What job in our world is less lucrative than being a parent? A Hollywood internship? Volunteering at a soup kitchen? Professional writer? Parenting is the only job you have to pay money to do. Lots of money. Lodging, clothes, food, school, Pokémon cards – it really adds up. And it’s getting worse. According to the tech industry, I have to strap my drooling offspring to a computer in order to ensure the baby’s survival.
Parents are being offered life-altering advancements in artificial intelligence that purport to make this taxing endeavor a tiny bit easier. OpenAI is suggesting its latest products can make child-rearing more efficient: its boss, Sam Altman, suggests generating a podcast about your kid’s life that you can listen to in the morning on the way to school. How entertaining would a podcast “that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc” actually be? “Jimmy needs to work on his dribbling.” Great. I think he knows already. He’s not going to be the next Messi, so how about we switch back to music?
Presumably, this idea renders the need for conversation moot. The computer already knows everything about our lives and has now regurgitated it into digital mush delivered by a generically cheery voice. But why I would find it helpful to have a machine reiterate information I have at my disposal already is a grand mystery even Philip Marlowe couldn’t solve. I’m a functioning, alive adult human being. This is like giving me an extra tooth with the promise that I can chew my food faster.
But what about the eight to 10 hours a day when your child has the gift of blissful solitude? Surely, they can’t be left alone at bedtime, lest they swallow a Hot Wheels car or open your favorite jar of loose razor blades. That’s where Nanit comes in – a startup that promises the kind of 24-hour surveillance that would make the Department of Homeland Security salivate. Nanit sells a camera and monitor set that observes your kid during sleep, tracking eye movements, “sleep efficiency”, and breathing patterns. Nanit’s rival, a company called Owlet, attaches a pulse oximetry tracker to your child’s foot through a sock. That’s not quite hooking your kid up to a terminal from the novel Neuromancer, but it feels like a decent first step in that direction. An app called Huckleberry offers “optimized nap predictions” and a chatbot assistant.
Of course, all of this costs money. A Nanit kit is $474, plus $100 a year in subscription fees. Owlet’s robo-sock is $300. Huckleberry’s app is free, but its nap predictions, like expert sports betting advice, will cost you. For $120, you can be told when your kid might go to sleep. I doubt there’s a money-back guarantee if they get it wrong, and the kid ends up spilling Legos all over the floor instead of going to bed.
These services promise to save lives by identifying health issues early in a child’s development. Nanit claims it offers more sleep and peace of mind, so parents can move their babies into their own rooms, thereby giving mom and dad a chance to go back to having regular intercourse. Yes, Nanit has looked into parents’ sex habits, too. If you went back to when I was married, you’d find there wasn’t much to look into.
None of this is anything people actually need to be parents. Babies need food, toys, diapers and a regular bath. Those all cost money. If I have to choose between saving for my son’s college and a spreadsheet with a bunch of biometric data, I’m skipping the spreadsheet. I realize, of course, these products are not for me. I don’t have an unlimited supply of disposable income. I have to prioritize and be practical. These devices are for people who optimize every single shred of their daily lives, thinking it will protect them from the reality of failure, illness and death. I’m sorry to report that a $400 camera isn’t going to fix any of that.
Society has been trying to offer solutions to solve the conundrum of parenting for decades: self-help books, classes, the legendary (and expensive) Snoo crib that shakes your child like it’s a gin martini until it stops crying. In every case, these aids cost money, turning parenting into a lucrative sector of the economy. If you can’t afford these modern “miracles”, where can you turn?
Parenting is hard, and we all need help. But there was a time when grandparents lived with their kids and grandkids, or at least lived close enough to help. I grant that the idea of living with my mother is akin to pitching a tent next to a cave filled with grizzly bears, but I’d do that before I got an AI-powered camera system to take a video of my kid sleeping. The best part of extended family childcare is that people can do something an AI can never do. It can teach children about someone besides themselves.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
