Book: Human Raised

Human Raised

Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI

Dana Suskind, MD

310 pp., hardcover

Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House Publishing

When I was a child, when President Reagan was calling on Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and you had four options for broadcast television (and a converter box if you wanted to be entertained by 4 or 8 bits of processing power!), my parents would not buy me the cool toy the kid down the street had. It was a nifty little Texas Instruments device called a “Speak & Spell,” and they were concerned that my sister and I would end up trying to talk like the digitized voice rather than speaking like a person.

I just wanted something to use for communicating with aliens if they crashed on our street. After all, I had seen E.T. In truth, I had a habit of mimicking movies far more than what noises I could get out of educational toys. Still, this part of my childhood echoes to the present moment because we’re still challenged about how much to expose children to screen times, digitally-processed responses, and non-human learning aids.

While I have not gone back and read the parenting advice from the disco-era that guided my upbringing, my wife and I did consult other turn-of-the-millennium books as our kids were born. Now, we’re looking at parenting tips for friends and future grandchildren in the new era, where Generative Artificial Intelligence is part of the fibers of life, along with algorithms that guide our shopping and the ads we see when we stream programs over dozens of platform options.

Into this milieu comes Human Raised, by Dana Suskind, MD. Dr. Suskind writes here to set forth some templates about how to keep your parenting (especially) guided toward making human connections, so that your children end up more human-focused than digitally guided people as adults. After all, the goal is not “good kids,” but adults capable of thriving in the world around them. “Good kids” are a stage in that development process, but then again, “challenging kids” are also a stage. 

Some folks will likely fault Dr. Suskind’s work because she does not come out flatly against using AI-tools in parenting, including exposing children to the products of AI. While there are valid ethical critiques of many AI-systems, from their flamboyant thefts of intellectual property to their excessive destruction of environmental systems, she approaches the situation with the realism that says: “There will be AI, so how do we deal with it?” If you’re looking for a debate about AI overall, this is not it. She does not deny the need for that debate, but is not hosting it here.

Instead, you have basic guidance on researching AI and what you should and should not use it for. There are several chapters first establishing the very real need for parents and caregivers to be human-first in their interactions with children. Suskind makes plain that imperfect human interaction far supersedes algorithmic perfection. (She also acknowledges that most algorithms aren’t going to hit perfection anyway!) Her medical specialty in pediatrics and otolaryngology (I was a frequent ENT patient as a kid, lots of ear infections!) exposes her to many children’s diverse development challenges and provides good illustration of the real-world principles she writes about. 

I found her acknowledgement that family resources, such as financial wealth, access to medical care, and extended support groups of people, will affect whether you can use AI to strengthen your parenting, help you survive challenges, or not even be able to use it a valuable note. Too often, guidance on technology assumes equal access. Again, life in pediatrics has made clear that not everyone can do everything. (If you’d like to see authors who don’t note these inequalities, check out most nutrition writers. The assumption is massive that anyone can afford, in time, energy, and access, to eat perfectly all the time.)

Each chapter in this book ends with a helpful TL;DR section, giving you, the reader, the main takeaways from each chapter. One should still read the chapters! However, life gets busy. You will see the value of each chapter as you check these chapters out. If you see this book on a bookstore shelf and want to know if it’s worthwhile, take a peak at any of those chapter endings.

Finally, almost worth the price of purchase itself, she walks the reader through an investigative framework using DETECT as an acronym. This shows up in the body of the text starting in chapter 8, but then is helpfully pulled-out into an appendix for easy reference. This framework guides the reader in evaluating AI and other technology implementations. I expect to see this material to show up in parenting seminars soon.

All-in-all, Dr. Suskind has produced a well-constructed argument for rational use of AI and other technology tools to allow parents more space to build human connections with their children. She provides good cautions about not letting the technology overrun human imperfection, and the gives a good framework for investigating any technology or activity you involve your children with.