How will Childhood Change?: Inside the 100-Year Study Tracking AI's Impact on Children and Society

Dr. Joseph Wilson joins Chelsea to discuss launching a century-long longitudinal study of AI-native children, the importance of human elements and why evidence should drive AI policyFull show notes here: https://potentiamedia.org/p/how-will-childhood-change-insideDr. Joseph Wilson has been working in AI since before most people knew the term. He ran computer vision studies as a high school student in Central Florida and now serves as Managing Director at the American Institutes for Research, an 80-year-old nonprofit research institute. The team is launching the AI Century Study, a 100-year longitudinal project following the first generation of AI-native children, born between 2023 and 2025, alongside a comparison cohort born a decade earlier. AIR has done this before, and in the 1960s they launched Project Talent, which captured 5% of all U.S. high school students and is still producing research today.Living less than a mile from OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco, Wilson has a front row seat to the the AI hype cycle up close. He notes federal funding for rigorous longitudinal research is shrinking even as the need for it has never been greater. With these rapidly evolving technologies, he says policy must be guided by evidence. We need to question what comes out of these tools, and AI is not human (and never will be.) In the day-to-day, he encourages listeners to take the small act of taking out your earbuds and talking to the person in front of you, and to lead with empathy.