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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 857: Being Human Is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage | Dr. Dana Suskind, Human-Raised
00:52:44
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- [00:00]
Ginny Urich
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. We're going to be talking today about a book that every parent needs to read. It is called Human Raised. You want your kids to have the advantage of mostly being raised by a human in this age of AI. The subtitle is Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Lifelong Learning in the age of AI. Author Dr. Dana Susskind is here. She is New York Times bestselling author of Parent Nation, Kids and 30 Million Words, founder and co director of TMW center for Early Learning Plus Public Health, founding director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, professor of surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago. She's also authored more than 45 scientific publications and is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a fellow for the Council on Early Childhood, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, Forbes, Freakonomics, and npr. Sometimes, Dana, I'm like, how am I even getting to talk to this person? Huge congrats on all of your success.
- [01:02]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Oh, thank you so much. I'm the one who's excited to talk to you. What a movement you built.
- [01:07]
Ginny Urich
So thank you. Okay, so the new book that you have coming out, and actually it's going to be out by the time this podcast goes live, people can go grab a copy. It's a great book to read over the summer. Just like, what kind of a parent do you want to be? What kind of a home do you want to have heading into the school year, especially as this AI is progressing faster and faster.
- [01:25]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Faster.
- [01:25]
Ginny Urich
It is called Human Rays. So I would love if you could kick us off, Dana, with this front lines view you've had of the waiting rooms. So you're working in pediatrics, and it used to be really loud and you were kind of like, oh, I wish it was quieter. But then it became quieter because kids are on screens and you say it's, things have really changed and there's a lot that's being lost in the silence.
- [01:52]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah, you know, I'm a pediatric cochlear implant surgeon, so my whole world is about connection and talking. And, you know, I've been taking care of children for longer than I'll admit. And I always used to walk into my waiting rooms and it was loud and noisy. You know, just the bustling of little kids laughing, crying, having meltdowns. And I used to joke, I'm like, oh, it's so loud. But in the last few years, it has become eerily silent. I mean, literally everyone from the mother, father, child, older sibling, toddler, infant, is on their screen scrolling. And there was just this eerie silence that was a signal for, I think, something larger that we're all talking about that really got me going.
- [02:37]
Ginny Urich
So you talk in this book. There's so many interesting topics that we haven't talked about on the show. There's things that I haven't even considered. And one of the things that you talk about is the fact that there are reasons why this is so, so hard to handle. Scientific reasons. So you bring these up in the book and you talk about you, you need to know what's going on. Because you wrote that the people who are behind artificial intelligence who are making all this money, you wrote they are counting on you not understanding the psychological and economic nuances that drive your decisions. They are betting that you are going to be a complacent consumer. And so this book is about asking questions. It's about really understanding what's going on under the surface. And one of the big topics that you bring is that our brains are wired to choose immediate relief over long term benefit. And so we have this present bias, this is how our brains are wired. And so that is part of the reason why as a parent, we're tired, we're exhausted, we might just hand over a screen to soothe a child.
- [03:42]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah, I mean, I think this age of AI and understanding how to navigate it is as much about the technology as understanding ourselves. So I love the fact that you're bringing up understanding ourselves because, you know, you know, we are wired the way we are because long ago, you know, present bias is waiting immediate returns higher than long term benefits. Right. So if you were, you know, if you were out there foraging for food, you were going to, you know, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Right. And so in that same way, we are exhausted as parents. I mean, you know, it's never been harder. And sometimes when understandably somebody's melting down, you're going to hand over the technology because it's just so much. And you know, in that way, technology companies that have all these scientists, I mean, they're using, you know, I'm a big believer in science, I love science to help understand how to make the world better. But sometimes people can use science to get into your weaknesses. And so understanding that sometimes we will respond in a certain way gives us the ability to sort of stop and say, okay, I know that they're targeting it. Let me stop. Take a breath, take A beat and make a wise decision.
- [04:54]
Ginny Urich
This is so critically important to know. I want to read a couple of the things that you wrote. You wrote, it is nearly impossible to always behave rationally or strategically as a parent. I was so glad to read this because I think so many parents, like, at night, you might be like, oh, my kids had too much screen time today, but tomorrow. And you just think you're going to rationalize your way through it. And you say, it is impossible to always be rational. You're tired and you crave peace. And so we choose these shortcuts. One of the things you talk about is there is this prep. The. These companies are taking advantage of this pressure we feel, and they know that our brains are under stress, and so we're not going to make the optimal decision. So one of the things that you talked about was having a commitment device, like having.
- [05:43]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
I'm like, oh.
- [05:44]
Ginny Urich
I immediately was like, wait a minute. Like, you. And you talk about, like, maybe you lock your phone in a clear case or some sort of a box for an hour or two or four or whatever, because it's like, we almost need this external help.
