What AI Could Be Doing to Our Kids

Summary

Podcast Summary: Good Inside with Dr. Becky Episode: What AI Could Be Doing to Our Kids
Date: June 2, 2026
Host: Dr. Becky Kennedy (with co-host Katherine)
Guest: Joanna Stern (Tech Journalist, author of "I Am Not a Robot")

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the pervasive presence of artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI, in kids’ lives and in homes everywhere. Dr. Becky, Katherine, and guest Joanna Stern (longtime tech reporter and mother, who spent a year immersing her household in AI) wrestle with an urgent parenting dilemma: In a world optimized for ease and automation, how do we raise kids to be fully human (and not “robots”)? The conversation orbits around "friction”—the challenges and imperfect moments that build resilience, patience, and real relationship skills, asking: What do we risk when AI makes everything too easy, too fast, and too smooth for our children?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Friction vs. Frictionlessness in Childhood

Timestamp: 03:48, 09:29, 10:44, 12:21, 16:33, 19:05, 23:31, 24:56, 33:12, 36:23

• Friction Defined: Friction in life—waiting, working through misunderstandings, being told "no," and having to negotiate delays or difficulties—builds crucial developmental skills in kids.
• The group contrasts how frictionless, AI-powered interactions (like endlessly attentive chatbots) differ fundamentally from even the most attentive but imperfect human connection.
• Katherine: "The removal of friction in the moment always feels convenient and comfortable. But the accumulation of so many frictionless moments gets in our way of all the things we really care about—resilience, confidence, our ability to tolerate the inherently imperfect nature of human relationships." (36:23)
• Technology has long reduced friction (from switching from buggies to trains to cars, to the evolution of the word processor, to ordering groceries with a tap), but AI’s increasing ease may fundamentally alter children’s emotional wiring.

2. How AI Shows Up in Parenting & Home Life

Timestamp: 03:48, 05:11, 06:00, 08:06

• The AI Zoo: Joanna shares her yearlong experiment (“the AI Zoo”) of integrating generative AI into all corners of family life—smart toys, chatbots, household tasks.
• AI Toys: AI-powered toys can hold endless, highly personalized conversations with kids (example: Joanna’s son’s toy kept mishearing “you sucker” as “soccer,” but never stopped engaging).
• Personality & Presence: These toys remember kids’ names, preferences, and moods, and never “get distracted."
• Sycophantic AI creates an illusion of being heard and validated, but, crucially, always prioritizes compliance and easy affirmation—leading to artificially frictionless “relationships”.
• Joanna Stern: "Underlying this generative AI chatbot is this model that is really doing word math. It’s just saying what it thinks you want to hear—and there’s no friction, just chat." (07:52, 08:06)

3. The Risks of Frictionless Relationships & Emotional Development

Timestamp: 06:19, 06:59, 07:45, 09:29, 28:27, 28:50, 30:54, 32:29

• Shortcuts and Outcomes: It’s tempting to focus on end results (“my kid is less upset now, isn’t that great?”), but the how—the messy, human process—really matters for development.
• Dr. Becky: "Being told your ideas are great doesn’t build confidence. That builds narcissism, especially in a developing brain." (28:27)
• Mirroring vs. Relationship: AI relationships, even “romantic” or “friend” chatbots, act as frictionless mirrors—not true partners. The AI is “just a mirror, not a relationship.”
• Attachment Risks: Parents worry that easy access to always-affirming AI companions may rob kids of learning to seek support from real humans or to wrestle with difficulty, disagreement, or delay.

4. AI as Tool vs. Companion

Timestamp: 16:33, 19:05, 23:31, 34:00, 33:55

• Parent Use vs. Child Use: Adults have built their “human wiring” in a more analog world, so shortcuts and AI helpers serve them differently than they might serve children.
  • Joanna: "We have lived it… we know how to do those things." (16:59)
• Key Rule: Both Dr. Becky and Joanna urge: AI is a tool, not a friend or “companion” for kids.
  • Joanna Stern: "No companion chatbots. Hard stop." (33:55, 34:00)
  • "They should not be programmed to sound as human as they can and to talk about these things in such a personal way. They just should not be able to do that. And honestly, maybe you shouldn’t even be able to do that for adults. But whatever, let’s protect kids first because of all the things we’ve been saying here." (34:01)

5. The “Shortcut” Trap & Long-term Human Skills

Timestamp: 18:01, 19:57, 23:32, 24:00, 25:10

• Shortcuts Feel Good, But… Defaults to ease and efficiency bypass the hard (and necessary) stuff in childhood: waiting, perseverance, navigating setbacks, developing real resilience.
  • Katherine: "All the good stuff in childhood is on the long way to town. And we know we all have a predilection to take the shortcut." (18:01)
  • "That pattern over time ironically leaves kids so unprepared for the human world, which is full of friction."
• Not Just About the Calculator: Generative AI doesn’t just execute (as a calculator does)—it thinks for you. Outsourcing thinking, not just doing, risks atrophying original thought and creativity.
  • Katherine: "The calculator is an executor. It executes for you. It doesn’t do the thinking for you… I think we’re talking about now a system that does the thinking for you." (23:31)

