Aladdin’s Genie or Pandora’s Box for Early Childhood Education? Experts Chat on the Roles, Challenges, and Developments of ChatGPT

Research Findings: This study aims to explore the optimal roles, pressing challenges, and future developments of ChatGPT in early childhood education (ECE) by interviewing six expert professors from China and the United States. A content analysis approach that combined inductive and deductive coding was employed to analyze the transcribed interviews. The findings of this study revealed two primary roles of ChatGPT in ECE: (1) conversational agent for young children and (2) on-call facilitator for educators and caregivers. The challenges and risks associated with ChatGPT were categorized using the ”3A2S” framework, which includes Accessibility, Affordability, Accountability, Sustainability, and Social Justice. The participants suggest that as knowledge, information retrieval, and integration skills become less critical, human agency and inquiry ability become more important. As a result, they predict that ChatGPT's future trajectory should be as a resource for Intelligence Augmentation (IA) rather than as a replacement for the actions of educators and caregivers. Furthermore, AI opens new domains in ECE, such as AI literacy and AI social interaction, paving the way for novel opportunities and challenges in the field. Practice or Policy: This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on integrating AI technologies in ECE and offers valuable suggestions for policymakers, educators, and caregivers.