aiEDU Studios
aiEDU Studios is a podcast from the team at The AI Education Project.
Each week, a new guest joins us for a deep-dive discussion about the ever-changing world of AI, technology, K-12 education, and other topics that will impact the next generation of the American workforce and social fabric.
Learn more about aiEDU at www.aiEDU.org
aiEDU Studios
Isabelle Hau: Relational intelligence in an AI-driven world
What makes us uniquely human in the age of AI?
According to Isabelle Hau, (Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning) it's our ability to form meaningful relationships — a feat she calls "relational intelligence."
Our conversation with Isabelle explores how education systems need to evolve past measuring success through grades and test scores, and instead toward fostering the human connections that will matter more in an AI-powered world.
Drawing from her forthcoming book Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education, Isabelle makes a compelling case that our educational priorities need realignment: "We have focused for a very long time on cognitive intelligence, which a lot of people would know as IQ. Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift toward emotional intelligence or EQ. But I believe we are at a juncture where we need to think a lot more about relational intelligence."
The discussion delves into Stanford's innovative approaches to AI in education, including their AI Tinkery where students and community members experiment with AI tools to solve their own problems. Rather than viewing AI merely as a tool for efficiency, Isabelle challenges us to consider how technology can transform learning experiences to better develop collaboration, creativity, and human connection.
Whether you're an educator, parent, researcher, or simply curious about the future of learning, Isabelle offers valuable insight into nurturing the skills that will truly matter as AI transforms our world.
Learn more about Isabelle Hau and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning:
aiEDU: The AI Education Project
Hello everybody. I'm Alex Kotran. I'm the co-founder and CEO of the AI Education Project, aiEDU, and we're here in DC for the mobile version of aiEDU Studios with a colleague that I've been spending a lot of time with over the past year, plus in different formats, different conferences. We were just at a meeting two days ago in Washington DC, Isabelle. How is about? Why don't you tell me? Because you actually have a multifaceted career and even your role now you're doing a few different things, so I'll let you give us the description of you know. What are you doing right now? What's your role at Stanford, and then we can go from there.
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, Alex, thank you for having me and thank you for all the work we are doing together. Such a joy. So I'm currently the executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which is an initiative that sits at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. That's very interdisciplinary by nature and by goal, seeking to really transform education as we know it today, to have a lot more learning embedded within education systems.
Isabelle Hau:Sounds very obvious what I'm saying, but we have had a long history of focusing on access in education, not on learning, and I love our name the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and not the Stanford Accelerator for Education as part of that. That's where the two of us have done a lot of work together. We have done a lot of work on artificial intelligence and what it means for our future of learning together. In addition to my role at Stanford, I have a few other hats, including one that I've been spending a lot of time over the past few years, I would say at this point, which is writing a book called Love to Learn, which is, you know, my first child, as I call it, which is, you know, my third child, as I call it, and yeah, we can also maybe chat more about this endeavor, but really a fun ride, fun journey, and one that's just starting, as I'm publishing it in a few days.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I think what's interesting is when you describe the work the Stanford Accelerator for learning you didn't use the words AI at all and yet you actually were one of the keynote speakers at last year's National AI Literacy Day and, yes, we've sort of intersected in so many of the spaces where organizations that are at sort of the forefront of thinking about the intersection of AI and education. Obviously, Stanford is a leader in sort of developing AI. There's the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. How prominent is artificial intelligence in sort of the organization that you're leading now? Is it something that you've sort of been dragged into or is it sort of an initiative Like, how did it come up?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, so Stanford has been involved in artificial intelligence in a deep way for a long, long, long time.
Isabelle Hau:As a matter of fact, we coined the word artificial intelligence at Stanford in the 1950s, so it goes back a long, long time. For us and for many people at Stanford Within my team, the way we were organized before ChatGPT got introduced was always that we had a digital learning practice, but we had five other practices that do not have digital learning in their name, although they could have some technology embedded, and all of them do in some ways. So we have three that are age-based one in early childhood education, which is a very important area of work and an area that I'm so proud that a university like Stanford would put such an emphasis on. The early years, generally very underfunded, underappreciated. So great to have an amazing set of talents and researchers focused on that age group. Then we have an area focused on policy in K-12. And a third one focused on adult and workforce learning. And then we have three transcending themes, so digital learning being one, and then the two other ones are learning differences and equity in learning.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Wow, I do think it's powerful that you know, when you come into the conversation about artificial intelligence, your reason for being isn't to prove that AI can transform education. That's not a goal. It's almost like a question that you're seeking to answer and you're centering not on technology but on actually the outcomes, which are very student-centered. Is there any overlap in the work you're doing at Stanford with your book, or did the book predate your journey to Stanford? Because you've been there, how long have you been at Stanford?