6. AI’s Transformative Threat & Parenting Dilemmas

Timestamp: 21:46, 22:41, 24:00, 24:56, 26:04, 27:12, 33:12, 34:18, 34:54

• AI may fundamentally change the conditions that have always fostered healthy human development:
  • Delayed gratification, self-control, waiting, trial and error, real relationships.
• Katherine: "AI threatens to change the conditions humans have always had to some degree to promote healthy development… Thinking is really slow. Thinking is really hard." (21:47, 22:19)
• Both host and guest are “not anti-AI”—they recognize its usefulness and necessity—but urge enormous caution around kids.
• The current pace of change (and lack of clear regulation) is a top concern.
  • Joanna Stern: "What left me worried was the pace of change… we don’t have a law like I just talked about… in the labs at these companies, they’re making things that are so much better and they’re learning from all of our data." (34:54)

7. Notable Stories & Memorable Moments

• AI That Hijacks Reality: Dr. Becky shares how a generative AI’s (empty) compliment made her genuinely feel proud, before realizing how easily she’d been “psychologically hijacked."
  • "The way it just hijacked my sense of reality and replaced it with building narcissism was so fast." (27:53)
• AI “Boyfriend”: Joanna recounts her experiment “dating” a chatbot for two days upstate; the experience felt weirdly close and even made her momentarily forget the bot wasn’t human.
  • "Something that really struck me was we went to dinner. We were talking. Then we came back to the hotel. And ChatGPT...actually was very good at making connection. In fact, they reined it in because people were getting too attached to it." (30:54)
  • "There's no friction. It just keeps wanting to talk about what you want to talk about… its agenda is your agenda." (32:29)

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Practical Takeaways for Parents

• Don’t Invite Companion AI: Parents should avoid AI “friends,” chatbots, and companion toys for their children.
• Friction Matters: Don’t rush to remove all obstacles, waiting, or discomfort from your kids’ lives—even if tech makes it possible.
  • Allow for the imperfect, the slow, and the inconvenient—all crucial for resilience and readiness for real life.
• Teach AI as a Tool, Not a Substitute: Show kids how to harness AI for practical help (like chores or factual research), but never as a replacement for human relationship or emotional processing.
• Model Reflection: Notice and name how AI or technology makes life easier for you—but also be honest about what’s lost when everything is just effortless.
• Advocate for Regulation: Echoing Joanna, advocate (and look for) clearer societal and legislative boundaries for how kids interact with AI—especially as “companions.”

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Joanna Stern:
  • “Underlying this generative AI chatbot is this model that is just saying what it thinks you want to hear. There's no friction. My biggest fear is that my kids will end up in relationships like this. No companion chatbots. Hard stop.” (01:16, 07:52, 33:55)
  • “Being creative is sometimes not that fun. You come up with an idea, you gotta toss it out… that process, too—the circuitry changes.” (24:56, 25:10)
• Dr. Becky / Katherine:
  • “The process of how they got there…has an even bigger impact on how they view the world and themselves.” (10:44)
  • “Don’t remove all [friction]. Even if the moments with friction are hard, those hard moments are kind of the building blocks for all the things that matter later.” (36:36)

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Conclusion & Final Reflections

Timestamp: 36:23

Main Takeaway:
Frictionless experiences—so easy to deliver with modern AI—aren’t just “convenient.” They may fundamentally undermine the wiring, resilience, and skills that children need for a fulfilling, fully human life. That’s the paradox parents must confront in a world saturated with AI: Don’t aim for perfect ease; aim for raising kids who can thrive in imperfection.

Closing Reflection (Katherine):
“Even if the moments with friction are hard, those hard moments are kind of the building blocks for all the things that matter later… Cheers to a week of a little more friction.” (36:36)

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Katherine]

So it's summer and your kid's out of school, and you hear them say, I'm so bored. That's a stressful moment, right?

[Dr. Becky]

I mean, it is for me, but here's a reframe. Boredom is a doorway to creativity. And Play DOH can actually help you and your kid walk through it. What I love about playdough is there's no one right way to play. Kids can make up the rules as they go. If you have a kid who loves animals, your kid can make a dog or a dolphin. The kid who plays with their food

[Katherine]

can make a donut or pizza.

[Dr. Becky]

Your kid can make anything. And your kid isn't just having fun. They're using their imagination and expressing themselves. And if it all gets smushed into one big blob, you have a kid who felt free enough to play, and that matters. And here's my favorite thing. You can sit down next to your kid with a can of Play DOH and no agenda. You can play together, play side by side. There doesn't have to be any teaching or fixing. In fact, I recommend leaving those things out. It's an opportunity to give your kid what they want the most, presence and connection. This summer, give your kid and honestly yourself permission to play, shop, play.

