reason it was only human is that there’s this thing called the social gate that Patricia Kool describes, which is that only responsive human interaction will allow that to happen. TV actually doesn’t wire up the brain because it’s not responsive. But suddenly we have these technologies that can mimic that human interaction and opens up the social gate.

And what opens up the social gate has the ability to wire up the brain in ways that we don’t know. So we need to be very thoughtful about the types of technologies, AI technologies that we allow around our young children.

Paul Rand: A couple of numbers really stopped me, but 85% of the brain’s physical structure gets built in the first few years, which I think is why we’re talking about the youngness of this age and why this is so vital. This is a really, and this is even as you’ve done your previous books and your previous work, this is a really vital period that we want to be careful not to mess up.

Dana Suskind: Building a child’s brain is like building a computer. Those first years of life are like building the hard drive, the memory, the RAM. I think of K-12, which is super important as sort of software updates, but those early years where you’ve taken this helpless infant and built that brain, it is fundamentally who we are.

Paul Rand: Well, where this got really interesting, and I think this is where that in some ways we used to think about the social gate as a bit of a reassurance that it couldn’t replace a parent, but AI is definitely changing that. And I think you talked about babies as young as six months finding physiological responses to a robot. And tell us what that means and why that actually ought to give us some pause.

Dana Suskind: Yeah. I mean, the research is pretty clear. The younger, as I mentioned, the human, the more likely they’re going to respond to these technologies as a human. So you as an adult can say, okay, intellectually, I know this is, even though I’m responding like it’s a human, I know this is AI. But the younger you are, the more likely you are to anthropomorphize it, attribute thoughts and feelings, et cetera. And so it’s why we need to be very thoughtful.

Paul Rand: Tell me about the physiological responses.

Dana Suskind: When you attach to an adult, you synchronize, your pupils dilate, you’re physiologically responding to another human. And this research that I mentioned, you can’t synchronize brains, which is something that we do as humans with our adult counterpart, but we do physiologically show evidence that we’re connecting.

Paul Rand: Okay. And do you see this evolution and feel, well, there’s some benefit in this or does this just cause concern to you?

Dana Suskind: That’s a really great question. Look, I am a scientist and we need the science to help drive our understanding and how to move forward. One of my colleagues here at the University of Chicago, Sarah Sebo, did an amazing study where she looked at children reading to humans versus social robots. And in this randomized control study, she actually showed that reading to a robot physiologically, the kids were less stressed. 

Paul Rand: Than to a human?

Dana Suskind: Than to a human. And so you can imagine, okay, well taking that, well, maybe we explore in the early days for kids who are having a hard time, maybe that’s a sort of mechanism in a very limited and therapeutic sort of way for helping kids learn to read. This is just a theoretical. But at the same time, we can’t allow it to be then that kids only can read to social robots. We need kids to be able to navigate the human world. And that’s where we need science and thoughtfulness in our approach to lead the way. There are many amazing opportunities for AI to help human flourishing, to allow us to connect better. We just need to have science and common sense driving it, not the bottom line.

Paul Rand: Well, if we get very specifically to what parents, particularly parents of younger kids should be thinking about, the foundation you note, hasn’t really changed. And you kind of boil it down to three short verbs. I wonder if you can kind of talk about that a little bit more.

What are the 3 Ts?

Dana Suskind: In my first book, 30 Million Words, when we talked about the power of talk and interaction, there was a behavioral tool that we use in the research center called the three Ts, which is the shorthand for how you build a child’s brain. It’s really not that complex. The three T’s are tune in, talk more, take turns. Tuning in means tuning into your child, seeing what they’re interested in. Talking more is just as it sounds. Talking about the past, the present, the future, using rich language. And lastly, and probably most powerful is taking turns. Viewing your child as a conversational partner. This is not a one-way street. It is really the back and forth even before they have real words. And these three Ts are powerful enough to get your child ready for school and for life. And I always joke that it can be used with your spouse as well.

