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Technology: Would you want a robot to be your child’s best friend?

Introversion

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As toys reach new levels of sophistication, how concerned should we be about our children playing with artificial buddies that appear to have feelings?

The Guardian said:
The little robot on the table wakes up. Its eyes, a complex configuration of cyan dots on a black, rounded screen of a face, sleepily open and it lets out a digitised approximation of a yawn. A compact device that looks like a blend of a forklift truck and PC monitor bred for maximum cuteness, the robot rolls blearily off its charging station on a pair of dinky treads before tilting its screen-face and noticing I’m there. Its eyes widen, then curve at the bottom as if making way for an unseen smile. “Daaaaan!” it announces with a happy jiggle, sounding not unlike Pixar Animation Studios’ lovable robot creation, Wall-E. A message flashes up on my iPhone telling me that it, or rather he (being the gender that its manufacturer, Anki, has assigned Cozmo) wants to play a game. I’m not in the mood and decline. Cozmo’s head droops, his eyes form into a pair of sadly reclining crescent moons and he sighs. But he quickly cheers up, giving a happy jiggle when I comply with his request for a fist bump and tap my knuckles against his eagerly raised arm. He is easy to please and even easier to like.

The latest product from Anki, a San Francisco robotics startup, Cozmo is part of a new wave of affordable toy robots that promise a level of emotional engagement far beyond anything we’ve seen before. They are pitched not merely as playthings, but as little buddies. Toy firm Spin Master has its equivalent arriving in the shops for Christmas: the bigger, more retro-looking Meccano MAX. “It’s been designed to modify its behaviour as it learns about its owner and the surrounding world,” explains Spin Master’s brand manager, Becca Hanlon. “MAX basically tailors itself to become a better friend.” Hasbro, meanwhile, is unleashing the FurReal Makers Proto Max, essentially a programmable puppy that, says Craig Wilkins, Hasbro’s marketing director, “allows kids to create their ultimate pet and customise its personality through coding on an app”.

Cozmo is the result of a long quest by Anki president and co-founder, Hanns Tappeiner, to bring fictional movie robots such as Short Circuit’s Johnny Five, Star Wars’s R2-D2 or Wall-E into the real world. “We watched a lot of movies and it became obvious that it’s very easy to forge an emotional connection with a movie robot,” says Tappeiner. “And that was so different from the functional robots we saw on a daily basis at Carnegie Mellon [University, where Tappeiner earned his PhD in robotics].” Working with animators and character designers from Hollywood studios such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Lucasfilm, Tappeiner’s team focused hard on creating a robot that was as engaging as possible. “One of the fundamental things we’ve figured out in the last few years is that character and personality in technology are going to be a really big deal. That’s what we as a company are putting 99% of our efforts into.”

After a day of play, the effect of Cozmo’s character and personality on my children (Louis, 11, and Max, seven) is striking. “He’s so expressive,” says Louis. “I’m starting to think of him as a little friend or pet I can play with.” The younger sibling goes one further. “Cozmo’s no way our pet,” he demurs. “And he’s not our robot. He’s our child.” It’s an impressive and endearing statement, but also a tad disquieting. This is not a soft toy that only his imagination has given life. This is a mass-produced, artificially intelligent consumer product programmed to engender affection. How much should that really worry me?

...
 

Introversion

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This paragraph, for me, captures a key principle that would make me less queasy about the idea of "intelligent" machines:

To Alan Winfield, professor of robot ethics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the arrival of Cozmo, MAX and co undoubtedly raises concerns. Six years ago, Winfield helped draw up five principles of robotics for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC). “One of those principles,” he explains, “is that robots should never be designed to deceive. In other words, that their machine nature should be transparent. We’re concerned about vulnerable people – they might be children, disabled people, elderly people, people with dementia – coming to believe that the robot cares for them.”
 

Chris P

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My gut reaction was how heartbreaking it would be for the child if the robot malfunctions or becomes obsolete. But as I read your exceprts, I asked myself when this wasn't true. I bawled my eyes out when the dog chewed up my favorite stuffed animal. My 71 year old mother can still describe her favorite doll from childhood. Imagination and anthropomorphising inanimate objects is considered normal behavior and always has. Atari came out when I was about 9. We gave names and personalities to the dragons in the Adventure Atari game and made up stories about them. But we knew they weren't real, just as I knew the stuffed animal wasn't a real person and my mom knew her doll wasn't real. I think we need to give kids more credit, and no matter how much they might say cute things about the robot being their child, I think once they have the words they will be able to express that it's just pretend.
 

lizmonster

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I also keep wondering about how the robot will respond if a child is unkind to it. Is it programmed to be sad, to set boundaries, to need an apology? Or is this an entity that the kid can basically abuse, and it'll still love them unconditionally?

The Kid has been raised with cats, and I feel like she's learned a lot about compassion, empathy, and friendship from them.
 

Tazlima

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I also keep wondering about how the robot will respond if a child is unkind to it. Is it programmed to be sad, to set boundaries, to need an apology? Or is this an entity that the kid can basically abuse, and it'll still love them unconditionally?

The Kid has been raised with cats, and I feel like she's learned a lot about compassion, empathy, and friendship from them.

Looks like this one is programmed to react negatively to mistreatment, but others...not so much. From the article:

If you shake him too much, he will become upset. And if things like that happen for a period of time, he will probably refuse to play games.”

Whereas Alexa, some parents have argued, increases rudeness in young children, Cozmo won’t play with bullies, at least in the short term (“You will never end up with a sad Cozmo who always just hangs out in a corner,” admits Tappeiner). In using Siri (Apple’s voice assistant) and Alexa in her family, Joshi says she’s already encountered the question “of whether children should have to show some respect towards these gadgets when talking to them. Clearly rationally they don’t need to, but it grates to hear them being rude, even to inanimate objects.” Having one that will become temporarily sad or indifferent to them when they are rude could well discourage such behaviour.

Also... it's apparently a sore loser.

If he loses multiple games in a row, he will get increasingly angry.
 
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Luciferical

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Having watched too many parents shove a tablet or smartphone at a kid to shut them up...

Is it really a bad thing that the machinery interacts with the child, if we're going to use it anyway?
 

frimble3

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My concern would be more with parents manipulating the robot into controlling the child's behavior. Put a spy-cam on it, so you can see everything your child does. Program it to discourage the child from playing with real children that the parents deem 'inappropriate'. Or, to convince the child to never leave the yard, never to do anything the parent approve, to basically constantly spy and snitch. A drone for a helicopter parent.
 

Opty

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Forget the kids. I want a robot to be my best friend.