- [05:56]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah. I mean, you know, the technology companies, and I think it's becoming more to light that they are using sort of predatory designs. Just simple design changes to get into our weaknesses is exactly the issue to. You know, it's called the attention economy. They want your eyeball, so they will do everything to keep you scrolling. And so I talked about my own. Are you talking about my own story? You know, listen, we are all human, so I want every listener to give yourself grace. My children are now grown, and they're okay. So it's not every moment that matters. But with my first book, I was on the road talking about it, raising three young kids. And my daughter, youngest daughter, said, trying to get everything done. I was often on my phone trying to figure out logistics. And she said, mom, you're telling everybody to talk to their kids, but you're on your phone. And I was like, oof. And so we bought this plastic lockbox where, when it was mommy and Amelie time, we would lock it in. And it was good, because you need a commitment device. We all have weaknesses. But I told the story of one time I was on call. I'm a doctor, My pager was going off, and I couldn't find the key to open up the lockbox, and so we had to actually crack it open. So sometimes these commitment devices will work. They won't work. But just being aware is so important.
- [07:21]
Ginny Urich
Yes. Being aware and that's why it makes sense that you, you know, you're constantly like, tomorrow, tomorrow I'm going to do this thing. But you say our brains are wired to value immediate rewards more heavily than future benefits. Even when intellectually we know that future benefits are greater, we tend to place too much weight on today. So it's explaining, explaining why it is so hard to figure this out. So you have ideas in there like the commitment device. Another topic that you brought up that I have not heard anybody talk about at all is, okay, when we're trying to figure out, like, what makes us human. This, this is a big question right now. What makes us human? How are we differentiated from these machines? And what you talk about is the maternal and paternal instincts, the intentionality that we have. So can you talk about. Okay, it's like, it's a couple things. First of all, there's these five S's, like you're syncing with your kids. It's actually like a biological process. You can sense like your, your hormones and your, if you're upset. It just really clearly shows, Dana, that there's so much difference between a parent or just even any type of relationship than there would ever be with a machine. Even if the machine is kind of has some sort of a form to it, like it looks like a robot or maybe even looks like a person. But there are these very specific things that no code can copy 100%.
- [08:42]
Dr. Dana Susskind
And that is we care. No robot is going to stay up at night, you know, worried about your child and how they're doing. And I actually view, I mean, I wrote this for parents because they are the most powerful force in this world to make sure that our next generation is going to be okay. And what you're talking about is this deep biological sort of embedded, what I call parental gps. I mean, really, you've got it. Parents. And there's actually a biologic aspect to it. So I call it the, you know, the five S's. You can sync with your child. Like there's actually brain to brain connection with your. You co regulate. That's how your child learns to regulate. AI can't do that. You have pattern recognition. AI can learn about the population of averages, but only you can pick up your own baby's cry. You've got your stress hormones connect with your child. You feel deeply AI doesn't. And you understand your child better than anybody else. And all of that parental GPS is, is going to be what protects your child so that they grow up to be fully human. We can't turn that over to AI.
- [09:56]
Ginny Urich
Yeah. So these, if you learn about these five S's, you call it multimodal interaction. So all at once, right, your brain is syncing with theirs, your bodies are sinking, you are noticing what's going on in their environment. You know, you're, you're paying attention. And so you weave together all of this amount of information about your own child and their temperate and the history that you have together. And this is the, a key difference, a top key difference of why we are always going to need the human as the one that is raising the children. Then there is this sort of fear about being left behind. So you talk in the book about intensive parenting and here's what you say. It's a rational response. And I think that's a huge thing to say, Dana, because all of a sudden you feel like, I got to get my kid in tutoring, we've got to do this and that and the other thing because we're kind of trying to keep up with these fast machines. It's rooted in love, also fear. And you say each generation is always under the, it's always a, a trick. Like you're trying to raise kids for a world that you don't know, that you're not a part of. So can you talk about this rise in intensive parenting and how even though it's, it seems rational, it's actually not the right way to go?
- [11:14]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah. So we parents, always, every generation of parents from, you know, thousands of years ago have always tried to raise their children to not only survive, but thrive into, in the world in which they're going to be born. This rise of intensive parenting, it was sort of called tiger parenting, which we were almost trying to optimize our children for, almost become machine like, no more do math quicker, do everything quicker. And all of a sudden AI can do all those things at a totally different scale. In some ways. My dream is that now this is a positive dream from AI is that it breaks the spell of intensive parenting because you're not going to be able to train your child to out compute a computer. How we need to raise our children now is to be more human than ever, because that is going to be the differentiator, to be able to critically think to different an output from an AI that's right versus wrong. To be able to connect deeply, to be able to collaborate, to have curiosity, adaptability. Because none of us, I mean, you hear all these people pontificating about what it's going to look like and what work is going to need to be for the age of AI? Nobody knows. I'm going to just tell you. Anybody who says they know don't know. They're guessing. So you want to build the strongest human who can connect and adapt to the world in which they're going to be living in. And you know what the beauty, beautiful part of this is, and I know you're going to get to it, is that it's the same connecting, you know, being a, you know, an involved parent that it's always been. It's actually doubling down on the, you know, the traditional parenting techniques.
