Well, we've had some big news out of Washington in the past few weeks. We are in the middle of something truly insane and unprecedented that is happening between the frontier AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, and the federal government, which has decided all of a sudden, with basically no rhyme or reason, that it wants to start picking and choosing which customers are allowed to use the frontier models.
Yeah. When this happened, many listeners reached out to us and asked us if we would consider doing an emergency episode. And I'm happy to say that the emergency lasted so long that we're able to get to this now on our regular schedule.
Yeah. It's sort of a rolling emergency.
We're sort of like a permanent crisis, if you will.
Exactly.
So before we get into Fable, since it does involve AI, we should make our disclosures. I work for the New York Times, which is doing OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. And my boy Oh. Oh. Downgrade, and my fiance works for Anthropic.
Let's just explain what's been happening, and then we can talk a little bit about what we think about it. So the first sort of salvo in this dispute was on June 12th, which was the day that we officially left for our break. Very good timing by the US government, when the Commerce Department issued an export control directive shutting down access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the most powerful versions of Anthropic's models. Fable, in particular, had just been released a couple days earlier, and basically the government said no one is allowed to use this. If you're a foreign national, including an employee of Anthropic inside or outside the US, you are not allowed to use this model. That basically shut down access for all customers everywhere. Anthropic basically had to pull the model because it had no way to do sort of user-by-user citizenship verification. And as its reason for doing this, the federal government said, 'Well, we received some notifications from a trusted partner that there was this jailbreak issue on Fable specifically.'
And who was this trusted partner, Kevin?
Well, we believe it was Amazon, which, based on some reporting from The Information, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, had gotten in touch with administration officials after researchers at Amazon had discovered this jailbreak, this way of getting supposedly restricted information that could be used in cyber attacks. Based on some reporting from the Wall Street Journal, we believe that Andy Jassy sort of tells the Commerce Department about this. They freak out and say, you know, we've got to get this model off the market.
Okay, so let's zoom in as far as we can here because I think it's really important to get clear on what was the thing that this model did that gave the Trump administration the heebie-jeebies. My understanding, Kevin, is that when other security researchers have reviewed what we believe the issue was here, it was a fairly standard back and forth and was the sort of interaction that you would expect a cyber defender to have with a model to try to get it to identify and fix a bug. So what do we know exactly about what was going on here? We don't know exactly what Amazon's researchers discovered that made them so concerned. One cybersecurity expert who reviewed Amazon's work said in a blog post that these concerns were basically not a big deal. That this was something that defenders who are trying to patch systems from cyber attacks need. Basically asking AI to find and fix the bugs in a given file. And I guess Amazon's researchers determined that that same technique could be used to exploit a piece of software or find vulnerabilities, which of course is the whole advertised purpose of giving Mythos and similar frontier models to cybersecurity defenders ahead of the general public.
Right. Anthropic had launched this program called Project Glass Wing where it had shared Mythos with a relatively small number of partners in an effort to harden the defenses of a lot of the critical infrastructure in this country and in allies before similar capabilities were found in other models. And as soon as the government stepped in and said, you know, effectively we're placing export controls on this technology, all that stopped.
Yeah. And so it's now been a couple weeks since these export controls went into effect. Last Friday, Anthropic and the Trump administration reached a sort of tentative deal allowing Anthropic to restore access to Mythos for some clients. And then on Tuesday night, news broke that the Commerce Department was lifting those export controls and restrictions on Anthropic's models. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic saying that the company had taken steps to address the risks associated with these models. And on Wednesday, Anthropic announced that Fable 5 is back, that it is again available to users around the world. Mythos 5, still not publicly available, but is going to be restored to a set of US organizations, and they will sort of coordinate with the government to expand that more broadly. Casey, what did you make of the government's reversal here?
Well, I mean, to me, the reversal seemed inevitable. And it still concerns me how little was said about the process behind this. I was probably more interested in Anthropic's response because they put out a blog post that effectively put the industry on blast and said that GPT 5.5, Kimmy K2.7, and several other models could find the same vulnerabilities that had resulted in Fable being banned. So effectively, Anthropic said, 'Hey, you know, we added another safeguard, but like really this is an industry thing. Don't point fingers at us about this.'