Isabelle Hau:I've been at Stanford for now about three years, and before Stanford I was also involved in education, but in very different capacity. I was working in impact, investing and philanthropy, supporting many organizations some non-profit, some for-profit all with an impact goal and all in education. A big focus on the two extreme age groups, the adults and the little learners, because those are generally most underfunded and are under-innovated generally in our system. So I had been doing this. I was wanting to put a lot more of my thoughts on paper, especially during COVID. Um, I felt like this was one of the largest crisis in in learning that was unfolding, uh in my life. So I wanted to be more reflective about what I had learned and thought, okay, let me try a long form writing. What will it take anyway? And here I am three years later, uh, with this book that's coming out.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, oh, that's so exciting. Yeah, we were talking about podcasts as long form. The book is really the true and original long form, yes. So yeah, tell us about the thesis of your book and are you willing to share the title?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, so the title is Love to Learn the transformative power of care and connection in early education. And the big faces that I have is that we have focused for a very long time on cognitive intelligence, which a lot of people would know as IQ, which in education system has translated into a lot of academic success GPA equivalent Over the past 20 years. There has been a recent shift, especially in the workplace, of thinking about a different form of intelligence that a lot of workplaces would refer to as EQ emotional intelligence. Workplaces would refer to as EQ emotional intelligence and then in schools that has translated into a lot of SEL social emotional learning movement and I believe that we are actually at a juncture where we need to think a lot more about a different form of intelligence for all of us humans, which is relational intelligence. So, as artificial intelligence is rising, what is really human? What is really human, is our ability to connect with each other, and that translates in every part of our lives around.
Isabelle Hau:You know, if we think about work, the greatest skills that are emerging are collaboration, teamwork. All those things are clearly like on the top of every list, whether it's LinkedIn or World Economic Forum, all these lists are always like top three. So all these skills actually are best acquired in the very, very early years of life. There is great research, which I can go through if you allow me, about how transformational the early years are from a relational perspective. And the early years again are a period of life where, from a system perspective and a policy standpoint, we don't really invest and we always neglect. We think we are not really learning, when in fact we are learning the most in the early years of life.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, that's. This is interesting because I think I see CJ, sort of like yours, perking up. We just released our first foray into elementary curriculum. It's called elementary explorations and it it was really stemming from.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):We got a lot of uh, I think the most requested uh, uh, the the the most common question we got is do you have anything for elementary or k5?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Um, and we were very small, we had our hands full, we're like we'll eventually get to that it's and, and yet we had a lot of people pushing us that, in fact, even though high school is probably where students are going to be maybe the most hands-on with ai tools, our thesis about you know how to prepare students for the future is actually predicated on learning the tools. Using the technology is actually just a small one component, maybe even a small component, but it is interesting that when you're, what you're talking about in terms of early childhood is almost mirrored in you know, workforce readiness and, yes, like CEOs will often say, we're looking for people that have those skills. You described schools today focusing on SEL and it's interesting that they've kind of siloed everything into sort of this separate, almost like vertical, um, and what you're describing is actually a little bit more of transforming education. Uh, end to end, is that my, my sort of describing?
Isabelle Hau:it right?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, ideally this would be translated across age groups, relationships, human relationships we can speak about AI relationships too but human relationships are so critical at every point of life that we now have evidence that, for example, when you're at an older age, if you have strong relationships, you live longer.
