Opinion
Artificial children? For all the upsides, there’s a big danger
Samantha Selinger-Morris
Lifestyle writerI’m the last person to see parenting as an easy, one-way ticket to non-stop joy and a boosted self-esteem.
As one of my children said to me not long ago, with the blithe tone of someone reeling off a grocery list: “My excitement, my passion, my joy? I get from dad. My irritation, my anger, my disappointment? I get from you.”
Catriona Campbell says AI children are in our future.Credit:iStock
Still, even I side-eyed a new report that promises a solution to some of the trickier bits that come with parenting.
Within 50 years, CGI and advanced artificial intelligence will enable us to enjoy “digital children”, according to a new book by a British artificial intelligence expert.
These children will live in the metaverse, a digital environment of our choosing based in virtual reality, where we’ll be able to interact with them. They’ll have photo-realistic faces and bodies and, thanks to facial tracking and voice analysis, be able to recognise their “parents”. And, with the use of high-tech gloves, parents will be able to enjoy the physical sensation of cuddling, playing with and feeding their “children”.
“On the basis that consumer demand is there, which I think it will be, AI children will become widely available for a relatively small monthly fee,” writes Catriona Campbell, in AI By Design: A Plan for Living With Artificial Intelligence.
A monthly fee? It sounds dangerous.
When that bill comes during one of those horrific parenting moments, when you pray for the floor to open up and a magic wind to whisk you away to Bora Bora because your teenager is ranting that you breathed on them, or your primary school child keeps asking you just why they can’t watch you and your partner have sex, no way in hell are you ponying up the cash. Bye bye, baby.
These digital children would be able to “speak” and respond emotionally, by cooing, giggling, and even sassing like a teenager.
Would there be any upsides to Tamagotchi kids?
Well, sure. You could skip childbirth and nappies. Not to mention the sort of severe sleeplessness that once prompted British author Caitlin Moran to say she would have “happily shot the world’s last panda in the face” if only to give her a brief reprieve from the non-stop crying of her six-week-old colicky baby. (Parents, writes Campbell, will be able to choose how quickly their digital children grow up, if at all, so presumably you could fast-forward through the newborn stage.)
And, as one friend, a father of three, adds: “You could mute them in the car.”
But I doubt you’ll get all the beauty – though it may sometimes be barbed – that comes with real live, flesh and blood children.
I probably wouldn’t be currently striving to better manage my anger at home – my kid was right about me and her dad – if not for having my child point it out to me so directly and so calmly.
I also doubt my heart would skip a beat like it did when one of my kids, years ago, grasped my cheeks between their chubby hands, looked into my eyes and proclaimed – while sitting on my chest – “I was going to pee on you. But then I remembered, you’re my joy.”
Some things are too strange, and astonishing, to program.
Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.