Yes. And speaking of other models, let's talk about what is going on with OpenAI and GPT 5.6. So last week, as OpenAI prepared to release their newest GPT 5.6 models, Sam Altman told the staff that they would not be rolling it out to the public right away. They would release it first to a limited group of partners that would be approved by the government, and that the Trump administration had asked the company not to release the model more broadly than that. And he didn't sound happy about it. This was clearly not the way that OpenAI and Sam Altman had wanted to release GPT 5.6, but the way that he phrased it made it seem like this was sort of pressure that had been applied to him from the Trump administration. So this new sort of this new business that the government is in of telling AI companies you can't release this model or you can only release it to a list of customers that we approve beforehand seems to be applied to at least two companies now, and this seems to be coalescing into something more of a broader strategy and not just a single targeted act of retribution.
Yes. And what we have said before on this subject is that this is the exact state of affairs that the people who are now running AI policy in the Trump administration were apoplectic about during the Biden administration, right? They were warning, you know, they're going to create a licensing scheme and they're going to start picking winners and only a handful of the administration's favored labs are going to be able to release any models, and that's why we've got to get rid of this Biden executive order. Fast forward to today, they have implemented a de facto licensing regime. And because it's the Trump administration, there are no known rules. There's no transparency whatsoever. We have no idea what makes a model considered safe to ship or unsafe to ship. We're truly just in this like authoritarian limbo where until a few people decide that, you know, Fable or GPT 5.6 are safe to use, we're out of luck.
Yes. AI is now being regulated by vibes.
Yeah. And that is a state of affairs that I think both you and I were worried about, which is why, you know, several years ago when these kind of pre-deployment testing regimes were proposed as part of these AI safety bills, we said, well, this is probably a good idea to have something like this in place so that you don't just have this kind of slapdash chaotic approach where like models with really scary capabilities start coming out and then the federal government has to scramble and try to figure out what the models are even capable of and then take some, you know, fast action on that basis rather than having something that is actually thought through and planned from the start.
Yes. And let me say I think the government should be able to prevent the release of large language models. I do believe that. I even think that after a model has been released, if it does something really dangerous, I think the government should be able to come in and say, hey, we actually need you to place a pause on that. I just think that it should be done with a set of clear rules. I think the companies should have due process. I think there should be a process for fixing those models and getting them into public shape and getting some sort of consensus on when it can be released. You know, just sort of like basic good government stuff. And we are just so far from that world.
I mean, I want to return to the point that you made about the hypocrisy of the people, especially on the tech right, who made opposition to AI regulation and licensing their entire personalities several years ago. You know, Mark Andre has credited this, I think, non-existent meeting. I have tried to back up through reporting the facts of this alleged meeting that Mark Andre says happened with officials from the Biden administration where they basically said, according to Mark Andre, that they were essentially going to pick winners and losers in the AI industry and that their favored labs would be able to develop and release powerful models and that no one else, including open source developers, would be able to. Again, I have tried to back this up. I have tried to find, I've talked to many people who would have been in a meeting like this. No one remembers it happening like this. So this may be a convenient fiction that Mark Andre has decided to tell. But this was their whole personality for years. They said we are becoming a socialist, Soviet-style state where the government's going to tell private companies what they're allowed to do. David Sacks, the former AISR, famously said that the private sector should be allowed to cook. And now we have just a couple years later a what you call the de facto licensing regime. And they're picking winners and losers. They're saying this company can release their models. This other company can't. They seem to have no clear criteria. They're going on these reports from random, you know, companies that are testing these models. And it does not seem like they have any interest in sort of formalizing that or making it any easier for AI companies to navigate.
Yeah. I mean, you say they're picking winners and losers. Really, they're just picking losers, right? They're saying, 'Uh, this model's too good. You can't release it. Sorry, loser.' Right? You know, so there's, it's unclear what is the way to win here.
I mean, the way to win is by becoming a political actor, right? Like that is sort of the downside here is that like now deploying models if you're an AI company is a political process.
Well, look, I mean, you know, I would love to ask Greg Brockman over at OpenAI how he feels about his $25 million donation to the Trump people, right? Because that didn't seem to buy them a lot of goodwill when it came to GPT 5.6. So I don't know that, you know, sucking up to the Trump administration will even get your model out the door right now.