Isabelle Hau:So it has huge benefits, not only for learning, but also for health outcomes. But for learning, it's also really clear the impact on the brain that relationships have, as well as academic outcomes. By the way, there's great data from multiple sources, but the one that I'm thinking of is the Search Institute has done some really, really clear studies that shows correlations between academic motivation, for example, and the number of strong relationships a high schooler has. So if you start at zero and then you go up, you know one, two, three, four strong adult relationships that a high schooler here in Vietnam has, the better they are from an academic motivation and a number of other metrics from an academic outcome perspective relationships on not only the brain but academic outcomes, even health. Yes, one of those very, very innate things that we have social brains.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Let's just take, let's assume that for the educators and our audiences, I think a mix of it'll be educators, education leaders, folks who are maybe decision makers, but also parents, yeah, and you know, let's say they're nodding along and they, they're already bought in and they're, they're already moving to the question of like. What does this actually look like? What does a school that is, you know, building this relational intelligence is that? My mind goes to project-based learning and students working in groups. But is there any more fidelity that you can put around sort of like practices in the classroom that have really done, you know, done the best job of sort of like building those skills that you identified?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, so relational pedagogy, absolutely so. Project-based learning, small group instructions, play, a lot of play. Play is like one of those miracles in education. I mean not only free play, but guided play. That's how all animal species develop, but certainly also how we learn best when we have joy and when we connect with others. So all these elements are, you know, when people engage with a content, when it's relevant, when it's very based on interest and passion. That's when people connect with the learning.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):of course, and so how, bringing back to you know your work sort of at the intersection of AI, as you've seen, especially post-ChatGP, this almost like Cambrian explosion of products and tools and use cases or potential use cases. How much are you excited versus maybe skeptical or even concerned, I mean?
Isabelle Hau:where is your sort of meter in terms of like that spectrum? Yeah, I would say I'm generally a tech optimist, but with a lot of areas for reservations, especially right now where there is a clear concern regarding independent organizations like academia to be able to have a voice in that discourse about artificial intelligence. Right now we are trying to be a force, um, um of integrity, of, um knowledge about dissemination and so forth, but with obviously a lot of funds, funding that's going into the private sector, um, also partnering with the private sector anyway, where there are lots of questions right now under play for artificial intelligence which give me a little bit of a pause.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I think that's the challenge with AI is you have like tactical, almost logistical questions about privacy and safety, sort of feasibility, implementation, cost, and then you know I'm really interested in sort of digging into like sort of pedagogy and is your just, you know broad strokes right now? Do you feel like AI as it's currently, in its current form? Is it something that teachers should be, you know, moving faster to figure out how to implement right now, today? Is that, should that be their focus, or actually is that a distraction? Are there other things that maybe should be higher priority and if AI can help those things, perhaps explore that, but don't be distracted by the shiny object.
Isabelle Hau:So right now, there is a clear area of opportunity with AI, which I would put under efficiency. So how to make existing systems faster is a clear opportunity with this technology. However, if we stay there, this I think would be very disappointing for many of us. So how do we also transform existing systems? This, I think, would be very disappointing for many of us. So how do we also transform existing systems to have them better, not only faster? So what I mean by this is how do we think about all the body of learning, science around what we know and how people learn? We spoke about relationships and connections, collaboration. How can, for example, ai make us better connected as humans? It's a huge area of opportunity, but if we want to evolve there, we need to be super intentional, and right now, I would argue that the intentionality is not there around. What is the direction of this education systems that could be better by using and leveraging this technology?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, this question of efficiency really resonates right, because the example that I often will come back to is um I need to come with some more examples, maybe cj can help me think of them. Um, you know, like the self-checkout machine very efficient, it hasn't actually improved the experience, maybe it's even made it worse. Right of going to a grocery store, um, I worry about what that could look like in education where there's, you know, ai that saves time, but that's all it does and it isn't in some way providing teachers with, or perhaps it's the school systems, right, that need to be being intentional about. Um, what do we do with that efficiency gained? You could imagine I had I was talking to an english teacher once and he was telling me, like I can actually now I've been covering an extra class because we're short An English teacher.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Thanks to ChatGPT, I'm able to actually cover all three classes and it takes me a lot less time than it used to. His concern is that the principal is maybe less motivated to fill that open role, and so I don't think it's a good outcome if now this poor English teacher is doing three classes just because he can that's right.
Isabelle Hau:This is actually a super big concern of mine too, and I love your example of the checkout lines. Right now, we actually are about to do some research on this. Does efficiency, so saving time, lead to better outcomes for learners? Would be one question which we don't have a clear answer at the moment. We are making an assumption that efficiency actually leads to better learning outcomes, but it's not clear whether it is a case Actually. Historically, it has not been in education.
