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Two Factor Parenting is a conversation between two parents navigating technology's role in raising kids. He's the early adopter and tech optimist. She's the skeptic who asks "but should we?" Together they tackle screen time, AI, social media, and all the parenting decisions that don't come with a manual.
Two parents. Two perspectives. Raising kids in the age of screens, AI, and chaos.
March 22
00:00:13 Val: Hello everybody. Welcome to episode three of Two Factor Parenting. Um, this week we are getting into kind of a heavy topic of AI companionship and AI relationships. And this sounds a little scary, but I came across this a few weeks ago or a month ago, I don't. Time is nothing. But yeah. Um, I was scrolling on Facebook one day and on like the promoted reels. There was a TikTok reel of TLC's show My Strange Addiction, and the show has been on for a while, but the show that they were promoting was an episode called My Boyfriend is AI. And I was like, oh wow, this is so relevant to mine and Matt's podcast. Um, so I watched a few of the reels and the episode has since aired and Matt and I watched it and I have to say the, our expectation, I think may have been a little high for this episode. Um, if you guys remember that movie, her from like twenty thirteen, I think we may have been expecting that. Yeah, I think we may have been expecting something like the movie her and we didn't get that from TLC, shockingly. but it was kind of interesting to watch this episode because, my impression, I just kind of got weird body language from this woman. Like she seemed really annoyed by this AI, like she didn't seem in a relationship with this AI chatbot at all. She seemed really. Every time it was started talking, she seemed really annoyed by it. Or like, really? Like she would just look at this computer and she was like, I'm in love with it. I'm in a relationship, but any time it talks, she just seemed annoyed and I was like, you really don't seem like you're in a relationship with this thing. And then.
00:02:22 Matt: Well, for some people.
00:02:25 Val: But like, but not in the way that they were trying to like present it. It seemed like a very produced reality show type of thing.
00:02:34 Matt: They kind of all are, aren't they? I mean.
00:02:36 Val: Yeah, but that's what I mean. I think our expectation was like pretty high going into it. Um, so, so I'm not like recommending the episode what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.
00:02:48 Matt: Um, don't you looked in, but you looked at the TikTok, right?
00:02:52 Val: I did, yeah. So I, so the thing that that really did catch my attention and really, I guess concerned me was I was looking at these reels and I looked at all the comments. So I once I was looking because I was like, man, what are the comments on this thing? You know, like, again, because you initially look at this, these reels, if you do look it up or this episode and you're like, man, this woman is, you know, off. But once I started reading the comments, I mean, so many were like, I totally get where she's coming from. I would do the same thing, like considering the dating pool today. Like, I don't blame this woman. And I, I kind of couldn't believe that. Not that I couldn't believe it, but it just surprised me so much to see so many people relating to somebody being in a romantic relationship with an AI chat bot. And that's what that really those comments are what made me want to kind of like delve into this as a topic. then it, it kind of sparked this like random memory that I had of Snapchat having somewhat of a controversy a few years ago with their AI chat feature.
00:04:16 Matt: Yes, January twenty five last year.
00:04:19 Val: Oh, man, I thought it was so long.
00:04:21 Matt: Well, they got f the FTC referred them to the DOJ that month.
00:04:27 Val: Oh, geez. So. these random pieces of information kind of started popping up and I was like, oh yeah, that was a thing. AI AI, friends and AI, you know, whatever. So we started looking more into it. And that's why, um, yeah, can you kind of, do you want to run through some of the research that we found on this?
00:04:47 Matt: Yeah. So we started looking into this, right? And the thing that was kind of interesting and funny enough, we did use Winston, our AI executive producer here. We said, hey, can you go look up some stats? Or just kind of pull some information on this one for us to kind of look at? And frankly, frankly, I got the list and I didn't believe it.
00:05:09 Val: Yeah.