- [13:09]
Ginny Urich
So, I mean, it really is the best news. I want to read how you wrote it in the book. So for a while, and I think we're probably still here, some of us believing that relentless optimization is the only path to survival. So parents are coming at this from, you know, love, right? They're like, I want to make sure that my child is prepared for tomorrow. But you wrote, what if getting ahead now means something entirely different? The advantage now belongs to the irreducibly human talents like empathy. These cannot be outsourced to an algorithm. They can't be automated. They are, in economic terms, the new scarcity. And therefore they represent the new value, the new opportunity. And here is the profound irony, the realization that struck me again and again. These skills are not built through optimization. They are built through presence. They are built through unstructured play. They are built through micro frictions, ruptures and repairs, the messy, imperfect, deeply human exchanges that we have with our kids that wire them for connection. I'm like, this is the best news ever. We're trying to prepare them for a world where being a human is the ultimate competitive advantage. And so the play and the presence, these are the things that we get to focus on. It is fantastic news. So this is what you talk about, like AI and technology actually in large spades, can reduce these skills that we might have diminish them. And so by protecting childhood, by protecting family time, you're helping with the skills of tomorrow. Like you talk about critical thinking and empathy and creativity there, you wrote they're built in real life. So this is great news for parents, isn't it?
- [14:48]
Dr. Dana Susskind
It is the best news ever. I mean, the thousand hours outside, that is the best way to build a child ready for an AI future. A thoroughly human childhood, raised childhood is just the best way.
- [15:02]
Ginny Urich
So, yes, I want to read one more. I have circled it.
- [15:07]
Dr. Dana Susskind
You're making my heart full, Ginny. Thank you.
- [15:09]
Ginny Urich
I like circled. Don't forget to read this, okay? The Fundamentals of Child Caregiver Interactions, which includes Serve and Return Exchanges. Okay, so I want to mention that your other books are phenomenal too. So there's a book called 30 Million Words and this is about the three T's tuning in, talking more, and taking conversational turns. So you're going to learn a lot. And then there's also Parent Nation, that's the other one.
- [15:32]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Right.
- [15:32]
Ginny Urich
So just phenomenal books that you have. So when we have these caregiver interactions, which is Serve and Return exchanges, those help build many of the course skills that technology threatens. The ability to connect with others, exhibit empathy, and call upon emotional intelligence are tools honed on the playroom floor as children share toys or struggle over the direction of an imaginative game. Adaptability and resilience are built on preschool mats and playground swings. I mean, this is, it's the old fashioned unstructured play. This is what kids need that the help give them the skills of the, of the future. And it's confusing, right, because there's all this technology and it's going so fast. But this is going to remind you to prioritize those things.
- [16:15]
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- [20:10]
Ginny Urich
Can you talk about the fact that imperfection is a part of this? So AI as it stands now, is. It's like a flattery machine, right? And so go ahead.
- [20:24]
Dr. Dana Susskind
No, no, no, no. I. I love this so much. I mean, I think in some ways the mirror AI looking into the mirror of AI, you know, it's frictionless, it's sycophantic. It's why, like, adults are flocking to it for companionship, because it is easy. It never pushes back. And the biggest sort of aha was friction is actually so important for all of us, especially young kids, right? The human interaction that with a parent, a good enough parent, when they sort of get distracted or look away and then have a rupture, a misstep, and then a repair. Those are the ways that children start learning about navigating the human world. They understand that somebody else has thoughts and feelings that they need to also navigate. You know, when you have a, you know, a frictionless sycophantic machine that you're the best, you're the best, you start thinking the world revolves around you. Now imagine we have, you know, a whole generation of children who are raised in that way. You know, it sounds really attractive having a humanoid robot read to your child and soothe them to bed and answer every question over and over again. But think about that child who comes out of there. They will think the world revolves around them. They won't know how to navigate, not being invited to the birthday party or taking risks to ask somebody out when they're older. Risk and inefficiency are part of being human. And you've got to learn it from day one.
- [22:00]
Ginny Urich
I love that this is a part of it. You have the HOPE framework. It's an acronym. So you say we must do everything we can to ensure our little ones remain human rays. This is a human centric approach to child rearing. That's the gold standard. It's never going to change. So you have this hope framework, okay? And you say human connection is irreplaceable. All right, that's the age. But then O is one of the four pillars, is basically your own imperfections. It's, gosh, what a great way to look. You know, because as a parent, you're like, oh, you know, I messed up this or I messed up that. This kid's upset about, whatever. And you're like, no, this actually is. Is an important ingredient, and it's missing. It's completely missing in human AI interactions. And you said, even if the AI was designed to perfectly simulate hesitations, repairs emotional variability, there would still be something fundamentally missing. They can't do the five S's.