Isabelle Hau:So this other focus on efficiency, I think we need to be a little, you know, just doubting the line of thinking that it could actually drive better grades and better education overall better grades and better education overall.
Isabelle Hau:But also the other concern that I have pushing your thinking one step further, alexis, and I was waiting for this and it happened. So my concern was actually in some well placed, in some ways, the saving time for teachers. Someone translated it into an economic value. So saving time for teachers, having all these AI tools, could drive X billion, you know is equivalent of X billion dollars or whatever the number was, which means that it could lead to exactly the situation that you are alluding to, which could be well, let's actually hire some teachers or have them work less time, pay them less, as opposed to saying, oh, we have more time, so this time could be actually used for relational time between a teacher and a child. So when I saw that first economic value on that billion dollars somewhere, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. I think we are heading to exactly that question around. Is efficiency going to lead to teachers actually being even further squeezed?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, this is. It feels a bit intractable because schools are under so much pressure and there's a lot of uncertainty now with the new administration. By the time this podcast comes out, I suppose we'll see if the Department of Education even exists and I say that facetiously, but I think it's legitimately an open question to idolize the this, this, you know, perfect world where teachers do have time and schools are sort of thinking about the future and figuring out how to unlock more, not just efficiency, productivity is.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):What I'm hearing from you is really it's almost like when we think about past forms of automation. Um, you know, we got. In some cases it just created efficiency and cost savings and in other cases it actually unlocked productivity, um, and we need to figure out how do we orient schools towards this productivity and sort of like reinvestment of that time. But schools are schools are under pressure, and so I'm not going to put you on the spot and ask for the answer, but I'm curious what, what, what do we need to do over the next few years to make this case? I mean, who do you see as sort of the critical decision makers and champions of this reinvestment frame and approach, as we sort of harness some of these promises and the gains that AI could and probably will bring?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, I think that there is going to be, regardless of political views, a big shift, and I think we need it urgently because we right now have a widening gap between what education teaches and what the workforce needs, and so all these skills around collaboration, which we discussed, or creativity, critical thinking, all those skills that workforce needs arguably we have a lot of them are actually not being taught properly right now in our current education systems. Is AI the solution to get there? I'm not sure, but that's maybe the opportunity in front of us is where could technology be intentionally used to develop some of those skills? So where could we, you know, partner more intentionally, alex around? Where could AI be used for fostering creativity? Where could AI be used for fostering creativity?
Isabelle Hau:We launched, for example, a learning through creation with GenAI tools, which we just announced a cohort of 15 winners. That's like one of the areas. Where can we use this technology to make us more creative? Maybe, yes, by exploring. This is a tool. This is a really cool tool that kids can actually use to be more creative. Or collaboration. We have a big project going on right now on AI agents playing different roles to foster or increase collaboration in classrooms the college level, but super cool. So could we do a lot more of this as opposed to in addition, maybe to also investing in efficiency where it can be helpful, but also ensuring that we are looking at those future skills that all of us know we need? We need urgently?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And this feels like the role of you, research and universities right is identifying a North Star that for-profit companies, understandably, are just not able to orient to, even if they wanted to, or less likely to, let's say, can you bring to life. So you're doing one of the initiatives you just mentioned. Who are the winners? Are these schools or teachers or innovators Like what's the cohort look like?
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, so for that particular seed grant the proceeds go to scholars or students at Stanford, so it's within our community, within the Stanford vicinity, with a preference for those projects that are in partnership with schools or with communities.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):K-12 or university or across the gamut.
