Chat GPT is NOT Your Friend When it Comes to Potty Training Advice.
You’ve been warned! I don’t want to have to say “I told you so.”
Look, everyone and their best friend is using ChatGPT. I’m no stranger to the appeal of it! Like any technical tool, it can be used for good or for evil.
I was late to jump on the bandwagon, because I am highly skeptical and concerned when it comes to AI.
Here’s what I love using Chat GPT for:
I’ll say various ingredients I have in my pantry and fridge along with time constraints and the types of meals I want, and it will spit back various recipes. I’m actually impressed with the results!
I use it for inspiration with vacation planning, especially if it’s a destination I’ve never visited. I often have to fact-check it though, as it has advised me to visit places that are currently closed for construction or simply not open on that given date/time.
organizing any tedious administrative tasks or parsing information from large, tedious documents. I still will never take Chat GPT’s answer at face value and will always cross-reference the outputs with a pair of human eyes. That leads me to the point of this blog post.
Why Chat GPT is NOT appropriate for potty training advice:
Chat GPT will never replace the level of discernment and attunement that is only achieved through phyiscally reading your child’s cues, in real life, thinking critically, and using your parental intution.
Simply put, Chat GPT cannot see YOUR child. The child in front of you whom YOU know best. Chat GPT is giving you generalized information designed for the masses, at scale, and it is skewed to placate you.
In high school, my math teacher used to remind us students that a calculator is only as smart as the person using it. In other words, the calculator isn’t some magic device that will magically give you the right answer simply because you press some random numbers. You must know the correct inputs AND be able to think critically about which mathematical formula is appropriate given the context of the problem in order to receive accurate outputs, and then you must know what to do with that information. Is that the final answer? Do you need to use that output to then use another formula to achieve the ulimate answer?
Let’s apply this analogy to Chat GPT. You may feel inclined to ask ChatGPT to draft a three-day potty training plan for you because let’s be honest, ChatGPT is free. You may even feel like you cracked the code because you were hyper-specific with describing your child’s age and temperament. Here’s the thing. ChatGPT doesn’t have the critical thinking skills to tell you that a three-day program will actually backfire more often than not and potentially even be the catalyst for poop or pee withholding due to the stress abosrbed from the child as a result of the parent. Chat GPT doesn’t know when or how your child has progressed through each sequential step of the potty training process in order to determine whether your child actually may just need more time in one speciifc spot.
I haven’t even talked about how ChatGPT has been so blatantly wrong about the simplest of details. The other day it told me December 13th was a Friday. I instantly knew that to be incorrect, so I told it that it was Saturday, and I was met with a “Good catch! You are correct, December 13th is a Saturday.” Eye roll.
If ChatGPT is making dumb, careless errors in regard to calendar dates, imagine how crappy the advice is around a subject that is so layered and dependent on understanding your child.
Outsourcing has a time and a place, but please don’t substitute professional expertise with a human for AI-generated “advice.” It’s a sobering reality that many jobs will be and have already been outsourced to AI to increase efficiencies and cut costs, however some jobs are irreplacable due to the level of human interaction required in order to achieve an optimal experience, such as nurses.
From my personal and professional experience, outsourcing matters like nursing, interpreting lab work, and potty training and parenting advice to ChatGPT may sound harmless, but the ramifications can actually be more costly and stressful once a true professional has to clean up the mess that AI made. Don’t fall for the quick fix!
