[andrewdug]

I have heard of books, but my kids prefer to have a large percentage of the knowledge of books on their wrist, such that if they see a clam at the beach and want to know about it, we don't need to wait until library day on Tuesday.

[spacechild1]

Can't they just ask their parents? Do you really think it's a good idea to give little kids unsupervised access to an LLM chatbot?

[andrewdug]

For questions their parents know the answers to, absolutely. That is the best idea. But the alternative to an LLM chatbot isn't their parents, it's Google. And Google has been showing kids pornography for decades. So, why not give kids access to information that does not also have access to pornography?

[spacechild1]

If the parent doesn't know the answer they can google it and then explain it to their kid. Really, I don't see the immediate need for such an app and as a parent I find the premise almost offensive. I won't even start with the potential dangers.

[andrewdug]

You're right. Parents can google it and explain it to their kid. Parents can find the answer in an encyclopedia, find a book about it, or find a youtube video for them. There are lots of options. I hope we didn't offend you.

As parents ourselves, we think it's helpful for kids to have independent access to the world's knowledge. We've found it helps them feel they can learn as far as their curiosity takes them instead of waiting for library day or waiting for us to look things up for them. Statistics show that most parents just end up letting their kids use Google independently, which has led to half of children today stumbling on adult images and videos by 12. For some reason, I don't see a lot of people criticizing that. Perhaps, because they don't market to kids. Kids just use it. That's probably what will happen with AI tools that don't specifically market to kids. They will have adult content, kids will get exposed, but they won't be blamed because they didn't market to kids.

We understand all parents have different opinions on these things. We basically just built the tool we want for our kids, and we want to give interested parents an extra option if they want it. One where it is impossible to find adult images, video, links, or advertisements.

[spacechild1]

Good to know that you actually have kids yourself! That gives me some confidence that you are really trying to make this as safe and non-addictive as possible. Although it's not a product I would use (without supervision), I can see that you have good intentions.

> We've found it helps them feel they can learn as far as their curiosity takes them

Unless they have very specific questions, children encyclopedia books/apps already go a long way. I'm not sure it's really worth bringing in LLMs to achieve that last mile.

> For some reason, I don't see a lot of people criticizing that. Perhaps, because they don't market to kids. Kids just use it.

You are right. The broader issue is that so many parents allow their kids unsupervised access to the internet in the first place. I'm just wondering if these people really care enough to use your app instead...