It won't get it out the door right now, but I think they are going to, if I had to predict, they're going to have an easier time over at OpenAI releasing these models in the future. I think the big shift that is really weird right now that all the labs are trying to process is I think they just moved from a sort of default yes environment where like the assumption was if you trained a really good model you could release it, and now I think they're in a default no environment where if you build a model that is more capable than Claude, Mythos, or GPT 5.6, your assumption has to be that the government of the United States is not going to let you release it, at least not right away and at least not to everyone. So I think that is a huge shift in the sort of structure of the AI industry that has happened more or less overnight.
Yeah. I mean, and this is just another moment where I wish that we had a Congress that was taking this seriously. This is a clear moment where we need a legislative framework for how these companies should be regulated that does govern how and when models can be released and governs how and when they are taken off the market over safety concerns. Right. We know what to do here. We just have a government that is not doing it.
Yes. And Dean Ball, former Hard Fork guest, former Trump administration AI adviser, soon to be OpenAI employee, had a great post about all of this just a few days ago where he made the point, which I thought was reasonable, that like the government should have some role. It's reasonable to expect that in the future when these models are very powerful and have very scary capabilities that the government will want to take an active role in deciding what can and can't be sold. That seems reasonable.
Yeah. And I think there's a good argument that that moment is now, that the models are now capable enough and scary enough that the government has an interest in addressing it.
Totally. But Dean made the point that you actually need technical experts in government to make that happen. You need people who are capable of evaluating and running the safety tests on unreleased models to determine what they are and aren't capable of. And right now, at least according to Dean, we don't have that.
Well, Kevin, I have some great news because on Monday, none other than Mark Andre himself joined the US Defense Policy Board, which will put him in regular conversation with Pete Hegseth and other government officials. And so now Mark can finally get to the bottom of this and demand that the government drop this de facto licensing regime.
Do you think he'll be running any of the safety evaluations himself?
I am terrified to find out.
So there's one other twist of this story, and it's something I'm really interested to get your take on, which is the whole China angle, because the other backdrop of these discussions between the US government and the US AI labs is that these Chinese models are getting pretty good. So recently we saw a new model out from the Chinese company ZAI called GLM 5.2. You know, people are saying that this is, you know, one of the best open source models out there. There's been a little bit of what I would consider overheated reporting that suggests that it's as good or better than some of the frontier models from the AI companies in the US. I don't think that is probably true, but it is at least in the sort of same tier of consideration. And so there are people who are saying, well, this is going to be a big problem because at the same time the US government is pulling American models off the market that are very powerful. We now have these Chinese open-source models that customers, big businesses, can use for much cheaper that are just as capable and that are not in danger of being clawed back by the US government. What do you make of this?
I think this is basically BS. Like I do. I think it feels like a lobbying tactic from people who want to get the American models back into production. I have seen no credible reporting that the Chinese models have kept up. Even when I've read the reporting that we've seen over the past week out of the Wall Street Journal and others, there aren't numbers in there that would lend credence to it. What there are is a handful of people saying these models are really good. And look, I'm sure these models are pretty capable. I'm sure they're more capable than the open-source and Chinese models of a year ago. But we learned during the DeepSeek freakout that a reliable way to get attention in AI discourse is to wave your hands and say the Chinese are catching up. The Chinese are catching up, and everyone will pay attention to you. But when you look at how the Chinese are building these models, the theory just doesn't hold. Because you have to keep in mind what these Chinese companies are doing is distilling American models. They're getting in there and they are scraping the responses of these chatbots and they're using those to make their own chatbots. So the best Chinese models are kind of like American models once removed. And that is why they're always going to be at least a little bit behind the frontier. And let me say one more thing, Kevin, while I'm all worked up, which is I'm increasingly coming to think about like the whole AI market as like two systems. There's the frontier and there's everything else. Okay. And if you're truly at the frontier, we will know because you can see it in the benchmarks. You can see it in the revenue figures of the companies that are selling this stuff. That is where the actual value is. And then there's everything else, which is the million little open-source models, the distilled models, the Chinese models, and they're just a step behind. And look at the revenues of those companies. There's an insane amount of competition, and it's not as good as the best. And so in my view, these Chinese companies that we're talking about right now, they're firmly in the everything else camp. That's not to say they aren't getting better over time, because they are. But if you're going to tell me right now that this is as good as a Mythos, I'm going to need to see the damn numbers, right?
