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As AI enters children's lives, human connection remains our most important tool for fostering critical thinking, empathy, creativity, and resilience.
AI is entering playrooms and classrooms at a breakneck pace. How can parents, educators, and communities nurture human connection while leveraging the benefits of technology? Dr. Dana Suskind knows. A surgeon, professor, and New York Times bestselling author of Human Raised and Parent Nation, Dana has dedicated her career to enhancing the pivotal role that caregivers play in building healthy young brains that are wired to learn, adapt, and connect. In urgent and actionable talks, she draws on her experience at the cutting edge of neuroscience to make the case for protecting both innovation and humanity rather than choosing between them. She equips audiences with four timeless principles to inform decisions about AI in childhood, and offers a concrete framework for fostering the unmistakable human capabilities that no algorithm can replicate. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt writes, “Raising a generation that can truly thrive alongside AI requires foundations that only humans can build. Dana makes that case brilliantly—and backs it with the science to prove it.”
Dana Suskind, MD, is Founder and Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, Founding Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago.
Her latest book, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI, is the roadmap that parents, educators, and communities need for raising children in an increasingly automated world. Rather than asking us to choose between innovation and humanity, Dana makes the case for protecting both. And she equips us with four timeless principles to ground decisions about AI and encourage the messy, beautiful human connections that build children’s skills as well as their capacity for love, empathy, and resilience. Adam Grant (Think Again) calls it “a stunning book about how to protect our children—and our humanity—in the age of AI,” while Eve Rodsky (Fair Play) writes that “Dana Suskind has done something remarkable: she takes our deepest fears about AI and children and transforms them into hope—and a clear path forward.”
Dana is a recognized thought leader on the national stage. In addition to Human Raised, she is the New York Times bestselling author of Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain and Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise. Her work has been featured in prominent media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, NPR, and The Economist.
Dana has dedicated her research and clinical life to optimizing foundational brain development and preventing early cognitive disparities from taking root, with an emphasis on helping parents and caregivers leverage their power as brain architects. Her pioneering research extends into the critical intersection of artificial intelligence and early childhood, exploring how emerging technologies can enhance—rather than replace—the pivotal role that caregivers play in building healthy young brains that are wired to learn, adapt, and connect. This body of work includes the creation of an AI-driven wearable device that promotes rich early language environments and helps deepen caregiver-child connection through conversation.
Through her unique lens as both a surgeon who harnesses technology to restore hearing and a researcher who champions human connection, Dana continues to shape how we understand the delicate balance between technological innovation and nurturing child development.
AI is already shaping how children grow up. Smart cribs, cry-decoding monitors, interactive companions for toddlers—and this is only the beginning. But our most powerful tool as parents, educators, mentors, and communities isn’t a chatbot, says Dr. Dana Suskind. It’s our own human connection.
Dana is a pediatric surgeon and researcher whose pioneering work on AI and child development is shaping how parents navigate the most important questions of our age. In this talk, she draws on her hotly acclaimed book Human Raised to offer the science-backed guide to raising children in the age of AI that parents, educators, and policymakers have been waiting for.
In this honest, accessible talk, Dana offers audiences her unique HOPE framework for raising children alongside AI:
In addition, audiences learn how to develop the human edge (empathy, creativity, critical thinking, and resilience) that will become the defining advantage of the decades ahead. And they leave with practical tools to make intentional choices about technology in children’s lives, permission to trust their instincts in a world calling for optimization, and a renewed confidence that the outcome of this moment is still, very much, up to us.