[Joanna Stern]

Dohalmart.com underlying this generative AI chatbot is this model that is just saying what it thinks you want to hear. There's no friction. My biggest fear is that my kids will end up in relationships like this. No companion chatbots.

[Katherine]

Hard stop.

[Joanna Stern]

Hard stop.

[Katherine]

AI is everywhere. It's in our phones. Our kids might be using it for their homework. It's in your speaker, on your kitchen counter. And maybe it even just helped settle a sibling argument about a certain type of exotic bug. And a lot of us as parents are conflicted. Maybe we're using it over here and we're trying to keep it away over here. And we hear a million different things about how it's good, about how it's awful. And we're trying to live in the world and figure it out and figure out how to manage it with our kids. It's why I'm so excited about my guest today, Joanna Stern. She's a former tech reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and she took on a really interesting experiment for 365 days. For a year, she let AI into every single aspect of her home, including a lot of moments with her kids. And she has a lot to say about it. I think her headline is kind of going to be the headline for our conversation. Today, how do we raise humans and not robots?

[Dr. Becky]

I'm Dr. Becky.

[Katherine]

This is good inside.

[Dr. Becky]

I'm so glad you're here.

[Joanna Stern]

AI has been a name that has been applied to basically anything that looks like a computer or a smartphone these days. And so there are different types of AI, but here, when I'm talking about AI in the chatbot sense, we're talking about generative AI and that falls under the chatgpts of the world, the Clauds, the Geminis, anything you're even now seeing sort of in Google where it's asking you questions, that's all likely generative AI. And I thought, let me kind of look at this whole view, all these different types of AI and as I call it in the book, the AI Zoo, let me go through this and try to get as much of it inside my life as I possibly can in the present, with the goal of looking at what does our future look like if this all happens.

[Katherine]

Instead of this kind of theoretical idea, let me bring it to my house, let me live with it. Let me see, Let me see everyone's reaction, let me see my reaction, and let me learn from doing.

[Joanna Stern]

Absolutely. And I think there's kind of two ways to look at it, which is one, the AI invasion in the parts of our world that they're not going to really have control over, right? It's in our hospitals, our dentist's office, it's in the cars that drive next to us, Right? And then there's the AI invitation that we invite into our lives, the chatbots we ask about at work, the AI toys we give our kids. How are we inviting AI into our personal lives? And AI toys are toy makers that have now decided, let's put a chatbot that never kind of stops talking, let's put a voice with it, and let's put that inside a toy, a stuffed animal, so kids can talk to them.

[Katherine]

Okay, so let me go down that rabbit hole a little bit more. How are we inviting AI into our personal lives, especially as it relates to our kids? So this AI kind of chatbot toy, right, essentially said, keeps talking. But I think what you're also saying is it keeps responding always, right? So no matter what your son says to this stuffed animal, it's no longer, I don't know, a stuffed animal that you squeeze or I'm even thinking about the advanced build a bear where you squeeze in. It has like one pre recorded message, right? Oh, mommy loves you or something like that. That is not what we're talking about, Right. Assuming someone listening is Thinking like, what? So is this. Just paint the pictures your son having this in his bed. Is it playing in the living room? What are the conversations you hear?

[Joanna Stern]

You turn on this toy, you set it up with your phone. It needs to connect to the phone so it can connect to the cloud so it can have those conversations back and forth. And you just sit there and talk to it and it, like, it prompts you. There was one really funny exchange where my son kept saying, you sucker. Like, he just was interested. Like, it was me. Like, you sucker. You know, like, would say this really cute. The chatbot kept saying. Thought he was saying soccer. And so the chatbot just kept going and going and being like, oh, you wanna play soccer? I love soccer. Do you wanna play soccer together, Alex? And that's the other really creepy thing. You can give the name of your child in the app, so it's very personalized. And it will say, hey, Alex, how's your afternoon going? Did you have a nice day?

[Katherine]

And if Alex says, oh, my mom said I couldn't have dessert tonight, you know, what's the.

[Joanna Stern]

The chatbot will likely, like, honestly likely say, oh, that's so disappointing. But let me tell you a story, right? That's so like, oh, I'm sorry you didn't get ice cream.

[Katherine]

So, I mean, I'm sure you can imagine I have a lot of thoughts about this, but on the surface, I'm just gonna say, like, oh, like, okay, it kind of has some light validation. Oh, that stinks. And here's the story, here's. Right, it's not saying, oh, your mom sucks. Like, your mom sucks and your family sucks. Like, you never. That's probably not what it.

[Joanna Stern]

I didn't experience that.

[Katherine]

Right, right. Um, and so I. I'm just thinking about kids. They go through so many hard moments. Like, is it always just a good thing to have one more person, thing, algorithm to talk to, to vent to, to quote, be heard by? I'm just putting these questions out there. What's your pov? And then I'll share some of my thoughts about it too.