Paul Rand: Well, you do work to give a lot of encouragement and inarguably hope to people. And that actually is a framework you came up with, you call HOPE. And so talk about that a little bit more. What does it stand for and how are parents to use it?

What is HOPE?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. And just to be clear, I want this book to be parent for parents, society, for technologists who are building this stuff, for policymakers who are working to safeguard the lives of children. But what are the principles? I tried very hard to give evergreen principles for navigating forward, right? Helpful. The new technologies will always change and evolve and look different. So it can’t be product related. And the hope framework are these principles. H is human connection is irreplaceable. It is not just a nice to have. It is a biologic necessity for all of us, especially in the early years. O is probably the most liberating of the principles. It’s owning our imperfections. AI and it’s frictionless has really allowed me to see the power of our imperfections, our good enough parenting, those missteps, those ruptures, the repairs as critical for children, not just learning, but learning to be human and navigate the real world. So embrace it. P is protecting the early years. As mentioned, I think we need to think about AI throughout the life course in a really thoughtful way. But those early years, because the brain development is so important and so large, we need to be really thoughtful. I hate to say it, but a low tech childhood is almost the best way for getting ready for a high tech future. And then E is -

Paul Rand: Good thought. Wow.

Dana Suskind: Yeah. Enhance, not replace. I am not anti-tech. I am a cochlear implant surgeon. I believe in the power of technology for allowing human flourishing. We build technology in the center that I co-direct with John. I believe in the power of technology, but let’s use it to enhance us, to enhance our connection, to allow human flourishing, but not to replace that powerful connection that we have as humans. So the HOPE framework is sort of a guiding principle for going forward.

Paul Rand: If you’re interested in learning more about the world around you or just yourself, check out another U Chicago podcast titled Knowing. Every week, Professor Era Golliver interviews writers, academics, artists, and other interesting people about the ideas they’re generating to help us better understand the world. Stop guessing and start knowing what it’s all about with Knowing. Part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. 

What is Parental GPS?

Paul Rand: Well, you did a nice job on the frameworks and there’s another one that you talked about that really resonated was this idea of the parental GPS. And I think it gives additional context. Tell us, I think that’s a very descriptive term. What does parental GPS mean to you?

Dana Suskind: Deep within our DNA is this drive to protect and allow our children to thrive. And what I don’t want is in this age of technology that can decode our baby’s cries, can do almost anything that we need in the same way as the GPS has made it so I can’t get around the city. I want us to know that as parents, we understand our children like no one ever. We understand their cries, their needs, and we need to embrace that. We need to believe in ourselves and not let that be eroded. And I won’t go into the science of it, but there is plenty of science backing up this parental GPS. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need education and support. Heck no. I mean the science is always evolving, but we do have a lot of innate abilities that can allow our children to thrive.

We’ve done it for millennia. It’s quite amazing.

Paul Rand: I wonder if I could get somewhat practical with you here and think about this from some of the listeners who may have kids at different ages all the way up to thinking about themselves. But we talked a little bit about the vital importance of what’s happening in the earliest formative years. But can we talk a little bit by almost age by age? Are there different things that parents ought to be thinking about as their kids are growing, evolving, how they should be thinking about where and how AI interacts with their lives?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a pretty large question.

Paul Rand: It is.

Dana Suskind: Going back to how humans developed. In the first three to five years of life, I have real sort of trepidation, not trepidation, but we need to be really thoughtful about AI that interacts directly with our children. So those plush toys that come with LLMs embedded in them, I think are not a great thing. AI that helps parents lift up some of the administrative burden or lifting up administrative burden from teachers, that’s a great thing. As mentioned, I think thoroughly human childhood is the best way to get our kids ready. Once you get into the school system, that changes a little bit, but I think we’re seeing a lot of pushback. Technology Chromebooks became all the rage in the classrooms. And what’s clear is they have definitely not delivered on the promises. And in talking to and thinking through the classrooms, how can I see more how AI can work in the background?