I think that's right. But I'm also like I'm not quite as skeptical of this fear of China catching up as you are. In part because I think these distillation tactics appear to work. You get a model that is almost as good as the original. If the Chinese companies are able to keep doing that, I think there's a plausible case that they will shrink the time, the sort of gap between the American frontier and the sort of open-source frontier. Maybe it's nine months now. Maybe in the future that becomes six months or three months. I think that sounds plausible to me.
I also think that there are a lot of businesses right now who are really freaked out about what is happening with Fable and with GPT 5.6, and they are saying to themselves, well, if we were to sort of go with the latest American models at all times, not only are we paying a premium for that, but it could be yanked away by the government with no explanation and no due process, and it would totally screw up all of our workflows and all the software that we're building on top of those tools. So I did actually talk to someone recently who works at an American tech company, not one of the AI labs, but like a solid big American tech company, who was saying that they're actually spending a lot more time with these open-source Chinese models. Not because they're as good as the frontier models, but because you can download them, you can run them on your own hardware, and they're pretty good for a lot of tasks that don't need the absolute capability frontier that you would get from a Mythos or a GPT 5.6. So I think that in this moment where there's so much uncertainty coming out of Washington, I think a lot of companies that rely on these tools are going to take a hard look at the Chinese models and see whether they might be good enough for some percentage of what they're doing.
Yeah, that makes sense. You know, like the American economy has been so strong for so long in part because the government has mostly been safe, boring, and predictable. And the Trump government is not those things, right? We saw this during tariffs, right? Where like the American businesses were having similar problems because they couldn't predict how expensive their products were going to be on any given day based on what the tariff of the day was, right? And now we have the LLM restriction of the day, and it's causing similar havoc in the economy. So I think one obvious link between the actions of the US government and the China subplot here is that maybe there's a possibility that the US government restricting access to these frontier models from American companies actually doesn't allow China to catch up. Maybe it slows China down because if they are so reliant on distilling from, you know, Claude and the GPT series and other leading American models, maybe not having access to those models will hurt them. So is there any sense in which you think this action by the Trump administration could actually widen the gap between the US capabilities frontier and the sort of Chinese open-source frontier?
I mean, maybe, but that is an extremely ham-fisted tactic for accomplishing that goal. The United States government has many levers it can pull if it feels like Chinese companies are attacking its companies. Like for example, they could sanction companies that they believe have caught distilling. They can prevent them from selling their wares in America. They can get allies to do the same thing. We saw Anthropic the other day send a letter complaining that Alibaba has apparently been doing widescale distilling of Claude, and the hope there is that the government will intervene. So that is how these things are traditionally done. While it is true, I suppose, that this is going to make it harder for Chinese companies to distill the next models, there are still all of these other reasons why, at least for me, like that's the worst way to go about it.
Right. Right. That makes sense to me. I mean, the argument that I would make against that point is like what matters is not just the capabilities frontier of the internal models that the companies in each country have. What matters is sort of the deployment frontier. And for a society to really harness the benefits of AI, you have to be able to use the models. Like you have to be able to deploy them inside big companies. You have to be able to deploy them inside consumer products. Like people have to be able to use them. It is not just like which lab has in their basement the most capable model that nobody else can use. Right? And all of this happened at a time when companies and government institutions around the world were using these very powerful models to improve their cybersecurity defenses, right? I mean, like that's one of the reasons why this issue feels really urgent is that there was an ongoing project to protect the critical infrastructure of the United States and its allies, and that was yanked away while at the same time we're selling advanced chips to the Chinese to help them catch up.
So I think there's one silver lining to this story for me is that for years now you and I have been sort of hoping against hope that the US government would stop just sort of talking about AI as this unalloyed good that was just a normal technology that was going to supercharge the economy, that they would actually start to pay some attention to the risks of these powerful AI systems. That is happening now, for better or for worse. The government is now firmly aware that these models do pose risks. They are sort of thinking about cybersecurity, but I imagine they are also thinking about biorisk and other types of risk. So I think that there is a sort of way to spin this whole saga as a clunky, ill-advised first step on a good path, which is like the government is waking up. These models are very powerful. They can be very dangerous. They're going to get more powerful and more potentially dangerous as time goes on. And so I think what we're seeing now is sort of a fumbling attempt to kind of do something. And I think they will come up with better ways of doing this over time. I hope anyway that they will. This is not sort of the permanent structure of the AI licensing regime in the United States, but at least they are not just pretending that this is just a normal technology anymore.