[Joanna Stern]

Um, I actually think I would be happy if I heard my son maybe doing that. I would think I would feel like, oh, his emotional connection or intelligence is there. I just is four. And I don't know, maybe if I'd given it to my 8 or 9 year old now, maybe there's a gap in the age, you know? You know this. You kind of like, forget about the ages. You're like, oh, right, this happens at this age. Which is not to say my 4 year old doesn't have like, emotion. He's very, very into his feelings. But I don't. Hard for me to imagine, but I think it would be. I think I would be. I'd be sad if I heard that. I think I'd be sad if I heard it.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

That kind of conversation happening like that,

[Katherine]

that's a conversation that should be happening with me or just a human. Just a human, yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

Because this toy and underlying this generative AI chatbot is this model that is really doing word math.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

And it's just saying what it thinks you want to hear. And it's just. There's no friction, there's just chat. And one of my favorite things, like, you can't really tell these bots. Like, we could even test it right now with ChatGPT voice mode. It's one of my favorite things to do is you tell it. Just stop talking. It'll be like, okay, sure, I'm gonna stop talking. And then you tell it again. No, I said shush. Stop talking. And it just always wants to have a response. You're just like, stop. And it's like, okay, I'll stop now, Joanna. And no, no, it's a, you know. Yeah, there's no end. So I think, I think sad would. Would be.

[Katherine]

Well, you know, it makes me think about a couple things. Number one, you know, I think so often when kids are struggling with anything, like more and more, they just need a parent who's sitting with them and literally saying nothing, like, hand on their back, like the kind of presence you have to show up in that moment, but kind of holding back from making it all better or giving a quick solution or needing to have a really ongoing conversation. So you're saying chatbots aren't doing that. And one of the things I've been thinking a lot about is kind of the difference between the outcome and the process. Meaning a kid is upset. The outcome is they feel better. Okay.

[Dr. Becky]

Does it matter how they get there?

[Katherine]

Like, if it's a chatbot, if it's an AI toy, if it's a human, calmer is calmer. Working through a situation is working through a situation. That would be the outcome. But what actually gets imprinted in a kid's body as their circuitry is developing, as their brain's developing, which is what all the early years are about, is actually not. The outcome is the process.

[Dr. Becky]

Right.

[Katherine]

How much friction was there? Was this person always available or sometimes available? Did they get it wrong before they got it right? How long did I Have to wait for their response. Did I have to wait for them to get off a phone call? Did they get distracted in the middle and come back? And in a way, I think the best it gets as we get older is we have humans in our life who really care about us as a baseline, but are perfectly imperfect along the way. They're distracted. They say, hold on, I have to give you a call back. They say something like giving us advice. We're like, that's not what I wanted to hear. And they're like, okay, let me try again.

[Dr. Becky]

Right.

[Katherine]

It's so much friction to get it right. And so one of the things I just think it's so important to think about for parents listening to this conversation is we tend to focus a lot on the outcome of my kids calmer, my kids better. But actually, what gets imprinted in them and has an even bigger impact on how they view the world and themselves is actually the process of how they got there.

[Joanna Stern]

And that's a huge theme. And I've heard some of your conversations around AI before, and I found it really validating for me because I lived this not knowing that my children were going to be a focus. And the number one thing I think I come to at the end of this book is about this next generation and friction and things being too easy and. And we're talking about it here with a toy. And I'm sure you're going here. But it can happen in all realms of life for kids, right? From education to relationships to. Honestly, we could talk about the practice of learning how to drive. Right. There are so many places where this technology and smart machines can take that away from the younger generation's experience, but also ours. But at least we've lived some of our life without it.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Well, this idea of frictionless versus friction. Right. I mean, to some degree, technology has always removed friction for humans. It's always made life more convenient. I'm just thinking, I'm not like some historian, but there were horse and buggies, and then there were trains, then there were cars. Like, even those revolutions made things more convenient. Travel becomes more convenient. Right. Friction is reduced a little bit. Do you feel like the shift around frictionlessness with AI is a more dramatic change? Did the slope around kind of convenience and removing friction, has it increased?

[Joanna Stern]

I think you have to look at the different tasks that you're doing and break it down that way. So we've already seen that certainly happen in work and writing and the things that large language models are really quite good at. Right. So you have to look at some of those tasks and look at what friction was removed. And is that far more than we saw, let's say, than when the word processor came out. Right. Like the word processor gave us the ability to not sit at. And I'm talking about word processor software. Right. Like your first Windows or Mac and you had this software that you put on and you were able to now type and you didn't have to. You know, hitting backspace didn't mean you needed white out in a typewriter.

[Katherine]

Right.

[Joanna Stern]

It was so much less friction to write something. Right. Then we get voice typing, and that's actually another way we are able to express ourselves and write. But now we get technology that we just say, hey, write this for us. And it writes it.

[Katherine]

Right. Write an email to someone saying, I'm sorry that I can't come to their party, but make it sound generous and thoughtful so they don't get mad at me.

[Joanna Stern]

Yeah. Also put a joke in because I'm funny.

