CONCEPT
The AI Dose-Response Curve
The pharmacological principle — too little produces no effect, too much produces harm — applied to AI exposure, structuring the clinical question that prohibition-vs-endorsement debates obscure.
The dose-response framework
Christakis applied to television in 2004 is the template for evaluating AI's developmental impact. Before his study, the screen-time conversation was binary: screens were good or bad, depending on camp. His work transformed it into a pharmacological question: at what dose, at what developmental stage, does the effect transition from benefit to harm? The 2004 paper demonstrated a continuous dose-response relationship for television with ten-percent increments in attentional problems per daily hour of early exposure. The AI version of the question is structurally identical but empirically harder: the measurement unit ('AI time') collapses qualitatively distinct interactions; the relationship is almost certainly non-linear; and — critically — the longitudinal data does not yet exist. The framework nonetheless structures the right question even where it cannot yet provide the answer.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The measurement problem is severe. Television exposure was simple: the child was watching or not watching, and duration could be estimated by parental report. AI exposure is categorically more complex. A
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