Welcome to Episode 2 of our exclusive Series 2 on the impact of generative AI technologies on children, teens, and young people. In this series, we’ll cover news and research on AI toys, the use of AI in education, and AI’s social and cognitive impacts on one of the most vulnerable subsets of AI users. In this deep-dive episode, we’ll cover recent news and research on generative AI toys and the use of AI in education, providing you with some insane metrics about the AI toy industry in China, the UK, and the US and OpenAI and Mattel’s deal with Barbies and Hot Wheels. We’ll also cover research and news on the new AI toys Curio and Cayla, and discuss the real and potential harms of these new products. On the education side (36:25), we’ll talk about metrics of student use of AI for schoolwork, studies on how the use of AI impacts brain activity and memory and student GPA and learning, the Alpha School and the Google Effect, research that talks about what people truly want AI to replace - and it’s not creativity or critical thinking, despite where AI’s being applied. With all that being said, we’ll also discuss how this all fits into the question of what it means to be human and what it means to replace that - especially in terms of parenting, teaching, and creative work. - GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: Our show features sensitive content, including mentions of suicide, self-harm, mental health, and sexual harassment and sextortion. Our developing lives with bots renders these subjects front-of-mind in our discussions, and we want viewers to be aware of this as they follow along. - In our last episode, we laid the foundation for the series, covering the ongoing court cases around AI-induced suicide for (now) multiple teen users, Alpha School, the aim of big tech to predict the age of their users to “protect” vulnerable populations like children and youth, people’s perspectives on AI use in the classroom, and a truly interesting new AI toy called “Curio,” co-founded by Grimes that has a generative AI stuffed animal called Grok (!!!), “not to be confused” with Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot on X. - This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep. Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ourliveswithbots.com. Links: MIT Technology Review on AI toys Guardian article on Curio Let the Children Play. Smart Toys and Child Vulnerability AI-Driven Design of Emotionally Supportive Toys for Child Development: An Iterative Process Pew Research Center on US teen’s use of AI for schoolwork Common sense media report on teen companion AI use Kosmyna et al (2025): Your Brain on ChatGPT Research paper on job sector preferences for AI automation