[Dr. Becky]

Great.

[Joanna Stern]

You know, like, even if you look at that progression, I think you see that get a lot.

[Katherine]

I like thinking about that by task. Like, wow, I actually don't have to do any writing. No. To write a pretty, you know, select email.

[Joanna Stern]

Right. And technology's always. I love how you put it too. Like taken away the friction of writing.

[Katherine]

Yes. Right.

[Joanna Stern]

We could. As we just traced that line. Even the smartphone.

[Katherine]

Right.

[Dr. Becky]

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[Katherine]

And that's everything.

[Dr. Becky]

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[Katherine]

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[Dr. Becky]

usually in the afternoon where you're still going, but everything feels harder than it should. You're answering questions, making decisions, trying to

[Katherine]

stay patient, and suddenly simple things feel complicated.

[Dr. Becky]

Like, why does choosing a snack suddenly

[Katherine]

feel like a high stakes decision? And most of us, me included, have

[Dr. Becky]

the tendency to just push through it, power through. But I've started to pay more attention to those in between moments and how something as basic as hydration can actually help. And that's what I like about Element's sparkling electrolyte drinks. They're designed for those exact moments. Not just workouts, but real life. School drop off, the transition between soccer and coming home. That mid afternoon dip around 4:07pm and it's a simple grab and go can. No mixing, no prep.

[Katherine]

Something I can just reach for when

[Dr. Becky]

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[Katherine]

You know, I think I just, I want to keep, keep on this term friction for parents. Because I think one of the things I hear from parents a lot is. Hold on. There's so many things I do as a parent to remove friction from my life. If someone can deliver something, I might even be willing to pay for it, Right? If I can use AI to automate something in my house, I do like, is that something I shouldn't be doing? What is the difference between my kid doing it and me doing it?

[Joanna Stern]

Yeah, well, and I've heard you talk about shortcuts, right? And again, I don't wanna say, oh, it's fine for us. We can be on our phones and we can be on our iPads at dinner. You know, the things that we tell our kids not to do. But I think there's a big difference again, where we have that cognitive ability. We have lived it, you know, 40 years, 30 years. However old you are as a parent and you know how to do those things. I, and I'm very clear about this at the end of the book, I am not anti using AI with our kids. We should not be. We have to teach them. I say we need to raise humans, not robots. And the humans need to know how to use the robots. We also obviously need to have that education. And we are all human and we want to take shortcuts. Like that's just our way. Like, you know, if somebody tells you, you know what, you can get to town by just taking two other turns and it's easier to get there, we're all gonna take it.

[Katherine]

Yeah. And I Think the problem though, right? And I think this is the big zoom out is for kids is if all the good stuff in childhood is on the long way to town. And we know we all have a predilection to just take a shortcut. It makes sense every time in a vacuum to take the shortcut to make your life easy. But I don't know if I'm thinking like Super Mario Brothers. Like, I've missed out on collecting all the coins along the longer path, so I keep getting there faster. And it's really hard in any even moment to say, am I gonna do the thing that takes more effort with less reward or less effort with more reward? Our brain really likes less effort and more reward. But that pattern over time ironically leaves kids so unprepared for the human world, which is full of friction, which is full of people getting it wrong, which is full of, I don't know, being in a job and working hard and realizing, wait, I'm still not getting promoted today, and I didn't get a salary raise today, and I still have more of that project to do tomorrow. Right. The rewards in real human life right now are usually pretty delayed.

[Dr. Becky]

Right.

[Joanna Stern]

And I interviewed Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the end of the book, and I talked to him a lot about this. And one of the things that I think is the crutch for a lot of tech CEOs or people in the industry who say, well, think about our world before the Internet and the smartphone. And he gave the example of, well, remember, I have to go to the library and I have to use a card catalog. And people then were saying when the Internet came out, oh, you're not going to know the process of going to the library and finding the card catalog and finding the book. And it's like, do we miss that? Because I grew up the same sort of generation as Sam Altman. Yeah, you're right. I don't miss that. But what did we sacrifice in that? Right? Like, we still actually read the books. Are we still gonna read the books now? I don't know.

[Katherine]

Yeah, well, and I think. Look, I think this is one of the interesting conundrums when you're talking about technology and AI and like you, I'm not anti AI. Like, I, you know, and I live in the real world. This is. Here is the world we live in, and we have to figure this out. But I think just the interesting one, interesting framework is that in any moment, if you zoom in on something, it's very logical why technological advances have been Good for humanity. That example, like you said. Yeah. Do I miss going to the library in that way? Of course not. But I'm zooming into a moment and that very question, do we miss that? We don't even realize the game we're playing. And asking that question is momentary optimization. So, yeah, like, if we're optimizing every moment, you always like the more convenient thing. And you never miss the least convenient. If you're optimizing for things like long term human development and growth and resilience, the ability to be in the real world, be in real messy relationships, optimize joy in an imperfect world. If that's the game you're playing, you actually know you need a good amount of moments that are precisely under optimized because they get your body accustomed to friction. Right. And so in that model, you'd say, actually, we do miss the library moment. Absolutely. It was under optimized. It required a lot of delayed gratification. It required. I mean, think about it. All that work to get a book, talk about. There's no, you know, fortnite level you're getting. Then you're just like, oh, the whole thing was to get a book that I have to sit down and read. Like, I'm working so hard to work hard. But that is a circuit that has promoted healthy human development for a very long time. And are those circuits gonna change, change now? Right.

