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Sam Altman says he can't imagine raising his newborn without ChatGPT, internet calls it 'stunted perspective'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed that ChatGPT helped him navigate the early months of parenthood.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has caught the internet’s attention after saying he relied heavily on ChatGPT while navigating the early months of parenthood.
Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Altman said he often turned to the AI tool for reassurance over everyday parenting concerns. “I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,” he told Fallon, before adding, “Clearly, people did it for a long time — no problem.”
Altman, who welcomed a son with his husband, Oliver Mulherin, in February, also said that he feels “kind of bad” asking ChatGPT basic questions like, “Why does my kid stop dropping pizza on the floor and laughing?"
The OpenAI boss even recalled an incident at a party where another parent mentioned their six-month-old was already crawling. Worried his own son was behind, Altman said he rushed to the bathroom and typed a panicked question into ChatGPT, asking if his child’s development was normal.
"I ran to the bathroom, and I was like, do I need to take my kid to the doctor tomorrow morning?" Altman said, describing what he typed into ChatGPT: "Is this okay?"
He said that the chatbot responded with “great answer, which was of course,” his son’s development was normal”. He added that the response felt personalised. “ChatGPT gets to know you, and by the way, you're the CEO of OpenAI, you probably are around all these high-achieving people, maybe you don't want to project that onto your kid, and you should just relax, and he'll be fine, whatever," Altman told Fallon of the answer.
(Also Read: No em-dashes as Sam Altman celebrates ChatGPT finally responding accurately to user instructions)
How did social media react?
Altman’s remarks quickly drew reactions online, with many users trolling Altman for leaning on AI for parenting guidance. “He needs ChatGPT to do something that has literally been done for all of human time,” one user wrote.
Another commented, “120 billion baby humans have been born in human history…pre-AI anything. What a stunted perspective.”
“He may as well say he is stupid,” a third user wrote, adding that anyone relying on ChatGPT for child-rearing advice should “reconsider parenting”.
Altman, however, has previously spoken about how becoming a parent has reshaped his view of artificial intelligence. In a January episode of the ‘Re:Thinking’ podcast with Adam Grant, he said his child would grow up in a world where AI is ubiquitous. “My kid is never going to grow up being smarter than AI,” he said. “Children in the future will only know a world with AI in it,” he added.