Sort of like the ambient AI that has transformed the clinics can really lift up a lot of the burden from teachers so they can be more present. Can there be some technology interacting with kids? Absolutely, but we’ve got to be really thoughtful and we’ve got to make sure that the design principles that have gone into building that technology have the developmental alignment with what we know the science shows.

Paul Rand: Well, another word or term you used consistently was this idea of co-pilot, not autopilot. And that’s a really well encompassing phrase as you talk through these things.

Dana Suskind: We don’t want something else to parent our children. Parents need to stay the parents. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have some help in doing that, going back to the administrative burden. So technology and AI that can sort of be those different extenders and supporters, that’s all in. A humanoid robot taking care of the dirty laundry and cleaning, I’m all in. A humanoid robot taking care of my child and rocking them to sleep and reading to them. I think we might pass on that.

Paul Rand: Okay. Well, there is the flip side and you’re touching on it here because you come up with this term artificial attachment. And I think that connects a little bit to what you’re saying right now.

Dana Suskind: The attachment is not just feeling loved. It’s the biologic system where the brain learns to regulate emotion, trust other people, feel safe to explore the world. And that attachment with your parent and caregiver is what allows you to do that. And when you get it right, that’s where you get resilience, learning, you can have healthy relationships. And traditionally we’ve talked about healthy attachment and insecure attachment. So insecure attachment are kids that are raised in environments that they aren’t able to learn to trust their environment is going to be responsive to meet their needs. But now we’ve got these AI systems that are perfectly responsive. They’re perfectly frictionless and are perfectly patient. And my concern is now with artificial attachment that if children are raised or partially raised by these perfectly responsive technologies, they will not learn what it is to navigate the human world where people are inconsistent, have their own thoughts and feelings, et cetera.

They’ll expect everybody in the world to be always responsive. I give a story in the book where one of my colleagues, Danny, who is actually in the first book as well, and her nonverbal son Arthur, who invented his own sort of throat clearing to ask for water because his mom kept misunderstanding. And she kept misunderstanding. And then she sort of learned through his way of communicating through her lack of understanding. And you can see how the misunderstanding and repair wasn’t just sort of a bug in the system. It was actually the curriculum, the developmental curriculum where he started learning that she may not understand everything. I’ve got to learn to communicate in different ways, but we can make it happen, that she can learn and I can get the water. 

Paul Rand: You came up with an acronym you used called DETECT. What does detect mean?

What is DETECT?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. So DETECT similar to the HOPE framework is sort of a way to look at new technologies coming into your home. And it’s pretty complex, but after doing it a few times, it’ll become sort of shorthand. D stands for design. What was this thing actually built to do? Was it built for education, for entertainment, companionship? Does it work directly with the kid or does it support you? And that’s a really important thing. E is ethics. Was it trained on data that represents diverse backgrounds? Does it include child level data or built on adult data and sort of retrofitted for kids? T is trouble. Are there studies looking at negative consequences for children? The one thing that is a truism about technology is that it’s the unintended consequences that get us into trouble, just like social media looks like it should have made us more connected and happier but did the opposite. What are some of the troubling things that have been found and do they have guidance on healthy use? E is evidence. Beyond these fancy marketing, is there independent research showing that it actually does what it says it’s going to do? Is it peer reviewed or is it just company sponsored? C is confidentiality. What happens to that data?

Paul Rand: Yeah, great question.

Dana Suskind: When you ask parents about data, everybody says they care about data for themselves, for children, but there’s almost this privacy paradox where if we get something good, our desire for privacy sort of goes out the window. So really understanding what happens to the data. Is it stored for how long? Et cetera. Obviously in Europe they’ve got much more stringent regulations around this. In the US it’s much different. And then T is teaching. What is the system quietly teaching your child about values? Does it encourage critical thinking? Things like Siri, you can imagine how a child just barking out orders to Siri or Alexa teaches one thing as opposed to Alexa saying, “Please say please.” The tech framework is a way to look at something that you’re thinking about buying and sort of put it through this framework and it helps you understand what needs to go.

Paul Rand: I like that. It’s very helpful.