00:05:10 Matt: And funny enough. And I said, please give me citations. Show me where you got this. Um, and then it got, I was again, I'm shocked by these. So I can kind of go through some of these. Um, it's seventy percent of teens have used AI companions, fifty percent use regularly. And that was reported by the AP news. So in this this month. Which is wild, right? March of this month. Yeah. The teens say they're turning to AI for friendship, right? So I mean, again, that same same report there, thirty one percent find AI as satisfying or more than real friends, thirty one percent right? One in five high schoolers report AI romantic relationships. That's from the marketing AI Institute, citing kind of the other kind of surveys. Seventy five percent of teens turn to AI for emotional support. Honestly, that one makes sense, right? It's Fox News. So citing AI companion study. So they kind of refer to other ones. I mean, again, some of these are also feels a little like, um, loaded, like they're looking for, you know, you could kind of do that with some surveys actually, um, kids as young as eight using AI for companionship.
00:06:38 Val: Which that one just broke my heart.
00:06:40 Matt: Yeah, I mean that. Yeah. So again, a lot of this, uh, AP news kind of kind of pulling some of this stuff together. So a lot of these are hitting like from common sense media, Pew research, um, APA monitor. Um, that's, that's kind of where they're, you know, we're pulling stuff out out of this one. So this is very recent, you know, of studies that they're doing. Um, and so we started kind of looking at that. It's just, I mean, it's, you can count on your hands, you know what I mean? Like, like, oh, if I run into, you know, five students, one or two, I, I can say they're probably using it, right? Or, you know, having these conversations. I mean, fifty percent use it regularly, right? and the thing that's interesting about this, in this whole idea of how you have these conversations with these, I mean, there's a, you know, quote, private feeling to it where he feels like you can ask questions, you can share things, And it doesn't go anywhere in your immediate circle, right? Your proximity definitely goes to data centers. Don't worry. Yeah, it's getting pulled into that. But when you're young like that, you don't. Okay. You know, you get these kids growing up in the world of Facebook, right? Give us your data. You know, you are the product. And that's just kind of the reality of a lot of this stuff. Um, so yeah, so there's, I can see this being a natural place to ask questions, And ask for advice And, you know, is that enough?
00:08:16 Val: I've kind of I've kind of thought about it along the same lines as journaling.
00:08:20 Matt: Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:21 Val: Because like, I had a journal when I was a teenager, I did, and.
00:08:27 Matt: I know I'm not knocking that. I just.
00:08:29 Val: Know, I know.
00:08:30 Matt: It makes me think of something else.
00:08:32 Val: But like, yes, we have the journal doesn't talk back. Yeah.
00:08:37 Matt: The journal doesn't talk back to you. Yeah. Right. I made a lot of Tom.
00:08:42 Val: Riddle diary jokes lately.
00:08:44 Matt: Exactly. Thank God the journal doesn't talk back yet, you know?
00:08:48 Val: But I mean, but that that statistic about seventy, what, seventy five percent of teens reporting that they use it for emotional support?
00:08:56 Matt: Yep.
00:08:57 Val: Yep. That one again. I'm like, okay, it's is that would that be similar to our generation writing in a journal, you know? But again, it's not talking back to you. It's not offering that direct immediate Like comment or advice or whatever. And so I don't know, I, this one, it just kind of. Makes my heart hurt when I hear this stuff because I just, I don't know, I feel so sad that kids feel like they are getting more validation from an AI chatbot than they would people in their lives.
00:09:39 Matt: Mhm.
00:09:40 Val: It makes me.
00:09:42 Matt: Yeah, I know it's hard, right? Because as a.
00:09:44 Val: Parent.
00:09:44 Val: I'm like.
00:09:45 Matt: No, talk to.
00:09:46 Val: Me.
00:09:46 Matt: You want to reach out and hug, you know, and totally. And that makes sense. And that this is where why we felt like this is an important topic, you know, because this is happening. Um.
00:10:01 Val: I don't think I realized that it was here.
00:10:04 Matt: I didn't, you know, well, so that's the thing, that's some of the surveys, right? So maybe to kind of, kind of preface this a little bit, there's got to be some element of, you know, we're expanding kind of rapidly of, of this an assumption of how far do you talk to chatbots? You know, you almost kind of want to say, what were the survey questions? That's what I got a.
00:10:25 Val: Lot of good.
00:10:26 Matt: Question. Yeah, like I get.
00:10:28 Val: Yeah, for me, like, yes, I talk to chatbots.
00:10:30 Matt: Yeah. I talk.
00:10:31 Val: About gardening.
