As artificial intelligence reshapes nearly every aspect of modern life, one question looms larger than most: what happens when technology begins to take over the most human task of all: raising children?
That’s the question I explored in my recent essay, “Allomothers and Algorithms: The Future of Raising Children.” Inspired by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s TED Talk, “Are We Still Human if Robots Help Raise Our Babies?” the paper looks at how caregiving – something deeply rooted in human evolution – might change if we start outsourcing it to machines.
While this is an English class assignment, I think it raises questions that belong in the tech world too. As developers, designers, and innovators, we’re not just building smarter machines, we’re shaping the social systems that future generations will grow up in. When we train algorithms to understand emotion or design caregiving robots, we’re also encoding our ideas about empathy, care, and connection.
I’d love to hear your thoughts:
- Can technology ever truly nurture a child the way another human can?
- Or will our dependence on AI slowly change the very traits that make us human?
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by Austin Wells