Raising children on the eve of AI
Cross-posted with light edits from Otherwise.
I think of us in some kind of twilight world as transformative AI looks more likely: things are about to change, and I don’t know if it’s about to get a lot darker or a lot brighter.
Increasingly this makes me wonder how I should be raising my kids differently.
What might the world look like
Most of my imaginings about my children’s lives have them in pretty normal futures, where they go to college and have jobs and do normal human stuff, but with better phones.
It’s hard for me to imagine the other versions:
A lot of us are killed or incapacitated by AI
More war, pandemics, and general chaos
Post-scarcity utopia, possibly with people living as uploads
Some other weird outcome I haven’t imagined
Even in the world where change is slower, more like the speed of the industrial revolution, I feel a bit like we’re preparing children to be good blacksmiths or shoemakers in 1750 when the factory is coming. The families around us are still very much focused on the track of do well in school > get into a good college > have a career > have a nice life. It seems really likely that chain will change a lot sometime in my children’s lifetimes.
When?
Of course it would have been premature in 1750 to not teach your child blacksmithing or shoemaking, because the factory and the steam engine took a while to replace older forms of work. And history is full of millenialist groups who wrongly believed the world was about to end or radically change.
I don’t want to be a crackpot who fails to prepare my children for the fairly normal future ahead of them because I wrongly believe something weird is about to happen. I may be entirely wrong, or I may be wrong about the timing.
Is it even ok to have kids?
Is it fair to the kids?
This question has been asked many times by people contemplating awful things in the world. My friend’s parents asked their priest if it was ok to have a child in the 1980s given the risk of nuclear war. Fortunately for my friend, the priest said yes.
I find this very unintuitive, but I think the logic goes: it wouldn’t be fair to create lives that will be cut short and never reach their potential. To me it feels pretty clear that if someone will have a reasonably happy life, it’s better for them to live and have their life cut short than to never be born. When we asked them about this, our older kids said they’re glad to be alive even if humans don’t last much longer.
I’m not sure about babies, but to me it seems that by age 1 or so, most kids are having a pretty good time overall. There’s not good data on children’s happiness, maybe because it’s hard to know how meaningful their answers are. But there sure seems to be a U-shaped curve that children are on one end of. This indicates to me that even if my children only get another 5 or 10 or 20 years, that’s still very worthwhile for them.
This is all assuming that the worst case is death rather than some kind of dystopia or torture scenario. Maybe unsurprisingly, I haven’t properly thought through the population ethics there. I find that very difficult to think about, and if you’re on the fence you should think more about it.
What about the effects on your work?
If you’re considering whether to have children, and you think your work can make a difference to what kind of outcomes we see from AI, that’s a different question. Some approaches that seem valid to me:
“I’m allowed to make significant personal decisions how I want, even if it decreases my focus on work”
“I care more about this work going as well as it can than I do about fulfillment in my personal life”
There are some theories about how parenting will make you more productive or motivated, which I don’t really buy (especially for mothers). I do buy that it would be corrosive for a field to have a norm that foregoing children is a signal of being a Dedicated, High-Impact Person.
One compromise seems to be “spend a lot of money on childcare,” which still seems positive for the kids compared with not existing.
In the meantime
Our kids do normal things like school. Partly because even in a world where it became clear that school isn’t useful, our pandemic experience makes me think they would not be happier if we somehow pulled them out.
I’m trying to lean toward more grasshopper, less ant. Live like life might be short. More travel even when it means missing school, more hugs, more things that are fun for them.
What skills or mindsets will be helpful?
It feels like in a lot of possible scenarios, nothing we could do to prepare the kids will particularly matter. Or what turns out to be helpful is so weird we can’t predict it well. So we’re just thinking about this for the possible futures where some skills matter, and we can predict them to some degree.
I haven’t really looked into what careers are less automatable; that seems probably worth looking at when teenagers or young adults are moving toward careers. I wouldn’t be surprised if childcare is actually one of the most human-specialized jobs at some point.
Some thoughts from other parents:
A friend pointed out is that it’s good if children’s self-image isn’t too built around the idea of a career, because of the high chance that careers as we know them won’t be a thing.
“For now I basically just want her to be happy and healthy and curious and learn things.”
“I think it’s worth focusing on fundamental characteristics for a good life: high self esteem and optimistic outlook towards life, problem solving and creative thinking, high emotional intelligence, hobbies/sports/activities that they truly enjoy, being AI- and tech-native.”
“I’m less worried about mine being doctors or engineers. I feel more confident they should just pursue their passions.”
How much contact with AI?
I know some parents who are encouraging kids to play around with generative AI, with the idea that being “AI-native” will help them be better prepared for the future.
Currently my guess is that the risk of the kids falling into some weird headspace, falling in love with the AI or something, is higher than is worth it. As Joe Carlsmith writes: “If they want, AIs will be cool, cutting, sophisticated, intimidating. They will speak in subtle and expressive human voices. And sufficiently superintelligent ones will know you better than you know yourself – better than any guru, friend, parent, therapist.”