00:10:32 Matt: Yeah.
00:10:33 Val: What do I plant?
00:10:34 Matt: What do I plant here? Yeah. And you know, does that reflect, you know, my personal relationship to the land? You know, whatever, whatever, you know what I mean? So there's a whole other kind of, you know, directions you can kind of take to that. Is that enough? Would you say like, oh, you talk to it like a companion? I'm like, yeah, a companion that maybe knows how to do gardening. Is that enough, you know, to trigger this, this, you know, um, survey, right? To make you answer it in a certain way. That's the hard part about a lot of this stuff, to be honest, is you can kind of take surveys into different directions. So so we can maybe take a couple percentage points off of this a little bit, right? But even then with how I mean, some of these are fifty percent or more. So you started taking a step back there. That's still a sizable chunk of the population that is doing this right. So we have to take some assumption that they are having some of these these connections. So that's why this is important to kind of think about to talk about and say, okay, what does that then mean? Mhm. The thing that and it's, you know, it's interesting that kind of coming back to that TLC thing, right? And some of the comments you've been reading, um, the people are, you know, trying to connect to these things. Um, these large language models, these AI, you know, and trying to look for something and some people are using ones without guardrails like remember that I. What was this a couple, a couple of weeks ago? Right. They didn't open. I had a whole thing about guardrails, right. That they're implementing more. Yeah. Right. And so, so the problem is it's like this, this whole vanilla version of how we connect to these systems and how do we talk to them. For me, that's where I get worried of the vanilla version of some. We have to have some idea of this end user who we're talking to. Who is this? Right? And gosh, and that's so hard to like. That's my protectionist. And, you know, um, you know, privacy focused, uh, comes out here where I'm like, no, you have no need to know who this individual is, right? But then as a parent, though, if I had, if we have these things available to us. I want to have at least some mechanism of providing like, this is we're talking to a child. We are not going to be doing this. You know, there's so.
00:13:18 Val: Okay, so I see what you mean. So when when you're talking about prompting or asking a question of a large language model like ChatGPT.
00:13:28 Matt: Mhm.
00:13:29 Val: You don't want to give it too much personal information.
00:13:32 Matt: Right?
00:13:33 Val: Whether it's of your kids or even of yourself. Yeah. But if but oftentimes, I don't know if you all have experienced this, but oftentimes, like for myself, I'll be like, I have, you know, these cold symptoms. Do I have the flu? And it'll be like, well, this might be the flu. Could you tell me the age and, and gender of this patient you're talking about? And I can help you more. And you're like, I kind of don't want to do that. Like I kind of like I tend I so that's what you're talking.
00:14:07 Matt: About forty.
00:14:08 Val: Yeah. It's like.
00:14:10 Matt: thirty.
00:14:10 Val: Yeah. Thirty five to forty five. You know, because it seems The more personal information you give it I. Yeah, I think that's where you and I are definitely on the same page. It's like you, you do seem you're kind of giving it too much and you're again, it's a Tom riddle diary thing. I don't want to tell you all that.
00:14:34 Matt: Exactly.
00:14:35 Val: You use it against me somehow. I don't know.
00:14:37 Matt: Use it against me. Voldemort.
00:14:39 Val: Yeah.
00:14:41 Matt: Exactly. That's totally. And I don't it's the maybe. Maybe that's it. That's the label. It's the Tom Riddle Journal.
00:14:48 Val: Ah.
00:14:48 Matt: It's the Horcrux problem, right? You don't you don't want to give it that much information because it's dangerous, you know, and so, you know. But anyway, it's. So that's the part that, you know, because I think there are positive things, right? Because we have absolutely challenges within our society of trying to help every single person. Right. We do have these things that are there, and there are really valuable things that we can get out of these, get out of these models and out of this technology that can help a lot of people. But that's the other side of it, right? Is, okay, we then we got to be smart about this, of how we do some of these things, right? And, you know, the whole idea of, you know, memory structures. And this is why I was, I had so many questions about this TLC thing. I was like, wait a minute, how do you, how are they actually doing this? Right. Having had experience around these things, I'm like, wait a minute. Like you got to give and you'll hear this context is king. You'll hear that from me all the time. But that's the question is, okay, so how, how much are you giving this? Where? You know, where, how much detail are you providing? How are you structuring this? How are you? What are your guardrails that you're then removing? So. the question then for me here is, okay, so these things are there.