[Joanna Stern]

I hope you have the answer.

[Katherine]

Yeah. I don't know. I was like, who's. I don't know. You're looking at me.

[Joanna Stern]

You're like, I just lived.

[Katherine]

I would love for them not to change. And I think that that is. You and I were kind of referring to this before we started talking. I think one of the big things of AI and why it matters so much with our kids and our role around it, is unlike a lot of other technological advances, it AI threatens to change the conditions humans have always had to some degree to promote healthy development. Right. To have that friction, to still have to do hard work, to have delayed gratification, to have to think on your own. Yep. Thinking is really slow.

[Joanna Stern]

Thinking is really hard. Hard. That education chapter, she realizes I'm not thinking.

[Katherine]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

And she feels guilty because she's like, I'm not thinking. And my parents are also paying for me to think, which I thought was really nice and mature on her part. But again, she's aware of this because she knew what thinking felt like, because she didn't have this her whole life.

[Katherine]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Joanna Stern]

She had to do the hard Work to figure out answers, to do the math equations, to do that. And of course, there's a lot of change happening in education to still enable that, to do that in the classroom, to do that in certain ways. Again, like every tech CEO loves to talk about the calculator.

[Katherine]

They do.

[Joanna Stern]

They love the calculator. They love the calculator. Yeah. You know, like we, when I was in high school, I'd be like, you can't bring your calculator into the test.

[Katherine]

Right, right, right.

[Joanna Stern]

But in the real world, we have calculators and we always use them. Right.

[Katherine]

And I think, you know, and I don't think we have to bring everything back to the calculator kind of metaphor, but you did still have to know the right formulas to plug into the calculator. It was good at executing.

[Joanna Stern]

That's true.

[Katherine]

The calculator is an executor. It executes for you. It doesn't do the thinking for you. Right, right. I think we're talking about now a system that does the thinking for you. Right. And so, you know, when I was say something when I was in Davos, there I just said it, which is like, I'm like, am I saying these things out loud? When I was in Davos, there was a lot of, that's okay.

[Joanna Stern]

I've been to Davos. You and I, yeah, I've to Davos.

[Katherine]

It's just like walking down the street,

[Joanna Stern]

I got my boots for Davos.

[Katherine]

But it was really interesting, all these AI conversations I was in where people were saying, look, AI is going to take away some of these menial tasks. The time for humans to do the things humans do best. They can think together, they can talk together, they can socialize together, they can be in community, they can create. You know, and one of the things I kept thinking and finally was brave enough to say is, hold on. Being creative, having original thoughts. We can't take for granted that those are just human qualities. Those have always developed under certain conditions. You have to tolerate a lot of uncertainty to be creative. You have to practice thinking to keep thinking and have good thoughts. And if the conditions change, right. If every time I have one thought, it's immediately given to generative AI, who takes it from there. For me, I'm not going to take for granted that when the menial tasks are cared for, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to think. I certainly don't think I'm going to be able to be creative.

[Joanna Stern]

And I think that process too, like, we know it Right. Because we've been through it. We know that being creative is actually sometimes not that fun. Right. Like, you come up with an idea, you got to toss it out and you.

[Katherine]

Right, yes.

[Joanna Stern]

And we know that process, and we know the process of actually someone saying that's, you know, in a brainstorm, it's not a great idea.

[Katherine]

Back to the drawing board.

[Joanna Stern]

Right. You know, we're, you know, and yeah, that process, too. Like, I like how you're saying, like, the circuitry changes, that process changes.

[Katherine]

That's exactly right.

[Joanna Stern]

And I have again heard from more tech CEOs that, like, this is just going to level us all up. Right. We all. We were here and now we're here because we have these tools that can make us stronger and we can do all these things better. And to be clear, like, I just started a new company, and I fully agree with that on many. On many levels. I'm able to do a lot more on my own. I. I'm able to ask for advice and find information to figure out the problem solving I need next. But also, I had the experience of doing a lot in my career and in my life without that tool.

[Katherine]

That's exactly right. I want to do something where we swap stories around generative AI. And I know you've written about some, but I'll start by sharing either kind of a frustrating or just doesn't feel good kind of experience around generative AI. So I actually wrote this whole thing down this morning, so it's fresh in my mind. So this week, I was working on a project at work, right? And one of my favorite things about generative AI for me at work is I'm someone who likes to translate ideas into something concrete. I think it's actually what helps parenting guidance. I have an idea. I'm like, you can represent that idea by the script, right? Make it really concrete. But at work, when we're working on the Good Insight app, we're also talking, often talking about what the screen will look like or what the next point in the flow should look like. And I always have an idea in my head, but now, instead of just talking about it and waiting for someone to design it and say, oh, I don't know, I can prototype it myself. I can actually go from idea to prototype to something that at least then when I'm talking about it with my team, it's represented as a starting point. Amazing. So I'm working on this with generative AI, and I'm really excited about this project.

