In the sad world of AI parenting, ignoring your children is the name of the game

My son is in a Fantasy Football mini-league with some school pals, administered by a WhatsApp chat that last week issued a playful injunction. “A reminder,” it said, “the boys are the managers and they make the decisions. We can provide guidance, but only human brains are allowed – no ChatGPT or other AI tools please.”

As a detester of AI, I cheered at this, but not because my son is a devotee of the game. Far from it. When we first set up the team, I randomised a default squad and then he spent 10 enjoyable minutes moving players around – he wanted a goalkeeper he’d heard of, more Liverpool stars and insisted on having Erling Haaland. Once I explained that a host of his faves would need to be replaced with less expensive players to justify the presence of Man City’s freakish Norseman, he lost interest entirely and never returned.

This was striking for two main reasons. For one thing, it was proof that the Premier League’s Official Fantasy Football Game enforces stricter rules for signing a fantasy Erling Haaland than Man City experienced signing the real deal. Secondly, despite my son’s love of soccer nerdery, Fantasy Football just doesn’t excite him at all. In a perfect world, this would be a moderately interesting personality contradiction I wouldn’t have to think about very much, like the fact that Guy Fieri hates eggs, or that Clint Eastwood is allergic to horses. Except now he’s in a league, which means every single week I feel the wrench of futility as I either ignore the team entirely or, worse, become tempted to get in there and make changes on his behalf.

Looking at his unchanged team, filled with injured or inactive players, overloaded with star names who aren’t providing the goods, I don’t want to be that kind of dad – the kind who grumpily orders their child to leave him them alone as the child puts the finishing touches to a science project he’s clearly done entirely by himself.

My own dad avoided this by not really knowing anything that was going on in my school for my entire childhood. I think he only knew I went to school because he’d often see me wearing a uniform. I don’t want to be that hands-off myself and, in fairness, given I’m not a widower with 11 school-aged children, I feel such a path would be less justifiable in my case.

AI only supercharges this struggle between presence and absence. Last week, former Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer told the New York Times her daughter’s teacher “wanted three bullet points summarising what made her special”. Mayer, who has presumably met her 10-year-old, simply asked an AI assistant to provide these three qualities and it came back with the staggeringly bland trio of “empathetic”, “creative”, and “animal lover”. So delighted was she by the results that she told this harrowing story, out loud, to America’s paper of record.

In July, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman raved about a “cool use case” of his product ChatGPT: “Every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.” In other words, advice that charts bold new frontiers in refusing to talk to your children.

Perhaps worse again was a post from AI researcher Alvin Sng, which transcribed a conversation in which his wife asked him to read a bedtime story to their baby. “I can just play an audiobook from my phone,” he said. “But then it won’t be in your voice,” she replied. “I can train a voice model,” he said, victoriously, before signing off his tweet with “parenting hits different when you work in AI”.

[ In the sad world of AI parenting, ignoring your children is the name of the gameOpens in new window ]

On that last point, at least, I agree with him. Maybe I am just different, but I do think of my children as more than data points to be collated, fiddly little tasks on a flowchart waiting to be efficiently optimised. I enjoy their company and could readily tell you what’s going on in their lives without consulting a spreadsheet. I could easily give you three things I like about both of them without asking a word-guessing algorithm that has never once held a living thought within its digital brain, nor a human child in trembling, grateful hands.

I could even make a pretty decent stab at picking my son’s Fantasy Football team on his behalf. Better than decent, really. And I know him so well it would actually be kind of a tribute to him if you think about it. Right? Right?