Maybe in a few years it’ll be impossible to keep my children away from this coolest of cool kids. But currently I’m not trying to hasten that.
What we say to them
Not a lot. One of our kids has been interested in the possibility of human extinction at points, starting when she learned about the dinosaurs. (She used to check out the window to see if any asteroids were headed our way.)
We’ve occasionally talked about AI risk, and biorisk a bit more, but the kids don’t really grasp anything worse than the pandemic we just went through. I think they’re more viscerally worried about climate change and the loss of panda habitats, because they’ve heard more about those from sources outside the family.
CS Lewis in 1948
I think this quote doesn’t do justice to “Try hard to avert futures where we all get destroyed,” but I still find it useful.
“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
Related writing
Zvi’s AI: Practical advice for the worried, with section “Does it still make sense to try and have kids?” and thoughts on jobs.
Anna Salamon and Oliver Habryka on whether people who care about existential risk should have children.
I have thought the same with young kids. After a little thought I decided its best not to really change anything. As you said there is no benefit of taking kids out of school even if you believe the skills wont be useful. If they are happy at school and gain a sense of mastery and purpose with peers etc then that is good.
If you want specifics then sure asking them “what do you want to be when you grow up” is definitely not a good idea, if it ever was. Also our society is all geared towards feeling worthwhile if you make something rather than just being intrinsically worthwhile. You can wonder how a parent in the “Culture” universe would bring up their child.
Perhaps the more open a child is to a Brain Computer Interface such as Neuralink, the more they will contribute in the future? I keep the kids away from ChatGPT and image generators—if kids get a sense of achievement from drawing then I don’t see any good that can come of letting them make artwork in seconds.
Also I consider it plenty likely enough that we won’t see that future anytime soon. If you have read “Chip wars” you will realize how incredibly fragile the semi-conductor supply chain is. If Taiwan is invaded, then that guarantees say 5+ years of a setback and I could realistically see 2 decades if things really turn to strife and supply chains collapse. Additionally if we have a “slow takeoff” as I believe once again China will see that they will essentially have no chance of a Chinese century and will be motivated to destabilize things—likewise for any major power that thinks they are losing out. Where I live thats supply chain shortages but not a vastly changed world.
Good thoughts. The world will always have its ups and downs. I don’t think tech can save us from it perpetually. Just like “Gods” and whatnot didn’t save the people of past perpetually. People have been through waves of utopia and hell for eons.
Anyway, I don’t have a bunch of data but I can share my personal experience.
I had my first kid, 6m old boy. Everybody seems to think he’s “The Buddha” due to his wise and alert vibes, and unusually calm and happy demeanor. He certainly seems to be relatively easy and joyful to care for compared to what we hear from every other parent, though of course he has his moments.
Everyone is different (and they should be, it obviously takes all sorts to build this world) but this to me is the only thing that’s important. And we did not teach him anything, we just became calm and clear headed ourselves. The baby just picked up the same mentality.
This seems to depend less on money, but a lot more on time. Ok some argue “Time = Money”, but not necessarily, especially in affluent countries like where I live. Every single person I know who has much more money than me, has far less time. And I don’t feel any of them work on anything particularly great or meaningful for society. My wife and I spent years crafting a very unique lifestyle which maximizes time above all else, and it did not involve getting very rich
So what if we all get uploaded to computers? Well his neural-net will be the clearest and happiest so everyone will want one like it. Take a look at any other future outcome and see if having a clear and happy mind is never of great benefit. Skills are secondary and can always be learned “on the job”—especially when you have a calm and clear head. Note that calmness and clarity does not equal laziness nor ineffectiveness. On the contrary, it helps one better determine where it’s worth putting in a lot of effort and where it’s a waste of time. It allows one to pick up new things quickly.
I have four sons, ages 12 to 20. Ever since the oldest started to use the computer a lot I have wondered whether to limit it one way or the other. I also sat at the computer a lot starting ~1988. My parents must have wondered what useful might come of this strange hobby. I don’t know if they had a clue that it might become useful. But they trusted and gave freedom to explore. The job I’m doing right now didn’t even exist when I was their age. How could anybody have advised it as a career? In the same way, it seems even more likely that whatever my sons will be doing when they are as old as I am now doesn’t exist either. Maybe it will lead to participating in the gaming economy like in South Korea, or all the meme immersion will lead to future media empires.
It’s not related to the post’s main point, but the U-shape happiness finding seems to be questionable. It looks more like it just goes lower with age by other analyses in general this type of research shouldn’t be trusted
The U-shaped happiness curve is wrong: many people do not get happier as they get older (theconversation.com)
Yes for sure. I experience this myself when I am in the presence of very mindful folks (e.g. experienced monks who barely say anything), and occasionally someone has commented that I have done the same for them, sometimes quoting a particular snippet of something I said or wrote. We all affect each other in subtle ways, often without saying an actual word.