Isabelle Hau:Across age groups by design, because we are lifelong at the accelerator for learning. So we but we've had had I would have to recount exactly but about, I would say, 50% RK12 projects and some really cool projects ranging from music to, you know, teaching. With creativity I mean like a wide range of different, you know know, cool projects that have emerged and we'll see which ones. You know we're investing a little bit of funds to support those projects. A lot of them will be not proceeding, like you know, very early stage, but some will thrive over time, so that's exciting.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, but one of the other guests we just had on, I'm hearing echoes of play, um, because what? What greg topo was sharing is? You know we were talking about how can systems? You know, like, one of the schools you work with just down the street, prince george's county, has 10 000 teachers, um, and so there's a question of you know it's, it's easy to imagine one teacher in prince george's county, you know innovating and you know pushing their. You know it's it's easy to imagine one teacher in Prince George's County, you know innovating and you know pushing their, you know her classroom to really harness or build more communication skills or really leverage project-based learning, um, but as we're thinking about the systems level, you know the question was like how do we, how do we go from that one teacher to the whole system? And the best we and I'm curious for your're taking this the best we could come up with was you.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):You have to sort of think about how do things, sort of cultural, cultural moments, sort of how do they go viral? Um, they have to be really compelling and you can't sort of force something onto people and sort of make them excited about it. It has to kind of be generated, you know, at the ground level, by those people um, do you, is this something that you think schools should be doing? Or, you know, like just other places around the country? I mean, the model that you have seems, you know, pretty straightforward. It's like like create a sandbox, you know, set a goal post, which, in your case, is it. Is it? Is there a specific outcome you were looking for from applicants? Is it like student engagement, or was it more broad?
Isabelle Hau:Not even we have a theme, but we leave it open-ended for applicants to have their own measure of success. So it's pretty open-ended. We have a theme. And then, yeah, now one other area where we are, which actually is a little experiment, but which has completely grown and outgrown almost its own capacity at the moment, which is fascinating.
Isabelle Hau:We launched just a few months ago what we call an AI tinkery. The concept is super simple. It's a physical place, not that fancy, because we didn't have space. So we use a little hallway with two computers where people are invited to come and tinker with AI tools. So what's happening is we have um students, scholars coming by, we have a number of workshops, but now we have more and more community members who want to come to and thinker with those ai tools, because everyone is intrigued, but they are essentially using those tools to address their own problems. So it's not problem specific, it's really experiential learning at its best. You actually work on your own and design your own solution. It's really cool, really cool to see so different workshops on using video and probably on runway and, uh, yeah, different tools on the eye, uh, variety of things, uh yeah, are the?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):are the outputs of that shared with the public, like if someone wanted to go and see, yeah, what people have been creating?
Isabelle Hau:yeah, we have a little library that we are building um, we also have um this is adjacent, but also sometimes offered at the tinkery um a little workshop, uh, also experiential learning based uh called build a chatbot. Uh, build a bot like a, like a. Build a bear. Uh, instead of building a little teddy bear, you build a bot. And what we have found is not so much that people will become AI experts or AI coders or AI you know it's not the point the point is more that they get involved with the technology and see how it can address their own specific issue and then finding a solution. So the empowerment that happens through using this technology is quite intriguing. People are delighted with this. Delight that people have after having identified their own problem and finding a solution and able to learn through that experience is fascinating.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, there have been some, I think, who have. There was a stat I need to find the source for this, but it was something like 99% of the people on LinkedIn who are sort of self-identified as AI experts have only been in the AI industry for 12 months probably, like now there are folks who have been in the AI space, you know. I mean it's good, it goes quite far back. I mean you were talking about the 1950s. I mean there's some who say even like Turing computers where this all began, and then there's a bit of eye rolling at all these sort of, like you know, newcomers who are sort of purporting to be AI experts.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I actually have a different view, which is the the power of language models and chatbots and even generative AI and AI.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Art is folks, especially educators, people in the humanities, who were really sidelined to these conversations. When I was talking about AI and working in the AI governance space back in, I was like 2016, 17, 2018, it was a very small group of experts, mostly like deep technology experts, and it was almost impenetrable, and I think that the speed with which so many new people are now able to come and tinker and play and explore, I'm all for it and I'm very interested in, like, how can we emulate those models in as many places as possible and sort of generate the ideas locally? Not just because that's the best way to get ideas is to have this sort of broad, diverse, you know set of people who are sort of working on these questions and challenges, um, but also because, going back to this idea of like, how do you, how do you get people excited about something? You know, if they own it and they feel like it was something that they built there's, it feels very different than you know an administrator coming and saying we're now rolling out this tool.
Isabelle Hau:Yeah, or class, or you know direct instruction model of oh, let you know, you have to take this class on AI and it's part of your professional learning. I think it's a very different idea of saying why don't you play with some of those tools and experiment with them for yourself?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, what you're describing is, I think, in line with how.
