Dana Suskind on How To Protect Childhood in the Age of AI
The pediatric surgeon and author discusses how artificial intelligence is shaping child development — and the skills kids will need most.
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The last time I interviewed Dr. Dana Suskind, we discussed the three T’s strategy outlined in her book “”: Tune in. Talk more. Take turns. “It doesn’t require fancy gadgets,” she told me, “or a specialized degree.”
Though it was only a few years ago, the fancy gadgets have gotten a lot more advanced since then, and now Suskind is back with her next (and, she promises, her last) book, addressing the promise and perils of the technological revolution coming for every element of society, including young children.
In “,” which will be released on July 14, Suskind acknowledges that technology is swiftly mastering endeavors that were once considered uniquely human. “Artificial intelligence is eroding our supposed superiority in each area one by one. … It generates language with fluency that surpasses most humans. Al turns out art, music, poetry, software. It uses existing tools and builds new ones.”
But she zeroes in on a distinction that matters: Unlike humans, “AI does not care.”
Suskind’s new book guides parents, caregivers and educators through navigating how to raise children in the age of AI by offering the HOPE framework, which offers four principles: human connection, owning imperfections, protecting the early years and enhancing adult-child interaction. She called it HOPE, she said, because “Having a child is an act of hope for the future, and the future is not predetermined, as much as it feels like it is.”
A pediatric surgeon and the founder and co-director of , Suskind has been a prominent voice in early learning since the publication of her 2015 book, “” which popularized the concept of linguistic “serve and return” between babies and their caregivers.
In the conversation below, Suskind describes her nuanced stance on AI and shares her thoughts on how AI shapes child development as well as what parents and early educators should consider when deciding how and when to use technology with young children.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does “Human Raised” fit in with your other books?
My whole journey has been about the power of talk and interaction and relationships … to allow children to not just learn, but to become human. A couple years ago, when AI started building momentum, I was like, “Oh my gosh, wait a second.” Suddenly we have technology that can mimic the human interaction that builds a child’s brain, which has been the focus of my entire research. I was like, “Oh, we really need to be thinking about this in a really deep and thorough way.” Because not only was it going to come so fast and furious, but parents have no guidelines or guidance. There are no policy guardrails. And so I felt I needed to write one more book — I swear this is my last one! I wrote it to think through this whole thorny issue myself.
What particular insights do you bring as a surgeon?
I’m a cochlear implant surgeon. The way I got into this field was [by examining] differences in early language environments among children who are deaf and hard of hearing and got cochlear implants, [versus] typically developing children. I saw interaction and language … as modalities for building cognitive skills, language and literacy.
I’ve always been cognizant that and nurturing interactions are important for socioemotional development, but so much of my work has been focused on those hard skills. And in writing this book, [I see] that human connection is a way to become human, to build the social brain, to build our ability to connect with other humans and navigate the human world.
How can parents and educators tell when a technology is enhancing connection versus replacing it?
The frictionless experience is what makes it so seductive, and so different than what we’ve met before. I mean, we’ve had technologic innovation throughout all of human history, but it’s always been sort of a one-way street. Even social media and the engagement economy has been about sucking our engagement, but it hasn’t been building an intimate relationship and that is what generative AI [does].
AI is not a monolith. … The generative AI and that intimacy building aspect of it is what is seductive for adults, and for young children and very young children. The younger you are, the more likely you are to both anthropomorphize this technology, to project thoughts and feelings onto these entities. So they’re more at risk.
At the same time, I am not anti-technology. … I believe in the power of technology that allows human flourishing. And I do believe that if we use it in the right way, it could do the things that we want. Allow opportunity gaps to close, allow people to have more presence. So let’s use it to enhance the human condition, not to replace human connection.
I love tech, but I don’t love tech to replace the powerful role that parents and caregivers play in building children.
In your book, you talk about the importance of owning our imperfections. How does that make us more human?