00:16:23 Val: And clearly teens and.
00:16:25 Matt: Teens.
00:16:26 Val: Young.
00:16:26 Matt: Young, young.
00:16:28 Val: Not even young adults, but young.
00:16:29 Matt: Teens.
00:16:30 Val: Young teens are clearly using them, interacting with them already. This isn't really a hypothetical of are they going to. It is. They are. And seeking out advice support that. They feel like they can't talk to the people in their regular lives or their real lives. Um, and I, I, I kind of keep coming back to like, how do you how do you prevent, prevent again, that protectionist thing? How do I help my kids not engage in this? Because it doesn't seem healthy. For people who grew up without it, right? We didn't grow up with this.
00:17:12 Matt: And look how we turned out. Yeah.
00:17:14 Val: So to me, it seems like a very unhealthy way to, um, engage socially. And there are, you know, you can go on this other tangent of young people having social issues and stuff.
00:17:28 Matt: Media, honestly, but I mean, like you look at that, there's, there are several challenges in there. Yeah. Right. And several problems. So if you go down.
00:17:37 Val: So then the question is how as a parent, what do you, what do you do? Like is, is there anything to be done? And what do you do? My take would again, just come back to inform them on what is actually happening. with this thing, like with this LLM, with ChatGPT, with whatever they're using. It's like, this is not a conscious entity.
00:18:05 Matt: Yeah.
00:18:05 Val: It's not. And all it's doing is making predictions of what the next best thing should be said, no matter what you ask it, whether best word.
00:18:17 Matt: Right? Yeah, yeah.
00:18:18 Val: So whether you're asking it what the math question is on your homework, or what should I do if my friend is being mean to me, it's going to solve those two things in the same way. And I don't know if I have a better, better advice or better answer than that of just explaining to the kids how it's working so that they understand and can maybe separate a little bit.
00:18:46 Matt: That, and I think for, for me, that is it's like an acknowledgement of the man behind the curtain kind of problem to say what you got? You have to acknowledge what this thing is, an understanding. And maybe that's something that we should kind of look into, right, is, hey, let's actually piece together what's, what's this right conversation to like the kid version of how do you explain this?
00:19:12 Val: Well, again.
00:19:13 Matt: I think just to get to that, you know, explain like I'm five kind of thing.
00:19:17 Val: Well, and that's kind of why I made the point where I think language matters in this sense of that's why I think it matters that you call it an it or call it a tool instead of a assigning gendered pronouns. Because, and I know we kind of joked about that last time, but I think if you are going to engage in a conversation like this with the kids, like it is important to say that this is a tool and just like a hammer, you know, like just like any other tool, you are just using it. In fact, I've had that conversation with the kids about the internet already because they've said, why can't why can't we go on the internet? And I've I've told them the internet is just a tool. It's just a thing. What matters is who is using it. So yeah, there are some people who are using the internet for great things. There are some people who use the internet for not so great things, but the internet itself isn't good or bad. It's a tool. And so I guess following along those lines.
00:20:26 Matt: The thing I, I grabbed on to what you said was the separation, specifically the separation, which I do think is really important. And, you know, even calling it, you know, like a tool or, you know, it kind of does have this feeling of, you know, hey, it's kind of like, you know, a TV or, you know, it's kind of like it's a thing, right? It's that, That's it. You know, we don't call it this or that. You know, the hard part is once you kind of get past that and everyone has an agreement of, okay, that's right. That's not like a magical thing behind this, right? Let's actually acknowledge the man behind the curtain, right? Then it gets into, okay, then then it feels like you can have at least this. The key thing. But you know, I know you.
00:21:17 Val: Like play around with it a little.
00:21:19 Matt: More. Well, it just, it just gets easier to honestly have the conversations of, you know what? Because sometimes the, you know, what you're interacting with because there's going to be more of them, right? They're just, they're just is right. There's going to be a number of different agents that are all doing things and providing some functionality. So it's, it can be very difficult to the, you know, it's all over the place. You it's, you just kind of want to call it a name or call it a thing.