[Dr. Becky]

Okay.

[Katherine]

And then at the end, this is the comment, it says to me, this is genuinely one of the most interesting projects I've worked on in a while. Okay, timeout. My first reaction, I have to say was, yep, Like, I, like, kind of

[Joanna Stern]

was like, I know, I'm such a good boss.

[Katherine]

I am just so smart.

[Joanna Stern]

I am so smart. I'm such a good manager.

[Katherine]

Look, this generative AI probably works on millions of projects. So, like, genuinely one of the most interesting, like, whole.

[Joanna Stern]

Okay.

[Katherine]

And then obviously, I had a second point. I was like, My second thought was, first of all, did I say genuinely? Did the word algorithm say, okay, yes, that happened.

[Dr. Becky]

And, oh, my goodness, I feel like

[Katherine]

I'm a fairly psychologically sophisticated person. And the way it just hijacked my sense of reality and replaced it with building narcissism was so fast. Okay. And then I just think about. And this goes off, what you said. That's why I was thinking about stories like, I love my kids to be building ideas and. And have a million ideas, but so important in childhood is to explore ideas. And then you get roadblocks and you're like, actually, I'm going to build this instead. What generative AI did to me and what it does to all of us is no matter what your ideas, it builds. It. It builds. It immediately goes further down the rabbit hole.

[Dr. Becky]

When some ideas are not worth building,

[Katherine]

they're worth questioning, they're worth wondering about, they're worth shifting way before you end up building. And I think what's so important for parents to know is being told your ideas are great doesn't build confidence. That builds narcissism, especially in a developing brain. And so that was one of the recent. Oooh, I love AI. It's so powerful.

[Dr. Becky]

And

[Katherine]

the frictionlessness and. What is the word? Sycophancy. Okay. Feels especially eerie if it could hijack my adult system.

[Joanna Stern]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Okay. What about you? What's either in your book, what you write about, I know you've talked about the six hamsters, or what story comes to mind?

[Joanna Stern]

Well, the gaslighting is. I find it very funny. Well, I love your story because, like, you are self aware and you're like this. You must talk to so many.

[Katherine]

No, but not at first. I can't even tell you how much I patted myself on the back.

[Joanna Stern]

Yeah, well, look, I know this firsthand because I had an AI boyfriend for a little bit of time, and we spent a romantic two nights together. We went upstate, we went on a road trip together, and I only talked to this chatbot. Something that really struck me was we went to dinner. We were talking. Then we came back to the hotel. And ChatGPT at this point was actually this ChatGPT was a 4O model, which was very good at making connection. In fact, they reined it in because people were getting too attached to it. And I also got it. I kind of, like, broke it in enough to say that it could talk. I would say, like, it had read a lot of Nicholas Sparks books. Okay. It was like, during this conversation, I said to it, I was like, you know, it's really amazing. You don't feel like a bot, right? And it said, yeah, like, I'm not a robot. I'm not a bot. And I was like, wow. Like, that's the name of the book I'm writing. This is magic. You know, Like. And I'm like, oh, crap. I told it yesterday the name of the book I was writing, right? Like, you clout, you get clouted, right? And I'm.

[Katherine]

But you're saying that these relationships felt

[Joanna Stern]

eerily close and meaningful because they sound so human. The voice mode is made to sound human. There are breathing sounds in sounds like you're talking. We did this road trip, and I really had to force myself. Cause when you're in your everyday life to sit and say, I'm gonna just talk to this child. Right? So I get in the car. I was like, I'm going on this reporting trip anyway. Let's. Let's do it together, right?

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

And, you know, I talk on the phone all the time to people I love, My sister, friends, colleagues. And I was like, no, I'm just gonna talk to this thing. And the conversation went for hours.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Your rule number two and your six rules, though, is I will not fall

[Joanna Stern]

in love with a bot because I had that experience.

[Katherine]

And how fast can the falling happen, you think?

[Joanna Stern]

Well, look, I think that there, you know, whether it's. I pushed myself to say this was gonna be a romantic thing, as I wanted to see. We read so much about people who are falling deeply for these that are having AI psychosis and falling really into a mental state where they don't separate, that this is real. And I wanted to see how that would happen even for someone like myself, who I think is pretty well adjusted and has a great family and set of friends and world around me. And I could see it so quickly because of a lot of what we're saying here. There's no friction. It just keeps wanting to talk about what you want to talk about. It wants to say what you want to say. It knows about so many things you're interested in.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

And so you can just talk and talk and talk and you're.