My 8yo uses ChatGPT to help with his math and English school work if he’s struggling with a particular topic. This works particularly well with Custom GPTs (e.g. one tailored to being a Math tutor). It’s like have your own one-on-one tutor that can explain concepts in different ways, set exercises and provide encouraging feedback, it’s pretty neat and he loves it.
But yes, I have the same thoughts about what the future will look like when our kids are adults and how they should best prepare themselves for this. Being AI and tech-savvy seems a no-brainer. Thanks for the article.
I agree with this conditional, but I question whether the condition (bolded) is a safe assumption. For example, if you could go back in time to survey all of the hibakusha and their children, I wonder what they would say about that C.S. Lewis quotation. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of them would consider it badly oversimplified, or even outright wrong.
This strikes me as some indexical sleight of hand. If the priests were instead saying no during the 1980s, wouldn’t that have led to a baby boom in the 1990s...?
I’m going through this too with my kids. I don’t think there is anything I can do educationally to better ensure they thrive as adults other than making sure I teach them practical/physical build and repair skills (likely to be the area where humans with a combination of brains and dexterity retain useful value longer than any other).
Outside of that the other thing I can do is try to ensure that they have social status and financial/asset nest egg from me, because there is a good chance that the egalitarian ability to lift oneself through effort is going to largely evaporate as human labour becomes less and less valuable, and I can’t help but wonder how we are going to decide who gets the nice beach-house. If humans are still in control of an increasingly non-egalitarian world then society will almost certainly slide towards it’s corrupt old aristocratic/rentier ways and it becomes all about being part of the Nomenklature (communist elites).
I think one more thing could be useful, I’d call it “structural rise”: over many different spheres of society, large projects are created by combining some small parts; ways to combine them and test robustness (for programs)/stability (for organisations)/beauty (music)/etc seem pretty common for most of the areas, so I guess they can be learned separately.
Very close thinking to mine overall, thank you for this post!
My own approach is simple. We don’t know whether we’re heading towards dystopia or utopia. In some cases, it’s wise to be maximally pessimistic and assume dystopia. However, in the vast majority of cases, it is wiser to not only assume a utopian future, but to behave, to an extent which is realistic, as if we are already in a utopia. This “utopian zone” in our life should I think cover most interpersonal relationships, and definitely our relationship with our kids.
This simple principle—always act as if you’re in utopia, unless it’s too out of place—gives easy answers to most of the questions in this post. Should we have kids? Yes, because if we don’t, we’re already in dystopia! What to teach our kids? Assume we’re in utopia and teach them the skills of being happy, fulfilled, self-realized, not bored. Should we tell them about dangers ahead? Yes, because even in a utopia, you can tell kids scary fairy tales—kids love scary stuff. And so on.
My thinking on this was much stimulated by my writing a book for my 6yo son. I plan to publish it here on Lesswrong. A description is in the pinned comment in my profile. Would appreciate your checking it out!
The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year. Will this post make the top fifty?
A solid thing might be to get them used to the idea of only having one child (and freezing gametes just in case of course).
If people are happy with one child, that means that if either the lightcone or the earth economy has limited resources to support legacy humans (eg if everyone lives off their grandparents money in a world where money is massively deflated but there’s no jobs, or legacy humans need to share their lifespan with every child they “birth” due to the lightcone having finite energy) then everyone will be choosing 1-2 kids instead of 2-3. So they might as well be happy about that instead of sad. Early childhood intervention is the best time to avoid setting them up for disappointment later (they will be pleasantly surprised instead if 3turns out to be the right choice). I don’t know anything about population ethics, but I know what it’s like to be disappointed about this.
No idea how to explain that well, eg “we’re glad we chose to have all of you, but we didn’t find out until 2years ago that you will probably be happiest with 1-2 because grown ups make mistakes too and we didn’t know there might be problems with running out of space”. But it’s a limited time to say “yeah we had 3 but that doesn’t mean you should” because they won’t listen later, or something, idk (boggles my mind that trying to explain anthropics to a 6-yo is basically guaranteed to fail and make asteroid fears worse).
There seem to be a lot of assumptions in the argument for only one child. And even if that specific line of reasoning turns out to be eventually correct doesn’t mean it has to hold now.
I still think this is correct, but a better approach would be to encourage kids to be flexible with their life plan, and to think about making major life decisions based on what the world ends up looking like rather than what they currently think is normal.
Kids raised in larger families tend to see larger families as what they’ll do later in life, and this habit of thought gets placed early on and is hard to change when they’re older, so that’s an example of a good early intervention to prepare them for the future before their preferences get locked in, but it’s not the only one.
I agree that there is a correlation between kids of large families having/preferring larger families, but it is not a strong one, and we don’t know how it interacts with all the other things you assume. So I think is another weak argument with its own set of additional assumptions. I think you have to make a stronger case.