Exhausted Parents Are Turning to A.I. Apps Despite the Risks
Even as alarm grows over the risks, families are embracing bots and agents to tackle the spiraling administrative tasks of modern child rearing.
Even as alarm grows over the risks, families are embracing bots and agents to tackle the spiraling administrative tasks of modern child rearing.
One recent evening, Lisa Green’s 5-year-old son, Fitz, came home from school bummed. He couldn’t check out a book from the school library because he hadn’t yet returned his last book.
His mother, a 34-year-old medical resident in pediatrics, said the family, based in Kansas City, Kan., hadn’t realized that books were due on different days each week in accordance with a rotating printed schedule that Fitz had brought home from kindergarten.
As a solution, she located the schedule, took a picture and uploaded it to an artificial intelligence agent named Ollie. Now, Green gets a text message reminding her to pack Fitz’s library book before it is due.
“I was at the point where all the balls I’m starting to drop feel like the glass ones,” Green said, “and that was kind of a breaking point for me.”
