[awillowingmind]

I’m not sure how you lived through the last decade and came to the conclusion that people aged 17-25 make rational decisions with novel technologies that have short term gain and long term (essentially hidden) negative side effects.

[waffletower]

It seems that 10% of college students in the U.S. are younger than 18, or do not have adult status. The other 90% are adults and are trusted with voting, armed services participation and enjoy most other rights that adults have (with several obvious and notable exceptions -- car rental and legal controlled substance purchase etc.) Are you saying that these adults shouldn't be trusted to use AI? In the United States, and much of the world, we have drawn the line at 18. Are you advocating that AI use shouldn't be allowed until a later cutoff in adulthood? It is not at all definitively established what these "essentially hidden" negative side effects are, that you elude to, and if they actually exist.

[awillowingmind]

Your argument seems overly reliant on the definition of an adult. What is an adult? Is it a measure of responsibility, mental maturity? Because I would wager the level of responsibility and mental maturity of the average 18 year old has been on the downtrend.

I’m not advocating for completely restricting access to AI for certain age groups. I’m pointing out that historically we have restricted prolonged interactions with certain stimuli that have shown to be damaging to cognitive development, and that we should make the same considerations here.

I think it’s hard to deny that younger generations have been negatively affected by the proliferation of social media engineered around fundamentally predatory algorithms. As have the older generations.