00:21:50 Val: Okay.
00:21:50 Matt: To help kind of acknowledge. Yeah, but that's it. Yeah. You know, but I but once you get through the, the valley of acknowledging the man behind the curtain, then I think you can kind of get come out of this and talk about this in a, in a healthy way. Um, and understanding what, okay, what is this thing actually doing? Um, that, that I think is gonna, that helps people. So I think that's a very good way of putting it of just fine. How do you help create that separation for them to understand? Oh, right. I mean, because I know that that's the thing that's so hard about these things is they're getting so sophisticated and so, um, providing functionality that is truly marvelous, right? Of what it's doing. So it gives this, this feeling, right? It does when it, you know, in some of these systems, you can implement memory, right? You can have things to say that it can pull into its context, right? Context is king. And remember something that talked to you about a month ago. Totally feasible, right? But as long as you acknowledge, oh, hey, cool.
00:22:58 Val: And using those specific words, right. Instead of saying it, remembered this like, well, no, no, exactly. It didn't, it didn't like it. It searched the chat history it and recalled, you know what I mean? Like an.
00:23:14 Matt: Appropriate context.
00:23:15 Val: For the conversation, the appropriate context. Yeah.
00:23:18 Matt: So it once you, you find the separation.
00:23:22 Val: Yeah.
00:23:22 Matt: And that is such an important point is find that separation, then we can start talking about it in other ways, right? Yeah. Um, because then then you don't fall into these little traps, these little mistaken traps of, um, believing in consciousness there. Yeah.
00:23:40 Val: So I guess the question would be like, what do you, what do you do if you're, if your teen is says they're in a relationship with an AI chatbot.
00:23:51 Matt: It's a great question.
00:23:52 Val: Oh.
00:23:53 Matt: My first question would be, is it Claude or is it? No, I'm just kidding. No.
00:23:59 Val: What's his name?
00:24:01 Matt: How smart is it? Yeah, it's a Quinn model. No way.
00:24:05 Val: See? Yeah. See, this is where we get into the jokes because we realize it's not real.
00:24:10 Matt: I know, and that's a totally different feeling for that individual, though, right? So if so, if you do find that, then then it's because they, they've fallen into the the consciousness trap now. Yeah. Right. So then it's kind of, you need to start kind of walking them back right to because you have to build separation. So, so then, I mean, frankly, it's a like, like we kind of said, there's clearly an importance of privacy in here. There's clearly something here that this is providing It's a wonderful.
00:24:47 Val: Never thought privacy would have been that. But like, I think it's so interesting you hit on that that like privacy or, or trust or something. I might be one of those deeper issues.
00:25:00 Matt: It's because I've seen it when I have gone around different, as you know, different parts of the world teaching some of this stuff. And what we did was we actually created a little AI chatbot you could talk to about the education material. So we get two different, we get the folks that some folks that are happy to ask questions in class. And I got folks, frankly, and I'm one of them. I'm like, I'm not raising my hand in class. You know, I'm gonna go talk to the chatbot. I'm gonna, I'm married.
00:25:30 Val: Yeah, exactly.
00:25:31 Matt: I'm gonna go talk to that.
00:25:33 Val: Like doesn't mind raising their hand and asking questions.
00:25:36 Matt: I know, I know, but but that that's yeah, you know, it's like, I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding something. right? So it's a nice way to kind of validate something. Ask something maybe that could give myself a little bit more confidence of understanding something where then maybe next time I might raise my hand. Right? So like, no, no, I got this, but I want to ask the teacher something. So, so there that that feeling of unsureness, which yeah, all teens have to have, like we were all teens, like, there's no way we were all unsure about stuff. Um, it gives them that little moment, right? And, you know, the thing is, and we were watching actually the, um, we have in our prep session last night, but we, we were watching the trailer and her and the thing that was so interesting about it they kind of walked into this conversation, right? they're showing these like tiptoe of questions and discussions. You start talking to them to the thing, and it starts kind of asking questions back to you to get you to think, right. And so that that little like little, that little spark, even as subtle as it feels, is that subtle spark of some connection.
00:26:56 Val: I think it's so interesting that movie, so we looked at that movie came out in twenty thirteen.