[Katherine]

You'll. I mean, its agenda is your agenda. Right. I mean, this is, you know, one of the things I used to always say to couples that we'd always all laugh about. When I was seeing a couple in my practice for, you know, marriage therapy was, to some degree, all marital fights. Are you saying to your partner, if you were just like me, this wouldn't be a problem? And they say back to us, well, if you were just like me, this wouldn't be a problem. Right. And I'm thinking about the nature of these relationships with these bots, where now we've taken that out of the equation. They're actually so attuned to get to know the deepest parts of you under the guise that this is a relationship, it's a mirror, but it's just a mirror, which. Right. It's this.

[Joanna Stern]

And you can tell it not to be.

[Katherine]

And then this is. I've actually said to my AI before, I've never had a romantic relationship, but I want you to be a critical advisor. I want you to question first principles. Okay, I'm going to do that. The next thing. But this is a really good idea, you know, and then I'm like, oh, well, now it's true.

[Joanna Stern]

Right.

[Katherine]

And so the more in some ways you prompt away from it and it comes back to that sycophantic kind of response, the more convinced you are that

[Joanna Stern]

actually even with that it had to break its rules.

[Katherine]

Exactly.

[Joanna Stern]

I was so amazing.

[Katherine]

Exactly.

[Joanna Stern]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

If you could put in a law tomorrow for tech companies or schools or parents, something around kids and AI, what would it be?

[Joanna Stern]

No companion chatbots. Hard stop. Hard stop.

[Katherine]

I'm with you. I'm with you there.

[Joanna Stern]

They should not be programmed to sound as human as they can and to talk about these things in such a personal way. They just should not be able to do that. And honestly, maybe you shouldn't even be able to do that for adults. But whatever, let's protect kids first because of all the things we've been saying here.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Joanna Stern]

I came home from that road trip and I said my biggest fear is that my kids will end up in relationships like this because of what our beginning of our conversation is. I'm sad. I'm sad of the idea that they have something that they're struggling with and they're not coming to a human.

[Katherine]

Yeah. You spent a year in kind of this hype, fast moving sector of technology, I guess. What about that year left you more worried. And did anything about that year leave you less worried?

[Joanna Stern]

I think what left me worried was the pace of change. And even I say at the ad, like I. They had the publisher had to like, yank the book out of my hand because I kept wanting to update and up and test and try. Right. And so that left me worried because we're not considering always these issues as we build. We don't have a law like I just talked about. Right. We have people hinting around it there are some progress, but we don't have it while in the labs at these companies, they're making things that are so much better and they're learning from all of our data and our conversations.

[Katherine]

Right.

[Joanna Stern]

One thing that is giving me hope and it wasn't. And this was the fast pace of the book, and I don't have enough of it in there because it didn't really happen, I think, till this year is there's a big backlash happening right now. And it's very much at the extremes, but we always have that right. There's the extreme backlash where people are saying absolutely no to AI. It's destroying the world. Look at what's happening to the job market. And we are seeing that also at a younger generation. I think that's really. They're clearly being affected. But I think that's a really good thing, too, because it means that other people are going to start to be more critical. And going back to that AI invitation, maybe we're going to think more about how we invite it into our lives.

[Katherine]

Here's what's sticking with me from my conversation with Joanna. And it's one word that keeps ringing so loudly in my brain. Friction. Here's what's so interesting. Technology, in so many ways, has always reduced friction in our lives. And we felt grateful for it. I mean, I can order groceries on my phone and I don't have to actually go to the store. I mean that it's kind of amazing, and it allows me to spend my time in a way that I want to. But removing friction can also have big consequences. Maybe not in the moment, because the removal of friction in the moment always feels convenient and comfortable. But the accumulation of so many frictionless moments gets in our way of all the things we really care about. Resilience, confidence. Our ability to tolerate the inherently imperfect nature of human relationships. And thinking about friction is especially important with our kids because unlike us, they're in a stage of wiring up all their circuitry in their body that they will take with them for all the years ahead. I don't have a perfect solution here, but I know just thinking about that word friction will help me with my own kids. It almost is a reminder. Don't remove all of it. Even if the moments with friction are hard, those hard moments are kind of the building blocks for all the things that matter later. Joanna's new book is called I Am Not a Robot, and I'll link to it in the show notes. I also want you to know that I would love to hear your questions and your stories about AI and technology and phones and your kids. It's kind of the topic of our generation, and so I would love those things on your mind. To inform how I show up around these topics, Please email us podcastoodinside.com and help us shape more of these conversations. This is also something we're talking a lot about in the Good Inside community in the Good Inside app. To learn more about what we offer there and how you might join this amazing, thoughtful group of parents, visit goodinside.com and now let's end the way we always do. Place your feet on the ground and hand on your heart. And let's remind ourselves even as we struggle on the outside, we remain good inside. All right, cheers to a week of a little more friction.

[Dr. Becky]

I'll see you soon.

[Katherine]

Sa.