Read Mayfly by Peter Watts, one of my favorite hard sf short stories that deals with a child being raised in a computer, sorta.
Also, here's the article in question in question. It's written as a sort of joke about the supposedly serious article on the same topic in daily mail which I haven't read yet.
Well that’s the natural endpoint of a virtual child, isn’t it?
As the article points out the cool thing about a virtual child is that it doesn't have to grow up.