The Rise of AI in Everyday Life
摘要
The chapter examines the practices and discourses through which AI-based technologies are entering the everyday life worlds of children and families. AI-powered tools have already become part of the family planning process, and have been rapidly adopted by the health sector, as well as pronatalism activists. Contemporary parents are eager to make use of various baby-tech applications, chatbots, social robots and AI toys to support their parental and caring responsibilities. However, the role of parents in the mediation of children’s GenAI adoption is still rather limited. Teenagers are the early adopters of GenAI within their families, who associate the use of GenAI tools with various affordances. Our interviews with the Estonian and Italian young people indicate that they have started to rely upon GenAI tools for informational, instrumental, appraisal and emotional support—revealing a growing emergence of AI individualism among this generation.