Sam Altman got roasted for an AI parenting idea. He was closer to right than the internet thinks.

Last week, Sam Altman posted what he called a cool use case for ChatGPT: connect your family calendars, tell it your kids' interests, and generate podcasts.

Naturally, he was immediately roasted.

I think the criticism against Sam is a bit unfair. Here's what I think he meant: yes, parents talk to their kids themselves about their interests in soccer, birthdays, etc. But AI can be helpful by looking up facts about an opposing team, or the position the kid plays, or perhaps a brief story about the history of birthdays. I'd find this fun to listen to if I were a kid (or even today).

The question is never whether AI should replace talking to your kids. It's how much of the invisible work around parenting AI can absorb, because that work is enormous. To me this means providing short bursts of entertainment and looking up facts about cool subjects, but also doing things like scheduling, tracking, fixing, monitoring so I have more time to spend elsewhere.

There are two main ways I think of using AI in my household right now: 1. Helping with tasks directly for my son, and 2. Reducing the admin time spent in other areas of daily/weekly household tasks to spend more time with him.

Using AI directly in parenting

My son is 9 months old, so we're still a few years away from using AI to create podcasts or entertainment for him. Here's how I use AI right now:

1. I vibe-coded a little family journal app for him so we can record the milestones he reaches and when, as well as when he tries different foods or experiences something new. I can use voice-to-text for this which helps me fill it out on the go.

   

2. I recently added a section to this to track questions (along with the dates they come up) so I can ask the right person, whether that's his pediatrician, dentist, etc. Yes, I could accomplish this in the notes section of my phone, but things get lost in there!

3. I ask AI to identify any sort of admin or type of account we need to set up for him but have lagged on. For example, I used AI to figure out what a Trump Account is (a new tax-advantaged savings accounts for kids born after 2024), explain it to me, what the benefits were, and how to use it.

I feel confident about the types of toys and activities I already plan for him. And I try to be a "buy less" mom, not running out to get all the latest gear. But these are the areas where I'll probably use AI next: creating activities we can do together, and then finding the most durable, best priced products we need.

The second way I use AI (and my month of everything breaking)

We've all had one or more of these months. But in roughly four weeks:

1. My HVAC line clogged from outside soil intrusion and leaked, which meant a drain repair plus a separate water damage restoration job.
2. A couple weeks later, my water heater started leaking in the same place (unrelated).
3. My car needed a new tire, which turned into two dealership trips, one wrong purchase, one return, and a rescheduled appointment a week out.
4. My AC unit went out for 24 hours and required multiple calls to find a technician.
5. I spent 30 min sorting out a registration fee because my car still didn't have its Texas tag.

These are things that require A LOT more of my time and dedicated attention but could be prevented with some regular maintenance.

I used AI to create a project in Claude for a "home ops file." I added documents (like receipts, companies I've worked with in the past, my home inspection report) plus listed pieces of equipment in my house to give context. Prompting looked like this:

Here's an inventory of my home's equipment: [HVAC unit, water heater, sprinkler system, appliances, ages, and any past issues]. Build me a preventive maintenance calendar for the next 12 months. For each task, tell me the frequency, whether it's DIY or professional, roughly what it costs, and what failure it prevents. Flag the three tasks most likely to prevent an expensive repair, based on my equipment's age and history.

Then I put tasks on my calendar with recurring reminders. The rule I follow now is anything that breaks reactively earns a permanent, preemptive entry. I also asked Claude to share a monthly report: if there's anything I need to schedule within the next month or be aware of as the seasons change. Claude also helped me evaluate if it was worth paying for certain preventative services.

Nobody wants AI replacing conversations with their kids. But there are real opportunities to use AI in the invisible work of running a household.