Trump will not be president forever, nor will Republican neo-fascists dominate the government forever.
It only takes 20 years for an entire lost generation to be created. They’ve already been pushing that way for ~40. Give them 5-10 more and it’s game over for a century. If that short.
I’m going to pushback against that thesis. I don’t think easier and safer has much correlation with being pro-social and possibly a negative one at some points of a curve.
We cooperate to achieve goals, in the face of challenges and threats. As individuals and as societies we thrive in the face of surmountable challenges. Definitely if the challenges overwhelm us, if we experience no wins, we are miserable. But we are also miserable as individuals and as people, as societies, cultures, when things are too easy, too safe.
AI impact on kids? Not sure? Purpose built AIs can specifically provide individualized curriculum very specifically automatically adjusted to keep it that challenging but not overwhelming level. As the article suggests. That would not be a generalized LLM.
Yes kids need experience with real other kids who are often more exasperating than bots are. The fear, already being seen with technology already around, is that kids may retreat from these real world frustrations to virtual and fictive relationships. Romance with real people? Too stressful. Partnering, having children? Less frequent. The bot provides enough social connection. It isn’t real but good enough and less scary.
The learning may be well supplemented by AI tools but school may become more the place to experience the challenges of interfacing with real people.
This is an interesting observation. I’m pondering what exactly “more pro-social” means. I see the young parents in my neighborhood hauling their kids around to more activities than we did. And the parents seem to get together in groups for large parties. But I am not certain about exactly that that form of “socializing” means for both the parents and the kids.
I also acknowledge that interacting with people on-line is one form of socialization.
With no real support, my suspicion is that folk tend to be social within their very narrow group, with less idea of how other groups exist. I’m not sure I’ve seen a significant reversal of Putnam’s Bowling Alone trend.
My concern - which I’m sure I’ll phrase poorly - is that as so many things get easier, people lose track of what is required to “live a good life”, and “be “a good member of a community.” No, I’m not saying struggle makes you stronger. Instead, I’m trying to suggest having some awareness of what it takes to maintain your lifestyle - beyond the keying of an electronic payment. If you aren’t mowing your lawn, shoveling your snow, or walking around your neighborhood, you have less chance of interacting with your neighbors - or even perceiving how others in your neighborhood are doing. Driving in a car gives far less intimacy.
If you hire someone to mow your lawn, shovel your snow, clean your house, deliver your groceries, babysit and tutor your kids - what ARE your spending your time on? What sort of skewed perspective do you have of what your lifestyle costs?
What are people doing with their free time? I’m not sure my hanging out on-line is necessarily of less “value” than my lifelong enjoyment of reading. But I think folk of all ages often (generally?) overestimate the value of the use they are making of their free time. Of course I’m saying this to a bunch of people ehanging out in a message board…. 
Finally, I’m currently reading Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification, so at the moment, I’m not sanguine about the wonders tech provides. 
Prosocial behavior[1] is a social behavior that “benefit[s] other people or society as a whole”,[2] “such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering”.
People with hard lives become more cruel, people with easier lives become more benevolent.
As one example, Cluster B personality disorders can make people extremely destructive to those around them. but they all fundamentally are caused by severe childhood trauma. As I said the rates of child abuse have declined quite a bit, which means eventually we will hopefully see fewer adults with dark triad and cluster B traits. Thats just one example.
Donald Trump had a sociopath for a father and a sick mother. If both his parents had been physically and mentally healthy, then Donald Trump wouldn’t have malignant narcissism and he wouldn’t inflict so much misery on the world. He would be fairly mentally healthy had his parents been physically and mentally healthy.
The mentally/physically healthier people are, the more safe/secure they feel and the more loved they feel, generally the better they act towards others. This becomes a positive feedback loop.
That’s an awfully simplistic broad brushstroke.
Even with your chosen example it doesn’t hold. Trump’s childhood was lacking for models of empathy and nurturing behaviors but it was very easy. He didn’t have to work for anything. He likely got what he got no matter what effort he put forth.
Meanwhile many poor communities are full of people loving each other and working together for the greater good.
Prosocial behaviors are increased by secure attachments, having empathy to model, and having social bonds.
The fear remains that dealing with human like ai agents will displace human to human interactions to some degree and impede real (more messy and frustrating) human to human attachments, where providing for the other is as integral as catering to your wants. That would not foster prosocial behaviors no matter how easy life may be.
Gonna take me a while to get my head around this. I’m not entirely sure that having increased free time makes folks more altruistic. Of course, I’ve never tried to study it.