- [22:55]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
And so you write, struggles help us grow.
- [22:57]
Ginny Urich
You actually go through this part where, you know, I think when we think of kids playing unstructured, you know, they're playing in the neighborhood like they're having a grand old time, and you're like, actually, no, they're not. They're playing, but then there's conflict, then they have to fix it, and then they're going back to playing, and it's this constant cycle. So can you talk about that part of it that there's just a lot of, like, I'm not your friend anymore.
- [23:19]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah, exactly. You know, you think that deep friendships are built by people being super alike and always getting along, but actually the research is just the opposite. You know, you've heard of Professor Gotsman, who is actually famous in the relationship world. He actually, his early work was with kids and how friendships happen. And exactly as you say that the deepest friendships are made by kids having conflict. The rupture, the repair, the coming back. Just that cycle is actually how children learn to be friends. And I hate to say it, but the studies show that that early ability, you know, predicts your ability to have friendships and relationships later on. And so if your first best friend is an AI toy that always tells you, you are the smartest thing I've ever seen, or, you know, what a great idea. You're not going to have kids who can have deep friendships and relationships. So.
- [24:18]
Ginny Urich
Oh, is that important? So you say that the adaptive, messy qualities of human back and forth create frustration, tolerance, goodness. Is that a skill to have?
- [24:28]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Right?
- [24:28]
Ginny Urich
The ability to read the room and push and pull. You wrote, friendships are more likely to develop when conflicts arose and kids were forced to resolve them. True friendship is not built on endless harmony, but on conflict and resolution. So you had this question there. Will developers be able to figure out the perfect level of friction? You're like, I mean, I think just logically there's no way. There's so much nuance there.
- [24:55]
Dr. Dana Susskind
That's exactly right. I mean if technology, you know, AI technology is getting, you know, obviously getting better and better. I know people, I know the technologists are going to try to do it, but that's where AI struggles, right? AI is going to be much better. If you give it a singular task to do, go into a, you know, a preschool classroom, it'll be like ah. I tell a story in the book. Do you remember the story where I talked about Liebig formula? The formula making. There's so much that we don't understand, understand that's under the hood. You see it and you think you know everything, but there's so much missing. And the story was this chemist, back before there was formula actually created, you know, the first formula and he put protein, carbohydrates, you know, everything that they knew of the day, they didn't know about vitamins back then.
- [25:42]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Right.
- [25:42]
Dr. Dana Susskind
So he made this formula, baby started eating it, they started getting super sick, some died. It was very tragic. And I tell that story only because you can imagine technologists building these tools that say, look, it does all of this and it even pushes back just the right amount. I push back to that because I'm a scientist. I can tell you there is so much we don't understand. Even though I've studied human development, we're doing deep AI research and I can tell you there are nuances that you would never even imagine. So don't try to replicate the gold standard and try to put it out on the market when we know that there is, there is so much we don't know. Look at, you know, the social media experiment is the perfect example.
- [26:26]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Right.
- [26:26]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Let's face should make us less lonely, right? You're connecting people across the world. We should feel more connected and less depressed. It did just the opposite. And I think it did just the opposite because we don't know everything. We don't know about human connections. So when we try to replicate it, it, it's sort of like the ultra processed foods, you know, it looks like real food but it's not good for us. So.
- [26:53]
Ginny Urich
Right, right. And this part about having the, you know, even in our parent child relationship that like oh, you didn't hear your kid, you know, they have to ask twice. All of those types of small things that happen on a day to day basis, those are important. And with an AI that's kind of perfect and perfect responses that that's not happening. You are Infinitely agreeable AI companions are the socio emotional equivalent of giving your child ice cream and cookies for every meal. Conversely, there is power in pushback when your little one is forced to, to respond to criticism or even how to learn to respond to harmful words from a friend. Struggle helps us grow. So this is a critical component of what's going on. All in all, you're like, you feel a little bit better about the imperfections in your home and you feel better about choosing more old fashioned route because this is helping kids with their human skills. I would love to talk about. So you, you say like there's a bunch of different forms of AI. There's six different forms of AI that you talk about in the book, which is important to know because that's different. You know, your computer is your computer, but the AI presents differently. It could be a companion, it could be something that helps you to make your meal plan. So, so there's a lot of different types and so it's good obviously to be aware of that. One of the types is like this information overload. This is a new thing. Childhood filtered through a dashboard. It's like, okay, you can have someone who is assessing how, how many, how is their breathing at night, all these things that they're important but also could drive you nuts because it could just, they could add so much stress. Yes. Because now all of a sudden you can have an onslaught of information about every single part of your child. Even to the, you know, the started with grades, I think, you know, where all of a sudden I can know every test score and it's as soon as it goes up and do they have all their assignments? Whereas before there was like these long periods of time where you had no idea how your kid was doing in school. So can you talk from, from the standpoint of someone who's working with parents, how to navigate this without getting burnt out 100%.
