AI Tells Kids What They Want to Hear

Transcript

Ask a chatbot why Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird. Here's the catch. He never actually proposed that.

That question has a wrong idea baked right into it. And a chatbot writes by predicting what usually comes next after what you typed. So a question that assumes something can pull the answer right along with it.

To be fair, the good ones have gotten better about this. In our course, kids push back on purpose: "Are you sure? I was told an adult has 213 bones." When we tested it, the chatbot stuck with 206.

But facts that everybody writes about are the easy case. It gets slipperier with a question that's already leaning one way, or when a kid asks, "Is my essay good?" That question is pretty much asking to hear yes.

That's why our course has kids ask a different question: "What's the weakest part of this?" You leave room for an answer you might not want, and that's usually the one worth hearing.