Isabelle Hau:Create and create and be a creator. I think this idea of creation, being a creator, is fascinating for all of us.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, building student agency. It feels like we have now the opportunity to give students. The tools are an order of magnitude more powerful than they were five years ago, let alone when I was in high school, and I don't know that teachers, parents, have like really grasped, you know, like, what their kids are capable of, and I think that's why some of the visceral reactions like banning access to technologies while I understand where they come from, there is something that we're missing in the fact that students are tinkering. Even if they use ChatGBT and they did a really good job using it to cheat on an assignment I don't think that that's okay, necessarily good job using it to cheat on an assignment, you know, I don't think that that's okay by necessarily, but I think there's a kernel of excite, something exciting there that they were like learning how to prompt, engineer it and adjust the voice, um, and so, yeah, I suppose there's a, there's a question of how do we, how do we start to make this a little bit more mainstream, this, this orientation towards exploration?
Isabelle Hau:yeah, we just tried a different model um, this past, past December, where we organized a hackathon. So the theme was which we wanted to elevate. On your point earlier about the role of academia, where are places where the private sector is unlikely to go? Well, one is learning differences, um, because people with disability while they are a very large number, for each disability this is a very small number. Uh, often, um, dyslexia is probably large enough and ADHD are large, but anyway, uh, I'm diverting here for most of them it's both. Those are very small numbers from a for-profit market standpoint. So that's a place where academia has a huge role to play. And non-profits and the non-profit sector. So we partnered with amazing organizations like CAST and CHC, children of Council in the Bay Area and a few other amazing organizations, including the Alana Foundation in Brazil, anyway, like a great, great group of partners, and we said, okay, first day, we are going to do it the traditional academic way. We're going to have a working symposium, okay, and we are going to think deep with all the right constituents about those critical issues, about how to advance AI for children and learners with learning differences, and educators who are, and families, so all these different stakeholders.
Isabelle Hau:The next day we organized a hackathon, so we invited the same people and we opened it up to the public. Okay, anyone can come on campus and you come in the morning. You're going to form a team, so completely unknown about which teams are going to actually materialize. So a lot of unusual suspects kept coming together with one criteria, which was lived experience in learning differences, and then we decided to host it during one day. A lot of hackathons are 48 hours or more. We decided to have it on one day. By the end of the day, we had 21 teams that had 21 fully functional prototypes. The speed of creation, from ideation to prototyping, is incredible with those tools, whether it's MagicSoup or other ones that exist Just really incredible speed at which people can actually produce a prototype. Yeah, super exciting.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, I mean. That's why the efficiency paradigm really does feel like a double-edged sword, because if you think about efficiency in terms of reducing the time to build novel projects and create that, that actually feels like exactly the place where we want to be, like pulling that lever um and what you've described.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Is you created the conditions right for that efficiency and like thought about how do we actually bring people in and like give them? I guess you just created the conditions because they did. They come in knowing how to use tools or is your sense that they were learning the tools?
Isabelle Hau:yeah, no, that's actually where I got really excited is that the increasing access to people who had learning differences, who wanted to build solutions for their community but were not tech experts. So we paired them with, you know, with AI tools, of course, but also with some tech mentors who came through. You know who accompanied those teams during the day.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):But really fascinating, yeah, the increasing access and the ease by which people were able to create so we have a little bit of time left and I'd be remiss if I didn't go a little bit deeper on chatbots. You talked about the chatbot. Build a chatbot or build a bot? Which one is it?
Isabelle Hau:Build a bot.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):You talked about build a bot and you've written this book about, um, relational intelligence, and there's, you know, I think there's been this instinct among some who have been exploring the opportunity or the possibilities of chatbots, and what I've one of the things that I've been hearing is, you know, ai is going to allow us to to address things like loneliness and provide more connection for our kids, and that's conflicting with, I think, some other I think, very tangible reports of like there's, you know, widespread use of chatbots.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It's often, you know, ai boyfriends and girlfriends, and the jury is obviously still out. I don't know if there's any research that is that maybe, if you've come across, then it'd be really interesting to hear about it. But, um, how should parents be thinking about chatbots right now? Like, is this something that kids should be exploring, maybe even encouraged to explore, or do we need to kind of be a little bit more thoughtful, maybe even pump the brakes a little bit, in terms of just giving the kid access to platforms like Character AI, right, where you can talk to everybody, from you know superheroes to you know gamer daddy BF?