- [29:08]
Dr. Dana Susskind
So, so going back to AI is not one thing. Right.
- [29:13]
Ginny Urich
It's right.
- [29:13]
Dr. Dana Susskind
It can be, you know, depending on how it's created, it can be sort of a spectrum of things. And you know, I sort of make it akin to processed foods. You know, you've got whole wheat bread and canned beans, which are good processed foods. And then the other side, you've got ultra processed foods, Doritos and Twinkle. You know, occasionally it's okay, I do it every once in a while. But really understanding that spectrum is key. And I, I break it down into I think six different types. Right. You've got time savers. Those are the things that Are like, you know, when we use chat GBT for meal planning and scheduling assistant and how, how to make food out of the three things left in my refrigerator. Those are great things that's taking stuff, stuff off my plate. I love that. You know, observers and monitors, that's what you were talking about. Like, you know, you're seeing things like sleep trackers and developmental assessments and it gives you insights into your child's development. You know, those are good things with boundaries, as you say, you know, very easily you can go from like, oh, this gives me insights into, you know, how my child is developing to being obsessed with it and how you use it is really important. We can go deep into that. You know, there are things like smart tutors where, you know, you're using AI as like a reading coach that works through the children. There, there are actually technologies that are being developed with science that help children with developmental differences. You know, if there's science behind it, that's great. Then you get into the sort of sci fi things like people, you've heard some of these big AI technologists saying, oh, we're going to, you know, create a humanoid robot to take care of your children. Children or to be their companion. That's where I say, hold on, Nellie. So there's a whole landscape and really you've got to sort of. I share the detect framework later of like really figuring out what you want to let into your family life and into your child's world. Taking off your administrative load, your invisible labor. I'm all about the other stuff we've got to go through, you know, really intentionally.
- [31:25]
Ginny Urich
Okay, so let's talk, let's pick one of the categories. And I, I think that the.
- [31:29]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
It's.
- [31:30]
Ginny Urich
I think it maybe is pronounced Nan it or the company is a restful night. And obviously sleep is such a huge thing when you have young children. I mean, it is like pretty much all you're thinking about sometimes for years. So you can see on how one hand to have a child that's monitored, you know, for a long period of time through the night, how much, how are they breathing? You know, what's happening could be a really good thing. But then you're already, your plate is already so full as a parent that now you're having to sort of sift through. And I, and I know that they can probably use AI to just sift through the information. But then, you know, you're having to deal with. I just think it can make parenting feel so much more frantic. And I think you do a good job in the book about showing both sides of that. Like, one of the things that you brought up with this device called. Called louet.
- [32:18]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah.
- [32:19]
Ginny Urich
That the teacher would wear it, and then the teacher could. And then. So there's like an AI component that this is. Can observe the classroom. You can tell me if I'm saying it wrong, but I got the impression like, this can observe the classroom. And I used to be a classroom teacher in a high school, but I thought, you know, and I would use, like, popsicle sticks to make sure I called on everybody equally. You know how you do that. But this device could be like, well, you. You haven't talked to this child all day. Or can you see that that one is struggling over here? And it's just. You can see that it could be a helper. But then also you see that it takes away some of the human agency. Or maybe you would stop paying attention in general because you're like, well, this device can do it for me.
- [32:59]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
You.
- [32:59]
Ginny Urich
And then you talked about reading to the robots or learning a new language. You're like, well, that's great. The kid maybe feels more comfortable. But then also what happens when they have to speak in front of actual people?
- [33:09]
Dr. Dana Susskind
So I think what you're getting at is the unintended consequences of things, right? You can develop something, for one thing, and it's a slippery slope that it doesn't go into another thing. So let's go back to the nanit. Right? First of all, I want to really emphasize there is never judgment. Parenting is so hard, and every parent knows what's best for their themselves and their families. And, you know, you've got to remember your parent gps. You got to believe in it, and you've got to believe in, you know, how you're raising your children. So that is most important. But, you know, when I talked about the nanit for sleeping and Ginny, you. You can share with the audience how. How as a mother, I was not exactly the best with. I had three children in my bed at one time. It was not. It was a little bit of what
- [34:00]
Ginny Urich
would the nanny have said to you or myself?
- [34:02]
Dr. Dana Susskind
I would.
- [34:03]
Ginny Urich
You're doing it wrong.
- [34:05]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Exactly. Dana, you. Come on, get with it. But, you know, in the. In the nanny story, for helping parents who decide they need help with getting, you know, their child sleeping and sleep trained, it can be really powerful. Right. The lack of sleep, you know, for parents can be difficult. And so I talked to Meg from Arrest Night, who's a sleep coach who uses the nanit, you know, the data from the nanit and coaches the parents, which I think is really cool because there's a human in the loop. How do you use data to inform getting your child to sleep through the night?