I should have said, “…having increased free time, and spending that free time with technology…”
I think in a broad sense @Wesley_Clark is generally correct, but childhood upbringing and one’s station in life in adulthood are different factors that operate in different ways. An abusive childhood is a very potent factor in shaping personality in later adulthood and has a strong correlation with criminality. An “easy life” in childhood is a very different thing from comfortable adulthood, and is in fact a negative in itself because the child never learns responsibility. Trump became the monster that he is because he was afflicted by both factors, and on top of all that is spectacularly stupid, thus winning the trifecta of “everything that could go wrong”.
Please explain in what way the claim that “easier and safer” (as a result of ai) will result in children becoming more prosocial is correct in any way in your mind?
Do these devices protect children from abusive or neglectful parents? Do they provide the connection that abusive and neglectful parents do not? Will they help kids connect more with other real people including peers? Or, the risk, will they give socially anxious kids a safer and easier option than interfacing with peers and other real people, a bot that has no needs and is only there to give you what you want, risk free, easy, safe?
I also dispute as easy and as safe as possible is good for adults. There are sweet spots for happiness and I suspect for encouraging prosocial actions.
Happiness and prosocial behaviors are associated btw but I believe the arrow of causation goes from being prosocial to happiness more than the other way around.
But we are discussing the impact of ai on kids. The risk of ever less real person to person social interaction and retreat into the easy risk free interaction with ai characters ever eager to please and who demand nothing in return is real.
My understanding is that all children need and ideally get most of: unconditional love, respect, to be taken seriously, to be able to safely articulate their genuine feelings, parents that are available, and minimal neglectful behaviours. Many children do not have these things and can spend the rest of their lives chasing what was missing during their earlier years when these things were needed most.
AI can probably provide ersatz versions of respect, seriousness, and can validate feelings. At a minimum the effect is unknown, and given the effects of smartphones and digital immersement one wonders how much the children of AI developers are allowed to use the stuff.
One hand - most kids have enough intrinsic strengths to grow up fine with any reasonable good faith effort on the part of their caregivers, despite the mistakes we all make.
The other hand, all of that list and lots more. Limit setting. Modeling dealing with difficult interactions and feelings. As Bruno Bettelheim once said: “love is not enough” … and ersatz love? (Not endorsing Bettelheim btw - we have come a long way since his Orthogenic School days.)
And children actually need some conflict.
I really have nothing idea how the technology will get used let alone what the impact will be. Will the net result be easier and safer? I dunno. I doubt it. Which is good. I don’t think maximizing easy and safe is the best thing for kids.
If something has to last forever to matter, then nothing matters because nothing lasts forever.
Dictatorships can last for decades, easily. And if AI works as advertised then they’ll be able to make an essentially invincible dictatorship that will last if not forever, until some form of total social collapse happens.
Yeah. Regardless of what happens at the level of the government I expect we’ll see lots of use of AI to propagandize children (from the Right) and to suck them into spending money self-destructively (from the corporations). I see very little chance it will be used constructively, even assuming it can be.
The best evidence we have of how ethical corporations will be is to look at how ethical corporations are now. The world is currently run by ruthless greedy sociopaths who will sacrifice children’s well-being on the alter of their investors. AI businesses have trundled ahead despite widespread potential damages to users’ cognitive abilities, civil liberties, the environment, you name it. There is no reason to believe this will change unless they are explicitly forced to change. Outlook doesn’t look good.
I guess somebody isn’t buying a Happy Talking Fun Ball for Christmas for the grandkids…
If I live long enough to have grandkids it might improve my disposition. 
At least some young(er) people are resisting
This is the thing that scares me. An important part of children’s literature is giving kids the opportunity to experience other kinds of life. Sure, there are little kid books which can be customized for a specific kid, but they seem to be niche. Kids living in a world where everything is about them are going to grow up solipistic and selfish.
As for AIs telling a kid who likes them and who doesn’t, how about kids who express like differently from the norm the AI is trained on. How are they going to do when all the other kids are told the poor kid doesn’t like them?
It’s bad enough that people today have AI girlfriends and boyfriends rather than going out there and meeting real people. What happens if kids don’t want playdates because their AI is a lot more fun and easier than learning to deal with other people.
I know a few very wealthy people. It might be a stretch to say that all of their children are very well adjusted.
Disney, as usual, is selling our childhood, this time to AI.
https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora
Of course one can say also that it is OpenAI who is in the process of being sold to Disney!