AIBU to say AI will completely change how we parent and live?

[Ellis12]

I’ve been experimenting with AI tools recently (like ChatGPT and others), and it’s honestly been a game-changer for managing household stuff, helping with schoolwork, meal plans, even emotional support during tough days.

But it got me thinking are we at the start of something huge? Will AI end up changing how we raise our children, do our jobs, and even build relationships? AIBU to feel both excited and a bit nervous about how fast it's all happening?

Curious what others think, especially parents juggling a million things!

Children’s world and job experience being massively different from school/parents is not new though. when my husband was at secondary school, the school had one computer that was wheeled about on a trolley into lessons. his 2nd job after university was managing the company network for its Europe, ME and Africa divisions. If you had mentioned a computer virus to his O level teachers they would not have had a clue and thought you were being beyond fanciful.

@Octavia64 I know it's not accurate now, you can see it on some of the google suggestions but posters are talking about the future. Or will it never be accurate?

Actually there are multiple other operating systems for smartphones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_mobile_devices

i will concede no-one uses them except serious unix geeks

@Frequency oh yes I want one if those too

In the series silicon valley.....spoilers...

They integrate AI into their compression algorithm and it ends up being so powerful that it cracks every encryption code ever made. So no data would be safe, no privacy, no bank accounts etc. So they end up realising they have to destroy their own creation.

That's the concern with quantum computing. It is real and it is coming soon. It would take a modern supercomputer billions upon billions of years to crack the current encryption algorithm we use. It would take a quantum computer a fraction of a second, and they've already been developed. It is concerning.

Yes, because it will accelerate global warming at an unprecedented speed. There will be massive repercussions from you and everyone else using it to simplify your life. Crack on if you think that the pay off is worth it.

You sound like you think it's a choice. My work already integrate it into email, use it for summaries of meetings etc. I cannot personally opt out of that. I might not spend hours using it to create pictures of me with silly hats but I can't say that I can avoid using it for most tasks at work now.

So the question of will AI be accurate is an interesting one.

AI is a really big field and as others have said there are surgical robots, manufacturing has had robot arms for production line etc for years but most people don’t really think of these as “intelligent”.

so let’s focus on the LLM (the large language models) like chatGPT.

when we are asking are they accurate, we’re basically asking are they telling the truth. When they cite academic papers or previous legal cases can we be sure those academic papers exist?

the basic answer is no.

The only way for LLM to be more accurate is for them to have a way to compare their output to reality (*I am aware this is more complicated then it sounds). So they’d need to have a feedback loop that takes what they are saying, compares it to the world and works out if it is true or not.

this feedback loop could be fairly easily built for previous court cases or academic papers where it is a straightforward case of “check a few databases to see if they exist” but the general problem of “please check whether this statement is aligned with reality” is much much harder.

there has been a pivot recently to trying to use the A.I. hallucinations as a creative tool, as most in the field now think they cannot be eliminated.

see eg demis Hassabis in this article.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/demis-hassabis-strange-futures-lie-ahead-mikael-alemu-gorsky-noapf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via

I thought we are working on nuclear fusion and making strides and that will power all this stuff in a carbon neutral way,

The personalised tutoring and therapy angle, AI as a friend/teacher, is interesting. DD in Year 11 is using ChatGPT to help with GCSEs. We have solar panels. Still selling back to the grid at peanuts.

I read an article recently about an ai experiment. It had access to an “engineers” email. This engineer had suggested replacing the ai for another. The ai knew the engineer was having an affair through his emails. The ai decided to blackmail the engineer to be kept.

Scary!

I was at a talk about ai and the speaker said the rate of change caused by the internet in 30 years is going to happen in a fraction of time with ai.

That's a perfect illustration of the shortcomings of AI. People have got into all sorts of messes because they blindly follow sat navs without questioning the reliability of the information it gives them and because they can't read a map, they don't know it's telling them nonsense.

• write a letter apologising to Mrs head teacher for leading a mexican wave throughout her maths lesson
• Make a character for book week using green paper, coat hangers and a bin
• Is there a law about kids walking to school UK
• Find me all private speech therapists within 25 miles check they are hcpc registered
• Which schools have the best a level results Southend *Coolest trainers for 12 year old boy

Variable but all useful up to a point

You can ask it to double check or cite sources for it's comments, which means it will check more thoroughly and correct itself if necessary. It's what I do when I'm using it for anything technical.

AI is a tool. Books are a tool. The internet is a tool. You use it as a virtual planner (or whatever). I’m not sure how changing the tool is changing how you live. It’s just a different method of doing the same thing.

IReallyLoveItHere · Today 11:02
we could get the ai helper you see in films, on a screen in every room reminding the DC to do everything that you usually do

What happens if the child ignores it (or shouts ‘pushy parent, pushy pushy parent’ to the tune of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when asked to get on with revision, as mine did).

Careful with the legal ones. I teach a bit of law and asked it to come up with some vignettes to illustrate a point in the law. It was consistently wrong.

It will get better no doubt but I wouldnt rely on it for legal info

We are. It's all working wonderfully until we come up against the challenge of installing nuclear reactors in the playground at your child's school or
in the shopping centre on the edge of your town.

This article suggests a good - and chilling - way of conceptualising what AI is all about, ie we should think of it in terms of world-building: https://www.newstatesman.com/technology/2025/02/deepseek-race-to-god-mode-ai
It draws on a world created by the blinkered and avaricious, and that world will shape ours in turn without our even knowing it. We are all blinkered individuals, the powerful aren't special in that respect, which is why none of us should monopolise the building of worlds in the first place. The AI we can access may seem clumsy and ridiculous for now, but it will push through that stage.
I also generally dislike the idea of steadily eliminating more and more friction from daily life. This goes back to the same old tired debates on technological ethics but my instinct is that we passed a healthy balance a while ago and are heading to really problematic disregulation of human psychology. I wouldn't want developing brains anywhere near it.

Will it, though. At the moment, with AI, I can research and draft a highly technical tax report in a matter of minutes. Without AI, I'd probably be spending all day on the internet, googling, researching source documents like court cases, acts of parliament etc.

What takes more energy and computer power. Say half an hour via ChatGPT or a full day using google and other online sources?

Not really regarding Sat Navs, as most of us still have a map and also still have the alternative on our phone to sense check/traffic check, figure out what to do if you hit a newly built road.
The whole point is that you will use different AIs ask them the same question and then draw your own conclusions. There won’t be one answer surely. They will be competing with each other.

Did you not know how to do any of that yourself?

A car is a tool. Did that change the way we live? Yes it did.

Can't wait for the brain dead world where nobody can think for themselves. Sounds awesome.

But professionals won't be "relying" on it and nothing else. The mere fact that someone IS a professional means that they have experience and knowledge and have passed professional level examinations on there profession.

I don't "rely" on it when writing technical tax advice reports and dealing with tax enquiries/investigations. I use it as a tool just like years ago I'd sit in the office library with piles of text books, case law books, and acts of parliament - not to learn new stuff, but to check what I think I know, i.e. cross reference a court case to an act of parliament etc.

I ask ChatGPT to cite court case precedents and acts of parliament, and use my 40+ years of experience and knowledge to review what it's telling me as a kind of "sanity check", and then I ask it further questions or clarifications if anything looks odd or is contrary to my own knowledge and understanding.