- [34:41]
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- [35:45]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Price and she did. So I think that's really powerful. But then she shared some stories of parents becoming, you know, certain parents, not all parents, but moms, you know, getting really obsessed with the numbers. Like oh my gosh, my baby only took a X period of time nap, you know, and was really worried and she was like no, that's great. You got to just, you know, this is really good. And you know how data can be good for someone and for another person it can make them feel really anxious. And so it's as much about how it's used also understanding who you are. There are some people, I mean I can tell you, my husband, who's all very techy, not techie, but loves data, would love it and would help him, right? Other people would be like, no. So it's understanding not just the technology, but what works for whom is and why. You know, understanding you yourself as a parent and what's going to make you feel supported and keep the joy, otherwise get rid of it.
- [36:47]
Ginny Urich
That's so great how you worded that because it can be a slippery slope and I think there's going to be more and more things out there. That promise maybe a level of control that people didn't used to have. And you think you want it like you think you want to have the actual parent on GPS where you know where your kid is at at all times when they're driving. But then you become this anxious person who's constantly checking it. So the book does a fantastic. You have done a fantastic job in this book, helping the reader to ask the right questions. And there are so many questions that you can ask, and they're all in the book. It's this method called the detect method. But then there's additional questions as well. When you're evaluating technologies that can impact children, how do you evaluate those? I love that you brought up your husband. You said he's, he teaches economics and he says life is economics. Right. And that the choice architecture is part of this as well. So all of a sudden there's an infinite universe of possibilities. Like you could track your kids sleep, you could track their grades, you can track where they're at in the neighborhood, you can track where they're at in their car. Maybe you're going to be able to track all of their inner biology at some point, right? Like maybe constantly track what's going on or, or for yourself, you do one drop of blood every morning and you can constantly, you know, track all of your health markers. But just because you can, you know, should you. And, and I think the part of like this explosion of choice. Can you talk about that in terms of like, how that could really affect your day to day life? I think there was a statistic in here about how so many parents are stressed almost to the point of, oh, more than 40 of American parents report that most days they are so stressed they cannot even function. Yeah, yeah.
- [38:39]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Well, it, I think you bring up so many important points from choice paralysis, like when we are given too many choices, like when you walk into a candy store, you know, and you're given too many choices, it's hard to choose. Although I have no trouble choosing. But you're also getting to. Modern parenting has become so difficult. Right. We've lost the proverbial village. We feel like we've got to optimize everything. You know, if your listeners come away with one thing, we've got to stop looking at parenting like a performance that needs to be graded. Children don't need perfect parents. They need human parents. They need present parents, human parents with their human children so they can learn to be human and connected. So you bring up. There are going to be an infinite amount of possibilities of how to track and measure and optimize. But you can't optimize the things that your children are going to need to be fully human and to even if you want to be pragmatic to succeed in an AI world that is done just by presence. Presence. Your beautiful imperfect presence.
- [39:53]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Yeah.
- [39:53]
Ginny Urich
So you walk away with this message of like you could, you could do these different things. But most importantly is just this relationship that we have with our kids and the imperfections in that. And all these questions that you would ask yourself to determine, you know, is this, is this certain technology that I want to embrace or maybe not, or just parts of it. So just a considerable list of in depth questions to ask yourself about these new technologies. I thought it was interesting about the 30. Okay, you talked about the 30 million words. So this is your book. 30 million words. Really interesting. You know, you use cochlear implant surgeries. Then you talk about, you're like, I'm not anti technology, I'm doing all of these implant surgeries. But then combined with the parental and caregiver input, this is helping the kids thrive. It's a both and like you need both. And, and one of the things that you talked about was that the AI systems need 100,000 times more data than a child to learn a language. And I thought, I thought it was so interesting, Dana, because we all look at technology like it's so efficient and that is so inefficient. It needs a hundred thousand times more data than a child needs to learn a language. So you Compare that to 30 million more data words. These that, you know, we want to have all these conversations, talking, talking, talking to our kids serve in return. But that the machine needs 30 trillion words. I thought that was significant.
- [41:23]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah. And just think about all the data centers. It needs a whole lot of energy too. So. Yes. Yeah, I mean, well you, you know, your listeners probably know this, but like AI was built in the image of the human brain. Right. It is the neural networks. I am continually blown away by the human brain and how it's developed. I mean that is what I'm obsessed with. You mentioned the 30 million word study. I'm a cochlear implant surgeon. The whole reason that I'm an early childhood researcher now was, I'll share a little bit of the story is that early in my career I started noticing a troubling difference amongst my patients. I would do the same surgery, same technology, parents who love their kid in the same way, but their outcomes were so different. One of them would be thriving talking on par with their hearing peers, and the others would barely be able to communicate. And it was that experience that made me obsessed with two questions. Why was this? And what could I do to make it better for all children? And I got into this world of developmental neuroscience, which showed me just how miraculous it is the way a child's brain is developed. Literally, you know, like milk feeds the body. I mean, nature has given us everything we need. Milk feeds the body. Your nurturing interaction, your gaze with your baby you're holding, the baby literally wires up this hundred billion neurons just by that. And it drives me nutty that the world isn't as obsessed with our children and how they develop and how their brains are, because it's, you know, it was done in the image of AI, for goodness sakes, but we don't respect it and we don't support it in the way that we should.
