• by Maria Bailey , Columnist, February 23, 2023

In less than four months, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has created a stir among teachers, business owners and tech enthusiasts.

Why the fuss? ChatGPT can produce a grammatically correct college application essay, a chapter for a book on puppies, and answer math problems. If history repeats itself, as technology changes. so do the demands of parents for toys to fill in the holes in their child’s development.

So If ChatGPT can write a high school essay for a student, or calculate math equations into an Excel spreadsheet, how much will children really have to learn in the future? Will they need the head start of educational and STEM toys?  

I see the return of toys that were popular before it became mandatory for all toys to give a child a head start on technology.

Brands such as Leap Frog and V-Tech prospered by creating what I call edutainment. STEM became a buzz word in the toy industry, and until recently the point of entry for toy manufacturers. In fact, Gen X moms were the last group of parents to embrace the “just let my child play on the floor and have fun” mentality. 

Millennial parents were raised as children on Baby Einstein videos -- which, by the way were never meant to make babies smarter, regardless of the brand name. It’s a forgotten fact that Julie Aigner Clark, the mom creator of Baby Einstein, developed the line of videos to introduce children to classical music and art.

However as adults, those raised on Baby Einstein are now intent on using play to educate their kids, and the toy industry has happily filled their needs.

As ChatGPTand other artificial intelligence becomes more mainstream, here’s the types of toys that Moms will likely seek for their children:

Toys that promote linking together original thoughts and independent creation.  Moms will want to ensure their children don’t lose the ability to assemble original sentences and coherent paragraphs that are expressive of their own, authentic feelings.

Toys that develop emotional intelligence. Feelings and personal sensitivity will rise to the top of priorities. If children can easily find the answer to an algebra problem, moms will want them to “feel” the struggle of working through a complex problem whether it involves decision making or numbers. Toys can help moms present practice exercises in a fun learning manner.

Toys that teach children how to manage artificial intelligence by navigating its capabilities and how to extract the answers they need. ChatGPT likely has the answer or can find it, but often it’s how you ask the questions that determines the data you receive. Children will need to learn how to ask the right questions and how to re-ask them in new ways in order to fully utilize artificial intelligence.

The need for this education will put parents back on the path of using toys to give their children a head start in navigating new technologies.

The winner in the toy space of the future will be those brands that can develop toys with a balance between emotional development, education, and fun in the real world and online.