Don’t outsource the best parts of parenting to AI

There are a lot of things about parenting that are unpleasant drudgery. There’s the obvious ones: diapers, cleaning bottle parts, picking up Legos, listening to “Wheels on the Bus” over and over.

As kids get older, you’ll also discover so many more annoying things: The constant sorting of too-small clothes, dividing between storage, donation, and hand-me-downs. All the separate apps for messaging used by schools, bus companies, daycares, and sports leagues seem to have UI designed by Satan himself. The fact that there will be at least one early release or day off from school on a random non-holiday day you learn about the day before. And the most grueling scourge of it all: summer camp signup.

I embrace the idea of ceding some of the unfun mental load of parenting to AI.

That’s different than delegating away the parts of parenting that, sure, take time and effort and being present — but are also the precious interactions you’ll miss when your kids are grown up.

AI can help parents, but how is key

I would love a robot that could fold laundry. It does seem like the separate messaging app problem should be solvable (I pray for the singularity whenever I get a push notification from the dedicated school messaging app about a new message containing Google Drive link to the PDF that lists all the daily themes for school spirit week).

Sure, great! But there are also some clunker ideas of what you could use AI for with parenting.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a parent himself, recently posted to X about what he described as a cool use for AI: making a custom podcast for kids about their interests and calendar to listen to during their drive to school. The backlash was swift, the main response being something along the lines of, “What if you just talked to your children?”

I agree with that critique, for the most part. And more so: why would I want to give up that actually pleasant task?

Sure, I think an audio reminder of that day/week’s afterschool activities is probably helpful for kids. Keeping on top of the calendar does get difficult when kids get older and busier, especially if there are multiple kids.

This is something where a technological solution feels within our grasp. Something like Skylight’s “smart family calendar” or AI chatbot apps that act as personal assistants for busy parents.

My colleague Ben Shimkus talked to a Ford exec who vibecoded family “chief of staff” that sends a daily email to her and her husband going over the calendar of daycare drop-offs, appointments, activities, and other kid-related items for the day.

Dealing with the gruntwork of managing a calendar is something many parents would be happy to offload to AI or some other tech to deal with. I’m less confident in Altman’s idea of making this a whole “podcast” instead of just a brief audio calendar reminder. I suspect my elementary-aged kids would find this cringe and annoying.

But I see why so many people reacted so strongly to his tweet. It’s suggesting more than just an automated calendar reminder — it’s taking the place of time that could otherwise be spent talking to your kids.

Talking to your kids is the fun part

Talking to your kids about their upcoming soccer game or birthday is one of the enjoyable, pleasurable experiences of parenting. Those nice moments of positive connection, chatting in the car, are something I suspect most parents aren’t looking to give up or outsource.

This is one of the overall challenges with where we are with AI right now: AI might be capable of doing some of the tasks we find pleasurable and enjoyable (like creative writing or drawing), but what many people want is for it to take on the ones we don’t want to do.

Meta is testing out an app called Storykit that allows parents to create AI-generated bedtime stories for kids. “Write a story about a teddy bear in a magical forest” is a task that an LLM is very capable of doing, and there is probably some fun novelty for kids to have a personalized story — the kids might enjoy it a few times.

I’d argue that making up stories at bedtime for your kids is one of those rewarding parts of parenting you shouldn’t outsource. Though it may sometimes feel like there are 3,000 minutes between 7 and 8 p.m., the reality is that the years your kids want to hear you make up stories at bedtime is shockingly brief.

These are the sweet moments people dream of when they want to become parents: making up stories at bedtime, or peering at your kids in the rearview mirror while chatting about soccer games and birthday gift wish lists. These moments are the reward for putting up with all the grinding drudgery or the endless put-on-your-shoes reminders.

There are plenty of annoying and mundane parts of dealing with young kids — any parent could help you identify those tasks. Those things are often hard for AI to take over (good news to the parent in charge of emptying the Diaper Genie: your job is safe from AI).

The things that are fun and pleasant might be easier for AI to replicate — but who wants that?