Paul Rand: Yeah, very, very helpful. There’s also a bit of a, for lack of a better word, a quieter argument in this book and it’s about equity. And we are hearing a lot about equity in financial equity, resource equity and so forth. And the concern is that with parenting, it may be seen where AI gets pitched as “better than nothing.” And in wealthy homes, that human attention stays abundant and all of a sudden we’ve got a new 30 million word gap going on. Tell me about your thoughts about equity and how should we think about it when it comes to raising kids?

Dana Suskind: I’ll tell you honestly, Paul, that is the thing that keeps me up at night. While AI has huge potential for human flourishing, for closing opportunity gaps, for giving all children the right first start and supporting all parents in their powerful role, it could also result in human connection becoming a luxury good where parents who are working three jobs have other stressors in their life where these technologies that suddenly are responsive that humans get connected to can be pitched, whether it be they be in homes or in schools as sort of the good enough replacement in the same way as processed foods are a continuum where you’ve got whole wheat bread and canned foods that are genuinely nourishing. And on the other hand, you’ve got ultra processed foods that have become a staple in these food deserts. Will these AI sort of responsive AI companion teachers, et cetera, be pitched as the good enough when the real stuff is not there and the implications for human development, unlike processed foods, which led to a lot of impacts on obesity, health, et cetera, the impacts will have a much more fundamental impact on who we are or who people are as humans.

Paul Rand: And do you see that we will start facing more policy questions around this?

Dana Suskind: I sure hope so. Yeah.

Just like a hundred years ago, nobody ever said, “Oh, I wonder if this is farm fresh organic food or if it was made in a laboratory.” The idea that a human raised childhood would become a luxury good and these artificial replacements be given to certain individuals. We need to be thinking about these things. We need to be leveraging the power of AI so that every parent, as I said, going back to the beginning of the conversation, every parent I’ve ever met has wanted the best for their children And everybody has different constraints, but I’ve been doing this a long time. So let’s let AI allow what every parent wants the best for their children and the ability to be present with them.

Paul Rand: I love that idea that maybe we’ll start getting people getting tattoos that say human raised as just what they take into a bar to make sure they’re connecting with the right people.

Dana Suskind: Exactly. I love that.

Paul Rand: So let’s talk, if you can, about how did you... There’s many ways to think about wrapping up this book. How did you wrap up this book and what’s the thought that you want to leave listeners with?

Dana Suskind: Yeah. In some ways, wrapping up the book is about coming back from the beginning where I talked about the metaphor of the silent spring and the children who no longer laughed, cried, but were glued to their screens. As I mentioned, this book changed me. I noticed things that I never did. And I think that the sounds are still here. We are still here. Children still laugh and parents still lose their patience, but it isn’t guaranteed. And so I ask everyone to listen for those sounds, to make that extra effort to connect to other humans, adults, children and the like, because those are the sounds of what it is to be human and our species caring for each other. And while machines and technology are part of our world and will hopefully make our world better, we must never forget who we are as humans and that we all play a role in making sure that the sounds remain in our world.

Paul Rand: Today’s episode of Big Brains is supported by the Court Theater, Hyde Park’s Tony Award-winning theater located on the University of Chicago campus. Here, timeless stories speak to today’s world from Sofacles to Tom Stoppard, Carol Churchill to Anton Checkoff, and August Wilson to Tennessee Williams. When you’re at Court Theater, you know you’re going to see something bold and provocative, something that will move you and make you think. You know you’re going to get a great theatrical experience, unlike anything else, one that only could happen on the south side of Chicago. Reimagine what classic theater can be. Visit Court Theater. That’s Court, T-H-E-A-T-R-E.org.

Lea Ceasrine: Big Brains is a production of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. We’re sponsored by the Graham School. Are you a lifelong learner with an insatiable curiosity? Access more than 50 open enrollment courses every quarter. Learn more at graham.uchicago.edu/bigbrains. And if you like what you heard in our podcast, please leave us a rating and a review. The show is hosted by Paul M. Rand and produced by me, Abia Sazreen, with help by Eric Fay. Thanks for listening.