The Greatest Gift to the Future: Part I
Technology, pies, and people in the age of AI
It was 1951, Fred Rogers’ senior year of college, and he was home in Latrobe visiting family. There, the aspiring minister encountered a strange, glowing screen for the first time.
He didn’t like what he saw.
“I saw people throwing pies in each other’s faces,” he later said, “and I thought: This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?”
It’s a story that still resonates. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, the size and shape of the screens have changed. The pies look different, too: today, they’re deepfakes and threats, deceptions and slop. But in the age of AI, the two of us feel – sometimes, at least – like the young Fred Rogers: disappointed by how the wonderful tools at our disposal are used (or not used) to care for kids.
We’re not alone. Surveys show that Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, especially when it comes to its impact on human relationships. At the same time, we all seem to recognize the technology’s potential, even while wondering where that potential might lead. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most frequent question we get during our talks is, “What would Fred Rogers do/think/say about AI?”
And the truth is, we’ll never know. We’re as curious as you are! (Reason #4,567 why we wish he was still around.) But what we can know is how he responded to one technology – television. And we can wonder, together, about what that response might teach us.
So, this month and next, that’s what we’re going to do.
We don’t expect to reach a place of clarity. This is, after all, “absolutely the proverbial ‘flying the plane while we’re building it’ situation,” says our friend Lance Lindauer, executive director of the Partnership to Advance Responsible Technology.
But as Fred himself once said, “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”
In that spirit, let’s ask some questions.
What did Fred Rogers do?
Though famously soft spoken, he didn’t mince words when it came to early television. “I went into television because I hated it so,” he said in a 1999 interview, “and I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.”
His path to finding such a way took him first to New York City, where he worked at NBC, learning the nuts and bolts of how people made television programs. There, he worked on The Gabby Hayes Show: a short-lived, Western-themed program for children that began and ended with its host looking directly into the camera – speaking, as Gabby Hayes put it, to “one little buckaroo” on the other side.
It was one of several ways in which Fred saw television being used to nurture connection. After moving to Pittsburgh to work on a new concept – educational television – he kept expanding his toolkit, thanks in part to a decades-long collaboration with Margaret McFarland and other experts in child development. Gradually, he blended deep knowledge of his medium with the science of learning and a ministerial mission “to look at the television camera and present as much love as you possibly could to a person who might feel that he or she needs it.”
The result of this blending became Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The program embodied the best of what television could be, while avoiding or minimizing the medium’s risks. Fred’s careful attention to what was best for children – rather than what was best for networks or advertisers – informed every moment of the program, lasting even beyond an episode’s runtime.
“I’ve always said the best time for our program is once it’s over,” he said, “and the television is turned off.” That’s when kids and the people who care for them could talk about what they’d seen – strengthening their bonds along the way.
What might we learn from this?
Our friend Michelle Culver thinks a lot about using AI to strengthen human connection. One way it might do so, she says, is by creating opportunities for adults to learn alongside the kids in their care.
“One of the things that we hear most often is that while young people are in fact exploring and experimenting with AI, they are not talking to adults in their lives about it – explicitly, by choice – whether those are educators or family members,” says Culver, founder of the Rithm Project. “That is because they feel adult fear and judgment and shame about AI, and no young person wants to feel judged.”
Listening to young people’s thoughts and questions about AI – and aiding their efforts to use it constructively – can help forge stronger face-to-face relationships. Here in Pittsburgh, our friend Mary Catherine Reljac has been meeting with middle school students who participate in her district’s “Superintendent-Student Cabinet” to discuss AI.
“They said, ‘We don’t think you’re doing enough, and we have some questions,” says Reljac, superintendent of the Fox Chapel Area School District near Pittsburgh. So, she and her team began sitting down with these students to wonder how AI might be handled in their classrooms – and how the technology might be put to positive use.
Students have told Reljac that first and foremost, they want to learn from human teachers. But after learning a lesson from a teacher, one proposed, what if students struggling to grasp a particular concept could ask AI to explain that concept again, perhaps in a variety of ways?
“People want people. People want relationships,” Reljac says. And when kids receive guidance and support from adults, they know someone is looking out for them in this challenging new world.
How might we look out for the kids in our lives?
That’s the question we’ll turn to next month. In the meantime, we’ll leave you with a quote – and an invitation.
“No matter what lies ahead,” Fred Rogers said, “children always need to know that they are loved and capable of loving. Anything that adults can do to help in this discovery will be our greatest gift to the future.”
How might you give this gift in the age of AI? Let us know in the comments or at whenyouwonderbook@gmail.com.
Freelance writer Melissa Rayworth, who serves as executive editor at Kidsburgh.org, contributed reporting.