One really amazing experience in writing this book was reflecting back on the imperfections of humans and our relationships. We’ve always looked at them as bugs. How can we be better and more perfect parents? But the truth is that “good enough parenting” is an evolutionary gift that actually teaches kids how to be human. … Those missteps and ruptures and repairs help us learn how to be good partners with other humans.
In your new book, you wrote, “AI has the keys to unlock the social gate,” which you define as “the biological filter built into the infant brain that evolved to allow a particular type of teacher: a human one.” What are the ramifications of this breach?
We may not know everything about the technologies that are being built, but we know a whole heck of a lot about how children develop and how they can best develop to their full potential. In some ways, this book was about understanding the interaction between technology and children and adults, but also understanding how the human brain is built.
In some ways, evolution gave us a mechanism to ensure that baby’s brains develop through human connection. Kids don’t learn from TV. It affects their language development and social development, but it doesn’t actually teach them. The social gate has made sure that babies only learn from human interaction. It opens it up and allows the learning to happen. And now that AI can mimic that human interaction … it has the passcode to the social gate, and whatever flows through from that technology is actively wiring that child’s brain.
Patricia Kuhl [professor at the University of Washington and co-director of the university’s ] is a goddess of early brain development. Her research … is probably one of the most important things [for understanding] how to navigate AI in the early learning space. The basic science of human development is incredibly important not just for parents to understand, but policymakers and the people who are building this tech. They need to understand how we develop, so that they build tools that don’t inadvertently lead humanity in the wrong direction.
And how much faith do you have in the people building these AI tools?
I’m not going to answer that question, other than to say that I wrote this book primarily for parents and caregivers — for anyone who loves children. But I want desperately for those who are building technology … to read and understand it, so that they can more intentionally design with developmental science in mind.
How could you see AI technologies supporting the early years?
Number one, don’t displace that human connection that supports the parents or teachers in the children’s lives. We know about the administrative burden and the invisible labor that makes caring for young children so hard, so let’s build tools to make it easier for parents and teachers so that they can be more present. Let’s build tools that allow us to understand better how children are developing when [they] are exhibiting delays, so that we can more quickly ameliorate those issues. And there are scientifically driven tools that support the early learning process, but I don’t think that they should be used as replacements for teachers.
What are some promising areas of research?
Brian Scassellati, who’s a computer scientist at Yale [and director of the ], showed that social robots can help teach children with autism spectrum disorder to learn social cues and become more connected with other humans. In the same vein, [that when] children read to social robots versus humans, they were less anxious. Using the science to help guide us in understanding the best ways to support children’s learning is great, but [we should] never forget that it must not replace human connection, it must only support it.
I’m a physician, I come from the world of medicine. When we create new biologics, let’s say a vaccination, it’s not like we say, “Okay, we’ve created it. Let’s see how it does out in the real world and then go back and tweak and fix it.” No, we do really rigorous studies to make sure it’s safe for the population. And right now everything is being put on parents like, “Oh, you decide …” It’d be like saying, “Here’s your car seat … let us know if it’s safe and we can go back and tweak.” These are really powerful technologies. We need a lot more science, not to stifle innovation, but to make sure our humans remain safe.
We can’t wait for the research to happen to get guardrails in place so that no harm is done. We need longitudinal data in understanding children who are growing up with generative AI as a significant presence, in understanding the impacts on language, socioemotional development and attachment. We don’t have these. I want research on protective factors. What are the conditions in which AI tools generally support human connection rather than displacing it? It’s not just an academic question, it’s a design question that will shape the field.
What are the skills that children are going to need to succeed in the future?
Now that AI can do all the things that we were trying to optimize in our kids — like be the best at math and science — and all these hard skills now can be done by AI a million-fold better than humans, it’s those distinctly human edge skills that matter. The critical thinking, the social connection, the curiosity, creativity, resilience — those are going to be the skills that allow children to thrive in the age of AI.
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Mark Swartz writes about efforts to improve early care and education as well as developments in the U.S. care economy. He lives in Maryland.
