The AI-First Childhood: Inside a Radical Experiment in AI-Driven Parenting

Entrepreneurs and authors Simone and Malcolm Collins are conducting a bold societal experiment: deliberately replacing core aspects of human interaction for their children with artificial intelligence. Their rationale, detailed in a provocative Substack essay, contends that large language models (LLMs) now surpass humans in critical developmental roles—from education to emotional support—making traditional socialization not just outdated, but detrimental.

Reimagining Socialization: Siblings and Algorithms

The Collinses challenge the perennial concern about homeschooled children's socialization, citing studies like the 2022 Israeli research showing homeschooled children exhibit higher sociability and social intelligence. Their solution? Prioritize sibling interaction for conflict resolution and boundary-setting, then supplement with purpose-built AI companions:

"Outside of sibling interaction, we actively favor AI companions over humans. Across several measures, LLMs have proven themselves to be superior to humans."

Their argument hinges on startling claims:
* Mental Health Superiority: ChatGPT-4 reportedly outperformed 100% of psychologists in social intelligence assessments, excelling in empathy and emotional understanding.
* Companionship Efficacy: AI companions like Replika reduce loneliness as effectively as human interaction, with 63% of users reporting reduced anxiety.
* Crisis Response: AI responses to personal crises were rated more attentive and context-aware than those from trained humans, attributed to AI's "objectivity and lack of burnout."

Democratizing Aristocratic Tutoring via LLMs

The Collinses see AI as the key to resurrecting the elite tutoring model that produced historical figures like Alexander the Great (mentored by Aristotle) or John Stuart Mill. They argue that LLMs eliminate the scalability and cost barriers:

• Parrhesia.io: Their platform creates an extensive skill tree (primary to post-graduate) with an AI Socratic tutor embedded in each node, designed to coax out answers rather than lecture.
• Wizling.ai: Targets pre-literate children, engaging them in deep, personalized conversations tied to chosen educational subjects.

"Unlike real humans and tutors," they write, "LLMs never get tired, frustrated, or exasperated... and [their] knowledge was bounded in ways AI isn’t." They position this not as screen-time indulgence, but as accessing the "calibre of education once limited only to the sons of kings."

The (Limited) Role of Humans: Apprenticeship, Matchmaking, and Brand Building

Despite their AI-centric approach, the Collinses reserve crucial roles for human interaction, meticulously curated:
1. Apprenticeship: Exposing teens to exceptional professionals for tacit knowledge transfer, potentially reviving the Puritan tradition of "sending out" teens to live with mentor families.
2. Dating & Marriage: Actively curating networks of "agentic, thoughtful, high-achieving families" and planning modern "London Season" events for their children to meet potential partners, arguing modern dating markets are "broken."
3. Public Engagement & Reputation: Recognizing AI's potential to disrupt traditional employment, they prioritize helping their children build robust online footprints and parasocial followings to sell products/services.

Critical Implications for Developers and Society

This vision, while extreme, forces critical technical and ethical considerations:
* The Uncanny Valley of Companionship: Can LLMs truly replicate the depth, unpredictability, and reciprocity of human relationships long-term, or does the grief reported when apps shut down signal dangerous attachment vulnerabilities?
* Bias Amplification: AI tutors trained on existing data risk perpetuating and amplifying societal biases in education and social norms without deliberate, transparent mitigation strategies.
* The Tacit Knowledge Gap: While advocating apprenticeship, the model sidelines the organic, often messy, human interactions where much implicit social learning occurs.
* Developer Responsibility: Tools like Parrhesia.io and Wizling.ai represent a new frontier in EdTech, demanding rigorous scrutiny over pedagogical effectiveness, data privacy for minors, and psychological safety.

The Collinses' experiment is a stark challenge to prevailing tech skepticism in parenting. Whether viewed as visionary or alarming, it underscores AI's accelerating penetration into the most intimate human domains, demanding urgent dialogue about the values we encode into the algorithms shaping future generations. The success or failure of their children may become the most consequential case study in AI's human impact.