That is true, and I'm glad that it's the case. But at the same time, this same administration has been pushing to allow the export of more and more advanced chips to China, which will allow China to train more powerful models over time. And they're doing that at the same time as they are preventing good models from being used by our allies like Britain and other countries. So there is still an extreme level of incoherence in the administration's position, in my opinion.
Well, you can't win them all.
Well, Casey, I'm very excited for our guest today, who is an expert on the intersection of parenting and AI. This is a topic that I've been wanting to explore on the show for a while now, in part because it's just become a big part of my social life is talking with other parents about how we are or aren't exposing our kids to technology, including AI and chatbots. So today we have on the show our guest, Dr. Dana Suskind. She's a pediatric surgeon and childhood development expert. She's a professor at the University of Chicago and the founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health. She's also an author, and she has a book coming out soon called Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI. And when I heard about this book, I thought this is just the person we need to tell us how we should or shouldn't be using AI with our children.
Absolutely. Because in addition to all of that, Kevin, Dr. Suskind is a parent to eight children who are now all grown up. So this is somebody who has a lot of expertise in this subject.
Yes. So I think this is an important conversation today, but I think it's about to become much more important because there are just a lot of AI products and tools aimed at young kids that are making their way to the market and are going to become, I predict, more popular in the next few years. So already we've seen Moxie and Luna, which are two AI-powered robots that are designed for kids. And we've got all these sort of child-specific companions and chatbots with names like Asi and L and Hey Otto. And we're just starting to see a lot more products using AI that are aimed at children. And I think for a lot of parents, that is creating a lot of anxiety because how the heck are we supposed to know which of these things are going to, you know, help our kids grow and develop and which are going to turn them into glorified slop cannons?
Yeah. And that's what you don't want is a slop cannon child.
Yeah. Heaven forbid. But here's what I'll say. If your child is a slop cannon, you need to read this book.
That's true. Let's bring her in.
Dr. Dana Suskind, welcome to Hard Fork.
Thanks so much for having me.
So you've got this new book coming out, Human Raised, which is about parenting and sort of child development in the age of AI. And I was so excited when I heard that this book was coming out because as the parent of a now four-year-old, I see this issue coming for me in a way that makes me quite nervous. So first of all, like what made you want to pursue this topic as someone who's long been interested in childhood development?
So I'm a cochlear implant surgeon, and you may say, well, why exactly are you on this or even thinking about this issue? But early in my career, I started noticing profound differences in the outcomes of my own patients. So I would do the same surgery, same technology, same parents loving them, and the outcomes of the children were so profoundly different, with some of them being able to develop language and others not. So that experience actually brought me into this incredible world of brain development and neuroscience that shows that human connection is not just a nice-to-have. It is the foundation of how we learn and how we learn to be human. And so my whole career has been focused on that and supporting parents and caregivers in that important role. And then suddenly AI comes onto the scene. For the first time in human history, we have technology that can actually mimic that interaction that has traditionally wired our children's brains. And now I'm like, oh, we need to probably step back and really think about what is happening in our children's worlds because the choices that we make at this moment is going to determine what our species look like. So that's why I wrote the book, and happy to be on the show.
Dr. Suskind, can I run some scenarios by you from my own parenting journey and you tell me whether I'm being a bad father or not?
So there's no such thing.
The two primary ways that I am using AI with my four-year-old right now. One is to just like answer random questions that he asks. We're in like a big question phase right now. So the other day he, you know, he asked me where does wind come from? And I realized I actually don't know the answer.
I have to say that's like a hard question.
Yeah. So I pull up an AI model and I ask, and you know, I get back this answer and it's about like, you know, air pressure, and I'm like, okay, this is for a four-year-old. Could you like, you know, dumb it down a little bit? And it gives me a great answer. You know, we tell him the answer, and he has the answer to his question. Now he gets to like repeat it to all his friends. That's, you know, option one.
By the way, yeah, on his playground the kids are obsessed with where wind comes from. It's a hot topic over there.