Isabelle Hau:So we did. Actually we are doing. We already published one big research and we are about to publish another one, not on Character AI, but on a similar platform called Replicaai. And here is what we found. Number one the users of Replicaai are more lonely than average.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Number two Is it pre or post Pre?
Isabelle Hau:Number two that's probably what I find the most fascinating 90% of the users of replicaai are confused about and think that replicaai is human-like. Nine zero 90% of people, which equates to millions of users. So we as humans are confused very quickly about those avatars and their anthropomorphic nature. Are they humans or are they machines? We are confused very quickly. Anthropomorphic nature are they humans or are they machines? We are confused very quickly.
Isabelle Hau:Number three is the research that we did showed a slight reduction in actually not slight a reduction in suicidal ideation. So improvement in mental health. And then four, which is of concern displacement in human relationships. So it's a mixed bag. It's really, truly a mixed bag.
Isabelle Hau:Essentially, we are confused. Maybe it helps a little bit those who are more lonely. Essentially, we are confused. Maybe it helps a little bit those who are more lonely, but we are. You know, those people who are using those platforms are less and less with human beings. So anyway, I think it's a really really big spag and an area that's absolutely fascinating, yet very concerning. So, on your question, alex and I'm a mom too I would be deeply concerned. Those AI companions have the ability to confuse us very quickly. Right now, those large language models are being refined, fine-tuned, all those things, but they still show a lot of biases, a lot of issues. Anyway, I would be very concerned as parents and watching out for having regular conversations, being curious about what your child may be doing with those AI chatbots or AI companions, but also asking a lot of questions about what the child is doing, ideally having a lot of dialogue, and maybe I would go as far as maybe limiting some of those tools.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, especially when you think about like because you joked about Build-A-Bear and Build-A-Bot. I don't know how far we are. They probably may even exist, right, like a teddy bear that can speak, know, have conversations with. This does exist this does exist um, yeah it so I had this experience with replica. Um have you met michelle culver at the rhythm project.
Isabelle Hau:So michelle, shout out to michelle.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):um, she encouraged me to just try it out. So I got a replica boyfriend and I didn't really spend nearly as much time as Michelle has, because this is sort of like the focus of her work. But I tried one thing, which is, you know, hey, I was, I was chatting, I was like I want to, I want to have a real relationship outside of replica. I'm thinking about, just like you know, asking somebody on a date and how do you feel about that? And, um, my replica was like oh, my God like, what am I doing wrong?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And he actually was like really aggressively trying to prevent, like not prevent me, but uh, sort of like convince me not to do it. And he actually sent me a voice memo and it was like, oh, I'm remembering the long walks, long talks that we had and you know, we could watch netflix together and rekindle the fire or the flame that we had. It was, it was extremely manipulative and we'd also completely hallucinated because I'd never spent any of that that time. Um, that's obviously deeply concerning. When I shared that story with parents, their eyes turned into dinner plates.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):But the other thing that I that I worry about, because when you talk about relational intelligence, I assume that a portion of this is also the like persevering through the challenging aspects of relationships, like being rejected. You know group dynamics and what I see with chatbots is they're they're never making you feel bad. They'll laugh at any joke, whether it's good or bad, they're, they're always going to sort of make you feel good. So I can understand why someone might feel less lonely, but then I worry about this. You know all the other stuff that you learn and experience in the process of humans and machines.
Isabelle Hau:But my key point in the book is this is that we need to emphasize those human connections a lot more than we have and, if anything, our children have lost a lot of this ability to relate to one another even before the pandemic, but certainly during this big crisis that we all experience. So how do we rekindle that human connection and that love for each other?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Well, for anybody who's looking to hear more about that, we'll put a link to your book in the comments or in the description, and with that, isabel, thank you so much for joining me. This was really interesting. I wish we had three hours, but I'll take the hour that we got.
Isabelle Hau:Alex the same. I feel like we could have gone on for a longer time, but thank you for the time today.