Alex Ambrose

Every wave of new technology triggers a legislative reflex to “protect the children.” In seeking solutions to real or alleged harms to children on social media, policymakers have turned to flawed policies—such as age verification and outright bans—that cut children off from social media’s benefits instead of actually targeting its risks. Legislators are now recycling this playbook for artificial intelligence chatbots, or systems that process user inputs to respond with simulated conversation. But the playbook doesn’t work for either AI or chatbots.

Artificial intelligence adoption has accelerated rapidly in recent years, most visibly through consumer-facing applications such as chatbots and such generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. These technologies are reshaping how people work, communicate, and access information. Less visible but equally consequential is the emergence of wearable AI, which trains on spatial data—including depth, motion, object recognition, and environmental mapping—to interact with the physical world in real time.