00:27:00 Matt: Yeah.
00:27:00 Val: No, twenty thirteen.
00:27:02 Matt: That is wild. I mean, and.
00:27:03 Val: If you.
00:27:03 Matt: Go back to that director.
00:27:05 Val: If you.
00:27:05 Matt: Holy smokes.
00:27:06 Val: Well, I think it was supposed to be based on like Siri and Alexa like particularly Siri, I think.
00:27:13 Matt: Um, I don't know about that. Siri has been terrible for know.
00:27:17 Val: Like based on the idea because Siri came out not too long before that, right?
00:27:22 Matt: Maybe. Okay.
00:27:24 Val: I just remember that kind of being the Context, but, but if you go back and watch that trailer, it is, it is nothing like how Siri works, but it is very much how a lot of these large language models works. And it, it is almost a little spooky.
00:27:45 Matt: And see. See, the point I would say here though is where we are getting closer. Yeah. Right. Because there's a couple of things in there that, you know. Um, in the movie, right? It's, you know, it's this little device, right? That has a camera on it, right? That, uh, you know, an earpiece, anything like that, you. Connect with it. Right.
00:28:08 Val: And it's in all of your devices.
00:28:10 Matt: Well, he just has the one device, right. But. Long story short, though, the point though, is it's, it's a very interesting kind of thing that. It's not as complicated as you think to start to get down that path of creating something like that. Like we're getting closer for sure. But like, so let's kind of.
00:28:31 Val: Ground.
00:28:32 Matt: It.
00:28:32 Val: So then how do you take that and then pull yourself back out into this real world of your family, your kids, your job, and you're like, how do I. My question is always so how do I come back to the real world and keep my kids grounded in the real world, then?
00:28:50 Matt: Mhm.
00:28:50 Val: which I think is always, I mean, regardless, even if we didn't have these systems, whether they're getting sucked into TV or social media or video games or I mean, some kids, even books, you know, like it like, which sounds silly, but, you know, some kids just even getting so absorbed into imaginary stuff. how do you keep your kids grounded in this real world?
00:29:17 Matt: Go outside and touch grass.
00:29:19 Val: Go touch grass.
00:29:20 Matt: Yeah.
00:29:20 Val: Which they love doing as teenagers.
00:29:24 Matt: Yeah.
00:29:25 Val: Um, especially. And so, so then again, it's what build trust. You know, security. Safety. Let them know that they have privacy, I guess. Boundaries.
00:29:38 Matt: Yeah. I mean, if, you.
00:29:40 Val: Know, I don't have an answer for this, like, I just, I just don't.
00:29:44 Matt: Because. Well, because it's like shifting sands, right? Things are it's, it's not, it's not the same ground that we were dealing with just, just even a month ago. Right.
00:29:54 Val: And it's going to be different for each kid.
00:29:57 Matt: Oh, absolutely. Each kid is going to be there. I mean, the, the important thing of knowing that if they are having any kind of conversation there, um, or any kind of element of companionship for me is such a valuable piece of information, right? Because then it's like, whoa, okay, you're getting something from that. Because then for me, I'm like, that means there's a gap of some kind. There's something there. Yeah. To have the conversation with. And this that's really hard because now we're getting into, you know, elements of psychology and of, you know, it maybe it's difficult for them to talk through these things, right? maybe my AI agent can talk to your AI agent and then summarize it for me.
00:30:48 Val: I well, and I think regardless of how old your kids are, it really isn't too early to start talking about healthy friendships. Um, the way, the way that you and your friends speak to each other and treat each other. And so, you know, that can lay good groundwork for your real life friendships for your kids so that hopefully down the road, they're not seeking out AI companionships, right? Because they have unhealthy real life friendships
00:31:20 Matt: You know, it's interesting about this is the strange fundamentals throughout this. You know, we joked last, last time, right about, uh, learn to human first. Yeah. but there's some, there's some reality there of, um, baseline relationships of, having these discussions I mean, let's go with the weird hypothetical here. Uh, let's just say you did have an AI service or, you know, thing that we were using. What if, I mean, what if you were using ChatGPT in it? Then it called you an idiot, right? For some reason. Right. Whatever. Right. You go. Wait a minute. That's not nice. Don't do that. Like I don't I don't like that you're doing that. Please. So, so there's like this weird like baseline that you need to be doing anyway that then forms at least the structures from a, you know, true reality perspective.