It's made him quite popular at preschool. So the other way is just like creating stories for him. So you know, one of the things that these models are quite good at is like you give it some, you know, guidance. I want a story about a kid this age who has a best friend who's a dinosaur and they go off and they play soccer together or whatever it is.
I would do one where his best friend is the wind. I think I could really hit, I could land cleanly with him right now.
So are either of those examples of AI use in parenting of a young child going to harm my son?
Absolutely not. So first of all, those are great examples, and you know, I put in this book, I tried to really also give grounded in practical frameworks. And one of the frameworks that I give parents to sort of think about AI in general is sort of an evergreen I call it HOPE. H is human connection is irreplaceable. It is what we need to protect and double down on. But O is owning your imperfections. As I said, kids don't grow through perfection. They grow through, I don't know about you, but I was a very, I am a very imperfect parent, but now I know it's really good for my kids. P is protecting the early years. That early brain development when 80, those first years when you get 85% of the physical brain being built, we've got to be extra careful about what we let in. But lastly is E. If you're going to use it, use it to enhance, not replace. You're really using this technology to enhance your relationship, fill in the gaps of knowledge that you may or may not have. And that's a great way. This book in my view is not at all anti-tech. I'm a cochlear implant surgeon. I build AI tech. I'm all about it. But how do we use it to deepen our relationships and support us in this important role?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it is compatible with, I guess, my own sort of vague optimism about AI in the lives of kids. And you know, I see a lot of parents right now with a lot of anxiety about AI that seems like it is borrowed from this earlier era of like the screen time debates or the debates about sort of...
Addictive social media platforms for kids. And to me, it just feels fundamentally different what AI is as a technology and what it is capable of doing for children. Like, I just think back to my own childhood and like I was a nerdy kid who loved to learn stuff and if I had had like a chatbot that could have taught me about the Bernoulli effect in a way that was like enjoyable and entertaining to me, like I would have done that and I would have been happier than going to my, you know, World Book Encyclopedia and looking up that fact. Like, so I think for the curious kids out there, my sense is, and please tell me if you agree with this, like that this could be an incredibly enriching technology for, if it is designed well and if parents are sort of in the loop of how their kids are using it.
I mean, 100%, I agree with you. I think to your point, this, you know, people go to the social media as the best analogy and I get it. And I think, but I think a better analogy is actually processed food. You know, processed food is a continuum, right? There's whole wheat bread which is processed but it's still nourishing and then you've got the ultra-processed variety, you know, the Doritos and you know, Twinkies which are good, you know, for us occasionally. But the truth is that there, in the same way AI is a huge spectrum. I mean, not only being able to be, you know, provide answers as a chatbot, but you know, lifting invisible labors off of parents and teachers to diagnostics. You know, I come from the world of medicine where it's transformative. People are really focused on the AI companions, which I get, which I am concerned about in terms of crowding out that necessary human connection, but that's a really, that's a small part of what AI is. I mean, you can have socially assistive robots that help children with autism learn to read, you know, social cues to better connect with other humans. That's an amazing example. So I think to your point, it is a spectrum and we can't, you know, lump it into just a, it's not a monolith.
I'm curious though, like where, where if anywhere are you like drawing the bright lines? Like where are you saying like, you know, do this, don't do that?
Yeah. That's pretty easy right now. We are at the very beginning of this tech revolution and AI companions in the, you know, AI toys that, you know, claim to be better alternatives to screen time. That feels like a pretty hard no. You've got to, you know, I think the thing that we can learn from social media is that, you know, we need to take a precautionary principle. You've got to show me it's safe before I'm going to let it into the developmental sanctuaries of our kids because the stakes are just way too high. Even higher than social media in my opinion.
Yeah. What about like smart devices that are not meant to be plush toys, but like my, you know, my kid loves talking to Alexa and asking for various children's songs that are intolerable to adults but that he loves to play on repeat. Like, is that, is that the same thing or is that different because it's not pretending to be a companion or a stuffed animal?
I mean, I think it's, it's how, how much. I mean, it's a slippery slope, but I think we can all agree that, you know, Alexa playing songs when you're around or even if you're not around is probably a fine thing. It's at this, at this point, it's more just the crowding out of the human interaction that I'm very concerned about.
Yeah. My kid would otherwise be asking me to play the Blippi Garbage Truck song 400 times, so I'm somewhat sympathetic to that. Yeah, you know, you've mentioned that we're pretty early in many ways in the development of this technology, but I also know that, you know, you're really concerned with some of the things that you're seeing. Is this a moment where you feel like the government has a role to play in regulating the technology? And if so, what do you think that role should be?
No, absolutely. I think we know in Norway they've actually set out a law that there's no Gen AI in the school system in the early years. And in the same way I think we're seeing that in the US. I mean, in some ways this really mirrors the industrial food revolution. When the food revolution happened, you know, initially there was no guardrails and eventually we started, you know, had the Pure Food and Drug Act and then eventually we got, you know, the little...
Nutrition labels, the nutrition labels.
I mean, these are the things that, you know, are going to happen. It just, we're just at the very beginning, but hopefully we'll start seeing it.
What do you think of the Norway approach? Like does it seem wise to say like, hey, until we've done a little bit more research we're going to keep like kids under 16 from using ChatGPT in schools for any reasons? Does that, does that seem wise?
I mean, I think it's taking a scientific approach. I don't think they're saying no, never. I think they're saying, wow, this is happening so fast. Let's take a step back. We know what works. I mean, look, if we didn't know how to educate humans, I would get it, but I think they're just being, you know, taking a prudent approach. And I'm a scientist who is about innovation. I just, you know, I think about what happens in medicine and we're much more, you know, thoughtful when we have a new drug on the market. It's not like we have to say, 'Oh, I wonder what's going to happen to my child if I give them this new medication.' I'm not sure why, you know, this new technology, which is so incredibly powerful. It's amazing, right? But we have to acknowledge that it's a powerful technology that we need to understand what happens to us. I think the story of AI is as much about technology as it is about understanding what it does to humans. And I think that's what Norway is saying.
Well, let's try to give parents some practical advice. You suggest that when parents are trying to figure out whether a particular AI tool or product is suitable for them, they should ask themselves six questions. So what are the questions the parents should be asking?
Sure. So I, because I'm a surgeon and I love acronyms, it's called DETECT. So what is the DETECT method? D is design. E is was it ethically trained? T is were there any troubles with this technology in children? E is what is the evidence? Does it really do what it's supposed to do? C is confidentiality. What happens to your child's data? And lastly is T. What is it teaching from a value standpoint? And that DETECT method is used so that parents can quickly and easily figure out is this something that they want in their child's life.
All right. So I want to see if we can apply your DETECT framework to like an actual AI thing that is in the market right now. There is something called Cradlewise which I learned about from a tweet by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and he has a baby and he tweeted that they had bought, quote, 'a lot of silly baby things that we haven't needed but definitely I recommend a Cradlewise crib and a lot more burp rags than you think you could possibly need.' As for the Cradlewise though, this is apparently a smart crib that uses AI to detect early signs of a baby waking up and automatically starts a gentle bouncing motion and soothing track to get them back to sleep. So, if we were to use your framework, doctor, how would we rate a Cradlewise?
All I can say is I wish I had been there when I had one. Now I have my children. So, so what is it designed to do? In some ways, it's designed to support the parents by helping the child sleep, so that's number one. E, how is it trained? I think it's probably ethically trained. Is there any evidence that kids have had trouble?
Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't so much as Googled it yet, but that would be a thing to do, would be to sort of investigate whether there had been any problems with the device.
Problems? Yeah. Yeah. So, and what the evidence were. And probably some researchers have looked to see does it keep kids asleep? Do they have any problems? And I mean, I think long and short of it, I think that that feels very aligned with using technology to enhance, not replace, Sam Altman's parenting, allow him to have a good night's sleep, let the baby sleep. So, just hearing it very, you know, for the first time, it sounds like a good thing.
It seems okay. I'd say I would take a bed that would actually gently bounce me and rock me back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night because whatever I'm doing now is not working for me.
You said to update the firmware on your Eight Sleep. I'm Googling this right now and it seems like there have not been serious problems with the Cradlewise smart bassinet. Although it does say that it has proprietary linens. You cannot buy cheap third-party crib sheets because the mattress is a non-standard shape.
You know, Cradlewise was one of my favorite songs in The Sound of Music. Those eight. Oh yeah. Anyway,
Hey, listen. Listen, it's either that or like me, my late husband and I had three kids in our bed at one time and I don't know if I had had Cradlewise, we might have had more sleep.
