'Personal parenting assistant': Father of five encourages parents to use AI in raising children
Helping kids do their homework, breaking down complex topics for toddlers and telling captivating bedtime stories are daily duties for parents, but one father said using an AI assistant has helped him save time and better understand his children.
"AI is an extraordinarily powerful new set of capabilities that parents can leverage and should leverage," said Dmitry Shapiro, founder of YouAI, an artificial intelligence task agent tool. "What we have access to now in the form of these AIs is a thing that we can converse with, that has all of the knowledge that has ever been written down about parenting, that it's digested and learned, and can be our personal co-pilot."
Artificial intelligence in recent months has become a powerful tool across industries, helping doctors identify diseases earlier and assisting fast-food restaurants sell more burgers. It's also been controversial in some spheres like education, with some seeing it as harmful, while others view it as a powerful tool for students and teachers. New York Public Schools, for example, restricted using ChatGPT in the classroom earlier this year, but later reversed that decision.
WHY MOM AND DAD SHOULD LEVERAGE AI AS A PARENTING TOOL:
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Shapiro's YouAI has multiple custom chatbots designed for different parenting tasks such as generating custom bedtime stories, helping kids with homework and explaining complicated subjects to them.
"You can think of it as like a translator where you can say things to it in adult language and it can sort of then paraphrase it so that a 5-year-old or a 9-year-old or whatever can understand," Shapiro, a father of five, told Fox News.
Parents should use AI as a "personal parenting assistant that we can have at all times with us for all situations and be able to, in real-time, get the information we need to be able to help our children, engage with them, calm down their flare-ups or sort of anything else," he added.
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Shapiro said chatbots using artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, are powerful parenting tools that distills years of parenting knowledge. (Frank Rumpenhorst/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The founder also designed an AI version of Mr. Rogers that his children can chat with to calm them down and diffuse tantrums.
But there's opposition to children accessing AI too early or without supervision.
Snapchat recently introduced a chatbot feature called My AI to its over 775 million users, many of which are children and teens. Doctors have warned that Snapchat users seeking mental health support from My AI could receive fabricated information.
On Feb. 27, Snapchat launched "My AI," a chatbot running on OpenAI technology. But some critics worry that allowing children to access artificial intellgence, like Shapiro's YouAI, too early or without supervision could be dangerous. (Snapchat)
In May, Sen. Rick Scott introduced the Artificial Intelligence Shield for Kids (ASK) Act, which would forbid companies from offering AI to children without parental consent. "I think we need to have parents involved if their child’s going to see anything with AI technology," the Florida Republican told Fox News at the time.
The bill was recommended to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for further review.
Still, Shapiro is adamant about AI's benefits for children.
AI is the most "profoundly transformative" parenting tool since "perhaps the invention of print," Shapiro told Fox News.
To watch the full interview with Shapiro, click here.
Jon Michael Raasch is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.