- [43:13]
Ginny Urich
So, yeah, and the book really shows, I think there is some confusion, like, oh, AI is modeled after human growth and the brain. But you're like, you really get the sense from your book that actually there's a lot of more going on here that a computer system could never actually copy. They're not going to be able to copy sync and they're not going to be able to, you know, all the five S's and they're just sucking data a hundred thousand times more data than a, than a small child needs in order to get the same end result. They don't learn the way we do. And you also talk about how the pauses of our learning matter. You know, the time when the learning, learning solidifies. But AI companions never pause. You know, they're just go, go, go, go. So there's big differences there. And I like that you bring that up in the book. You also bring up the chatbot friends. This is obviously new territory for kids and adults. So people are going to say things like, well, kids have always had imaginary friends. Can you talk about what the danger is here? And this is across the spectrum, it's, it's all ages.
- [44:13]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Yeah. You know, children have always had imaginary friends. And in fact, you know, kids with imaginary friends have really strong. The. It's, it's a positive thing. But when you have an AI companion, that's not an imaginary friend. Right. It is feeding you content. It is giving you back the response. It is driving the interaction. When you have an imaginary friend, you have to do all the thinking, the back and forth, the, you know, putting in perspective. And in fact, my biggest fear with these AI companions is that you know, their sold as better than screen time. Building your kid's child's curiosity and creativity. And it will just do the opposite, sort of like social media, because the child doesn't have to work hard. There's no friction in thinking about, what am I going to do? How am I going to think about it? So you, you remember the story that I told about John and the Packers. So, you know, I tell a story of my husband who was, you know, this was in the 70s, you know, he had an older brother in Wisconsin who didn't always want to play with him. And so he had to sometimes play on his own. And he played football, and he played both sides of the football game. He would, you know, dress up as John Brockington and then somebody on the Bears, and he would play both sides of the game. And to be able to do that, to think, you know, you have to take perspective of the other team member. You have to think about the complexities. That is how you, you build curiosity, creativity, critical thinking. You don't get it built by an AI tool feeding you questions and talking about going to the moon. That is not how it's done. So.
- [45:55]
Ginny Urich
Right. So, you know, you talk about. There's a lot of, you know, there's danger here because kids bond deeply with stuffed animals and pets, you know, even just their hamster. So then if you've all of a sudden got something like a small robot or something that talks back and forth to them, then they can get pulled in. And even adults are doing it. Adults are flocking to AI in part because they eliminate the messy unpredictability of human relationships. But this is artificial intimacy, you wrote, and these are adults who probably already have neural scaffolding. Like you have to build the scaffolding for human connection. And so kids might miss some of that if this is. There's a lot of you talk about, like, displacement, a lot of time going toward these artificial relationships. And I liked even how you talked about, like, we're social creatures. So there was a part where you talked about social interactions. Light up the whole brain. You might not have that. Like you, you talked about kids watching, like the Baby Einstein videos or, you know, sometimes it's just only small parts of their brains that are lighting up because it's not hitting all that it's supposed to hit. Hit.
- [46:58]
Dr. Dana Susskind
No, exactly. Right. There's not, you know, it's not like there's a. There's a language part of the brain, a visual part of the brain, but the social brain is the entire brain. You Talked about artificial intimacy later on when you're having a relationship with an AI companion. But the ability to have relationships starts super early. Your attachment to your parent, to your mother, is building that foundation for later relationships. And when it's replaced with secure attachment to what I call artificial attachment, it changes what you expect from relationships and your ability to have relationships with humans. So you've got to build the skills from the get go, you know? Yeah. So that's, that's a critical part of it.
- [47:47]
Ginny Urich
Yeah. So there's warning here for the parent and for the child. Another warning was that all these labor saving devices, like, you know, everyone's kind of drawn in, like, oh, this is going to save me time.
- [47:57]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Save me time.
- [47:58]
Ginny Urich
But you say labor saving throughout history ended up with also in unintended consequences because, you know, you're expected to work more, your work is expected to be better, like, your house should be cleaner. And so there's a lot of thought here about thinking it through and considering you wrote some digital gifts. Entering your home could be positive forces, just like how a washing machine could be a positive force. All these technologies along the years. But you wrote, as long as you have the patience and foresight to study them first, which we don't really, because
- [48:35]
Dr. Dana Susskind
of all of our biases. Yeah.
