Joshua O'Connor

This is bleak. As a non-parent, I never judge parents unless there's a case of abuse or a clear case of really bad parenting. I've come to appreciate how difficult it is to be a parent and how parents sometimes have to make compromises to care for their kids that don't always meet the standards they've set for themselves or that, if shared publicly, might require a great deal of vulnerability. But if your daughter's teacher asks you to name three things that make your own child special, and you turn to an AI assistant for the answer, I'm going to judge you as a parent. There's a difference between using AI to help organize things, or even clean up something you've already written about your child, and relying on AI to answer a deeply personal question about what makes your child special. Maybe Marissa Mayer already knew all three things about her daughter. That's not the point. The point is that she was asked to identify what makes her daughter special, and she outsourced the answer to AI. And what makes this even more absurd is that the assistant came back with three of the most generic descriptions imaginable: empathetic, creative, and an animal lover. Those are lovely qualities, but they could describe millions of children. And if you think this is a story that reflects well on you as a parent, let alone one worth proudly sharing with the world, you are clearly untethered from reality.