Children Are Befriending AI

Children are reaching out to ChatGPT to ask emotional advice and look for friendship.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I heard podcasts here more mix one or two point
three podcasts, playlists and listen live on the free iHeart app.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
But right now we're going inside the mind of children
between nine and seventeen and what they're doing. And I
don't know if this is sad or a good thing.
Maybe it's helpful. But they are using chat GBT and
AI kind of chatbots to not only ask them questions
about schoolwork and things like that, but they're using it

(00:39):
for emotional advice and companionship. Yeah, because their I guess
essentially a little bit lonely.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
A recent study found that of like a thousand young
people at Australia, like young ones fifteen to twenty four,
eighty four percent of them have used AI stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
But then thirty five percent.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Of those people have used them just have a chat
with a chatbot, not to like say, give me a
workout routine, No, just to go and have a chat
and talk to.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Loneliness is a dangerous thing, right, So I do get it.
If you're only it's awful for your mental health. And
I've said this before, but it's apparently like smoking seventeen cigarettes.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
A day, that's how bad it is for your health.
To be lonely.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So I get that you need connections somehow, But the
scary thing for kids is there's inadequate safeguards with chatbots
at the moment, in that they're not really built for
children to talk. Have you know children conversations?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Child level yeah, child level of maturity yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
So and as I was reading this, I was like, oh,
it's nice. I guess they're interacting with something if they
get something back from it. Nice, But like, why don't
children these days do what we did and have little
imaginary friends.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I didn't have an imaginary friend? You hadn't imaginary friends?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I dropped Dead Fred. It was one of the greatest
movies of all time. I would put that in my
top five movies of all time. And any kid that
grew up in the nineties that watched Drop Dead Fred.
That was obviously about a kid who had an imaginary
friend who was so great.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Everyone wanted one. So I wanted one. But I don't
think I ever had.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Couldn't quite.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, I really like I would talk to people. Do
you think now that don't exist that I still do?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Do you think now it is a stranger thing to
say I talked to an imagining person that doesn't exist
in my mind, or I talked to an AI chat robot.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I almost think like, maybe we're losing creativity so we
can't think of someone in our head to talk to,
and now we just talked to a bot.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
I don't know. Who did you used to talk to someone?
What did you do as a kid?

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I had teddy bears. I had a heap of teddy bears.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
All their names.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, I obviously I had a big ted everyone had
a big tedd But my dad got involved with the
naming of a few of the teddy bears at one point.
And dad loves, you know, stock market and finance, like
he loves watching Alan Cohler on ABC.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Was your teddy bear called Alan?

Speaker 3 (02:56):
I had a teddy bear called dow Jones.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
He did not, Yeah, dow Jones index.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I did have a teddy bear called the dow Jones.
I had a teddy bear called Nasdak.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
He did not.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, he just had some I didn't understand what
they were, like, why they were called that.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
Oh god, that is so funny.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
And then as I you know, you put the park
the teddy Bears. And then ten years later you're like, Okay,
now I know what the Nasdaq is.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
A second, I used to have a teddy Bear named
Dow Jones.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Was it Dow like Dow dot Jones.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
He never had a birth certificate?

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Oh okay, so it was a Dow Jones like one word.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
There's a space, yeah Jones. Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So kids these days, maybe they should be talking to
their little Dow Jones index to a Teddy Bears yeah,
and coming up.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
With you can have little all Lords.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, it's so funny.

Speaker 5 (03:48):
Would you rather talk to a teddy bear named All
Lords or chat GBT a teddy Bear? I think kids
need to be doing that more. That's sad that they're
turning to chat GBT. I spoke to my chat GBT
this morning and.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Said, how are you, and it's it's it's not my friend,
like you know when you know how like you know,
you know your people and they'll be like a bit silly,
but it's very serious my chat GPT. So if it's
an AI general, there's no emotional intelligence, like it didn't
tell me that it has its period or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
That's how I connect with people