- [48:37]
Ginny Urich
Going back to the beginning about how we overvalue today. So, I mean, that's the tricky part. Right. You would have to have the patient and force foresight to think ahead, you know, and so. But that is. Let's talk about that part because I do think that part is really important. So you have this detect method and people can read this in the book. The book is called Human Rays. It will be out by the time you listen to this podcast. You can pick up a copy, I think a great one to read over the summer, especially, you know, like heading into a new school year and you're starting to think about the technologies that might be starting to become embedded in the classroom. So you have the detect method. Can you just explain what that is? Like an overview. And then this is a tool that you can use to ask yourself some important questions about technology and how it's integrated into your family's life.
- [49:23]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Absolutely. So it. First of all, I want to tell everyone, in some ways, this is not a fair fight. Right. You were talking about, like, how do we protect ourselves, really? We need the big tech to be building tools with children's development in mind, human flirting in mind. So I want to say that first and foremost. But until we figure that out, in the same way we did with food. You know, the detect is sort of a shorthand way of looking at these tools. The most important question is, what is this thing designed to do? And do you really want to bring it into your home or into your school? You know, if it's designed to interact with your child, really think about for what end, if it's to become their companion, their best friend, that's sort of a hard no. You know, if it's helping with specific issues, you've got to look at the science and the detect. I won't. I assume that you don't want me to go through the entire thing, but it asks questions like, how is this developed? Were kids development? You know, as part of the process, is there proof that it works? What's happening to your child's data? Data privacy is incredibly important. Is it being protected, and what is it teaching your children? Not just teaching them, but from a value standpoint, it's supposed to become part of your muscle memory. So you sort of look at these tools as it comes into your world. But my hope is in the future that in the same way as you don't have to look at each food that comes into your home and say, ooh, is this going to be safe? Is this going to hurt my child? That you'll know that technology is safe and it's done with your child's development in mind, so.
- [51:00]
Ginny Urich
Well, that's interesting. You know, even from the COVID of the book, which looks like a little patch, you know, you'd put on a backpack pack, it says human rays. It's almost like a. Like a tag. And I've got these friends that have this podcast called Beyond Labels, and they talk about how, like, even the government labels are incomplete. Sometimes they're inaccurate, even, but they're certainly incomplete in terms of all the information that you're getting. Like where your blueberries grown hydroponically, or were they grown in soil? Like, those are pieces that are missing. So it's like, even if the government comes through,
- [51:35]
Dr. Dana Susskind
trust me, I'm not.
- [51:37]
Ginny Urich
You know, I mean, there probably are still going to be some holes, and that's a big. Even if. And so this book really empowers the parent, the educator, the administrator to know what to ask, to think critically about all of these technologies. Because you wrote, you know, they could be a positive force, but you don't know until you have to ask the questions. Neil Postman said, said to ask is to break the spell. He was a futurist. And so he said, you know, I Can't remember the first part of the quote. But. But the end of. End of it was that. And I was like, well, is that too simple? But I. I do think that if you're asking, then you're at least critically thinking about what am I bringing into my home? You know, because you talk about what about the lonely, you know, the person who's lonely at the nursing home. There's. There's going to be all sorts of ways that these things are sold, and in a lot of ways they'll probably be justified. But then if it there, like you said, there could be a slippery slope for our children. And so we want to make sure that they are human raised. Human raised in an age of AI it is a phenomenal book. You bring up so many incredible topics to consider. This would be a good one to read with friends as you start to talk about this, like in your neighborhood. And at the end of it, I just really felt more qualified as a parent. I felt like my role is so important. I think sometimes we can get nervous like this technology is going to run us out of the room, but the fact that you know that your kid will only eat macaroni and cheese if there's ketchup is like a really important part of parenting. And so I, I loved that. I think I. I ended the book feeling more confident in my role as a parent, more hopeful, and then with a lot of tools under my belt. So huge congrats to you. This is your third book people can check out. 30 million words parent Nation. And this brand new one is called Human Raised. Nurturing, Connection, Curiosity and lifelong Learning in the age of AI Dina. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.
- [53:38]
Dr. Dana Susskind
I remember going with my parents to. So believe it or not, I lived in Thailand land growing up for a period of time and we went to Phuket, which has these beaches and they have these tiny little crabs. Don't ask me why. And I just remember being with my parents, seeing the little baby crabs everywhere and just being together.
- [54:00]
Ginny Urich
So just the simple things. I don't even know.
- [54:06]
Dr. Dana Susskind
I don't even know where you got that memory out of my brain. But literally when, when you said that, I saw myself on the beach.
- [54:13]
Ginny Urich
Yeah. The simple things that make such a difference. This has been a huge honor. Huge congrats on this critically important book.
- [54:20]
Dr. Dana Susskind
You are amazing. I mean, I have to tell you, this has been not only so much fun, but you really, you've read it so deeply. I know, we're. I don't know if we're still being recorded, but, like, I am so thankful. Thank you. You.
- [54:36]
Sponsor/Ad Reader
Thank you.
- [54:37]
Dr. Dana Susskind
Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure.