Kelly Corrigan

She's probably most famous for surfacing this idea of alloparents, which means other parents.

So there was this sort of resting belief that infants were completely attached to their mother in a singular way.

And the idea that she introduced is that can't possibly be true.

They'd never have survived.

They're very needy.

They're very expensive little creatures.

It takes them forever to stand up on their own and move into the world.

And because of that, there's no way that there weren't other mothers involved in the rearing of these children, which means that children can attach themselves.

to people who are not their mother.

Sarah is so fun to work with because she wasn't thinking about AI at all.

When we first called her, I think she thought, oh, I'm going to talk about the things I typically talk about.

I mean, she goes around the world giving talks.

Yes.

And it's, you know, what's a human for?

In an AI world, what's a human for?

And so our block is kind of what's a mother for?

And I put this idea in front of her, like, can you imagine a reality where AI is involved intimately in the rearing of children?

Could they attach to an AI?

We wondered if you might be interested in teaching the audience something about mothers and allomothers and why...

This is the ultimate job for humans that can never be replaced in any meaningful way by any other type of intelligence.