Hard pass. It's one thing to use this as supplemental education, but I would not want to use this exclusively to teach my children critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, citizenship, and character. Rather, it is developing those Six Cs in which tools like these AIs can be skillfully used.
Years ago, when I first read Neal Stephenson's _Diamond Age_, I was enamored with the Primer described in it, despite the warning at the end of the book. For those that are not familiar, that Primer was an attempt by a parent to instill values along with skills. It was capable of forming narratives (teaching stories), while also constructing all sorts of content and knowledge. It was meant to be a one-of-a-kind artifact, whose design would self-erase once it was constructed, but the engineer who put it together added a backdoor to give him a copy. He wanted it for his child too. He got mugged on the way home, and so the second copy fell randomly to an orphan.
Three copies, three different girls, three very different experiences. In this story, only one of them (the orphan) had someone signed up for a long-term contract to voice the narration generated by the Primer's AI. She was also the only one who was able to see and grow beyond the cultural matrix of values and virtues, while also appreciating those same values and virtues. That was what the original designers hoped for. So when the sponsor and the engineer got together late in the book and reflected, they came to the insight: the Primer was no substitute for a parent.
Parenting and education is not something we automate away. A parent, and/or a teacher has to have some kind of presence of mind, somewhere. It's not scalable, and it is deeply involved, even if you end up with a parenting style like free-range parenting, or something like the Montessori method, or even Unschooled.
Years ago, when I first read Neal Stephenson's _Diamond Age_, I was enamored with the Primer described in it, despite the warning at the end of the book. For those that are not familiar, that Primer was an attempt by a parent to instill values along with skills. It was capable of forming narratives (teaching stories), while also constructing all sorts of content and knowledge. It was meant to be a one-of-a-kind artifact, whose design would self-erase once it was constructed, but the engineer who put it together added a backdoor to give him a copy. He wanted it for his child too. He got mugged on the way home, and so the second copy fell randomly to an orphan.
Three copies, three different girls, three very different experiences. In this story, only one of them (the orphan) had someone signed up for a long-term contract to voice the narration generated by the Primer's AI. She was also the only one who was able to see and grow beyond the cultural matrix of values and virtues, while also appreciating those same values and virtues. That was what the original designers hoped for. So when the sponsor and the engineer got together late in the book and reflected, they came to the insight: the Primer was no substitute for a parent.
Parenting and education is not something we automate away. A parent, and/or a teacher has to have some kind of presence of mind, somewhere. It's not scalable, and it is deeply involved, even if you end up with a parenting style like free-range parenting, or something like the Montessori method, or even Unschooled.