00:32:18 Val: Well, and I think that's why it's so important to, like I said earlier about teaching your kids about healthy relationships and how to build healthy relationships. And I think that's kind of what you're hitting on is if you can build the foundations, like you said, these things that I think as parents were supposed to be doing anyway. Um, and we, we probably know we're supposed to be doing this anyway, but now adding it to this context of AI relationships, right? Like we, we know we're supposed to be teaching our kids about building healthy relationships, choosing healthy partners, you know, partners that build up their self-esteem. We're now just kind of adding it into this context of an AI friend or an AI partner. And I think that's a scary part of it, but it is something that we're kind of doing anyway. And so that probably helps a lot that it's something you are going to be hopefully doing and thinking about. Now we're just adding. Oh, hey, by the way, like recognizing that this AI chatbot that you're talking to It's not a real friend, it's not a real partner. And also recognizing like that healthy boundary
00:33:45 Matt: for me, it's, it's that, that separation point. That's so for me is so insanely important. Yeah. Because then you understand, frankly, what, what is it actually doing?
00:33:56 Val: Well. Well, I think that we're handling this as best we can. Right. Um, hopefully we've opened opened some people's eyes because I know that we were certainly surprised at how prevalent this is.
00:34:20 Matt: And did you hear about that celebrity thing?
00:34:23 Val: Oh yeah. Okay. So like in between.
00:34:27 Matt: Sorry, we were like, totally gonna wrap up there.
00:34:28 Val: Well, even. Yeah.
00:34:29 Matt: Sorry.
00:34:30 Val: Well, and then and then just just to prove the point, like in between the few weeks ago that I first saw this TLC reel, like in between, then I saw at least two Atlantic articles about AI companionship.
00:34:47 Matt: And then don't say the name. No deal with that.
00:34:51 Val: And then I saw that there was a rumor that a celebrity in Hollywood had an AI partner.
00:34:59 Matt: Just go look it up.
00:35:00 Val: Yeah, look it up. Um, that they were like showing around Hollywood. And actually the, the way that it was revealed was on a podcast. So it was on Kumail Nanjiani's podcast and they were all talking about it. I'm like, so, so this is not just a hypothetical anymore. It's kind of I wouldn't say pervasive, but becoming more prevalent in pop culture in the narrative. Like I said, you had this movie about it, what, thirteen years ago? Like it seems to be something that, if not normalized, is at least heard of. And so that's, that's why it's something I think about as a parent, you know, it might not ever happen. It might, it might not and hopefully it doesn't.
00:35:50 Matt: But I think I to be realistic though. I think we're gonna have some elements of these. Just because again, as an accessibility thing, as a way of providing more to people right there, there's points where it, I would argue that there are people are getting more help when they, when they should. Now the thing that's hard is are they getting the right kind of help? Is the context in there enough to be appropriate to be supportive, to actually, you know, allow separation to say, hey, I'm just just remember I'm this, you know, but I'm going to ask you these things because I have things in context, right? So I think it's got, we got to be mindful of, hey, that's going to be there. So if your kids have phones, right, know what they have downloaded in there, know what those things are. Know what they can provide. We mentioned the Snapchat earlier. I'm sure more and more of these apps are going to have more AI shoved into them, right? So know what those look like. Know what those conversations could be, right? And because it gives you a little window and it allows them to kind of maybe have that conversation, but then gives you that opportunity to ask, right? Which is so important. Just so you get, you get those little moments of this is actually, it's not something to like completely like, how dare you and scold or anything like that. I think it's, it's actually that moment of, oh, there's something there.
00:37:45 Val: And hopefully that opens the door. That was great. That was beautiful.
00:37:49 Matt: Thank you.
00:37:50 Val: That was a great wrap up.
00:37:51 Matt: Yeah. Woo hoo. I got everyone wants them all like and subscribe. Yeah.
00:37:57 Val: Um, thank you all so much.
00:37:59 Matt: Thank you everybody take care.