Siri in a Teddy
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
Maybe I read too much Calvin and Hobbes growing up.
That being said, I do think that in the future we're going to have to start learning to be comfortable talking with computers.. so maybe this is a good thing. Not sure how I feel about this stuff now that I think about it.
And not to forget: Dolls are most often initially "brought to life" by parents when playing with their children. They can form a vital path of communication and conveying of culture between parent and child.
You could argue that the parent talks to the bear and the bear talks to the child. But seriously now - I don't want Siri between me and my child, thank you.
Also - I don't want my child to be constantly affected by me. The good thing about a lifeless teddy bear is that they find out that they can change it, completely. If the Siri Bear is molded by me, initially, this now means that the degree to which it is able to be molded by the child is determined by the Siri Bear, not by the child.
If there's one place I'm a luddite it's with regards to the rearing of children.
It's at the discretion of the parent to decide what influences a child can or should be able to deal with. I don't see the use of this bear in that context - I think it's dangerous if introduced too early and rather useless when introduced later. (And I have similar "too early" reservations towards smartphones, or anything with a screen, really.)
I think that the quality of life a human (first child, then adult) enjoys is based on getting the basics right first - everything else builds upon the fundamentals of movement and perception, thought and expression that you learn in your first years. I've seen a couple too many children who are astoundingly incapable of commanding their own body, leave alone understanding their own person in context of the society they are in. I have enjoyed a lot of time for myself in contact with my surroundings - I got a lot of exposure to the elements - and that's what I want to pass on.
I think what you get from that is a calm sense of being connected to reality and only from that comes the ability to properly understand abstract concepts like smart phones or computers. If you lack that connection, you might still excel in the use of these devices, but there will always be something missing. You would be disconnected from reality and thus always try, but fail to connect with it fully.
Some manage to claim that connection back (the usual stories you read about people travelling to India come to mind), but like learning languages very late in life, the effort is a lot higher and you might find yourself wondering how your life could have been had you connected earlier.
Good luck on being a father. Remember that probably 90% of what kids need is consistency and love and you don't have to think that part through much at all. :-)
I was just talking about the Siri Teddy with my wife when this came up - More often than not, the box that something came in was a lot more interesting than the thing itself. And when somebody in the family got new shoes, getting the shoebox was heaven. I vividly remember being upset a couple of times because my parents forgot to bring home the box when they got new shoes.
Oh the things we built(/d) from cardboard boxes. That's what life is all about.
"In a teddy bear"
It would not be evil, if they made the software independant of the cloud, but I suspect they cannot due to a) the amount of data+processing speed required or b) in order to bind their customers.
An evil teddy bear could subvert your kid to murder xyz, let your parents buy xyz or do other things. That's why all highly intelligent AI robots in Films are independent agile forces and sometimes even able to additionally connect to the hive (collective mind), but they very rarely operate on the command of the hive (exclude the borg, they ought to be like Seven of Nine).
Am I paranoid or is there this slippery slope way too steep?
1) The KS video is completely gimmiky 2) The voice of the bear is (as pointed out by akandiah) completely non-child friendly. 3) They're claiming they can get this tech to market for 99 pounds a piece, yet don't divulge any real technical information at all. 4) I'm not even convinced the talking in the video was genuine.
I really hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, I really hope the KS staff catch this one in the bud.
I dont think it has to be a scam - it could be essentially a bluetooth headset that provides a microphone and speaker in teddybear form, with some extra motors to actuate the mouth when playing audio.
The idea of a supertoy is exciting as presented in the film "AI".
The (user supplier) smart phone does all the work. Except, even then, chatbots are hopeless and even Siri is often weird and sub-optimal.
I get terrible results from normal questions. I speak with children. They have wondrous, amazing, confusing, marvelous, off-the-wall ideas. If anything can make a computer fail a Turing Test it's the questions of a child.
That said, it's a fascinating project, and getting mass backing for these kinds of things is going somewhere I'd like to see the world heading.
(Although I share the feelings that toys are really supposed to be about imagination - I've met so many young people lately with poor problem solving/conceptual skills, and I don't think that's disconnected from the increasing prevalence of highly passive young age play activities over the last couple of decades. I've got nothing scientific with which to back that statement though!)
But, please bear in mind that this is one way that the UK is not very well joined up with the rest of the EU:
International shipping from the UK is awkward and expensive compared to domestic shipping (at least in small volumes) - for example, it's unlikely the local Post Office in Abergavenny would even handle an international parcel of this size and weight.
The ultimate difference in cost is probably >10GBP from the quotes I can find on parcels of an appropriate size and weight, although it's difficult to say.
This sounds like the video used a pre-recorded voice. So it isn't even actually working yet.
One wonders what sort of brainwashing potential a toy could be used for if it interacted this way with children.
[1] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pannous.vo...
Imagine every human you talked to had a 6 second ping.
"Bear, do you like me?"
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi.
"Yes, I like you."
Having to submit your smartphone entirely to the bear's voice-control would be very frustrating to most people and I can see this being a limiting factor when it comes to actual usage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrFzGKUs8-I
Love ALL your comments.
If I look tired its because I pulled two all nighters getting accepted on Kickstarter :-)
I hope it's more child friendly
We couldn't have made it through the first couple of months without it. Granted, that's diaper territory, so who knows whether it had a wet sheet effect, but still. If your child can't sleep and is very quick to wake on sounds, give it a try. And thank me later.
Internet connected device...has camera...play with children.
Recipe for disaster