- Like many of you, I grew up with a computer in the house
and it has shaped so much about me.
The way that I socialize, the way that I learned,
even the ways that I work now.
And so when I see kids growing up
with home assistants like Google Home
or the Amazon Echo, I think about the ways
in which it must be effecting them.
So how are these voice-enabled, artificially intelligent
bots impacting childhood development?
And is it all good?
(lively music)
Tens of millions of Americans now have
some sort of digital assistant in their home.
Chris Grimmig is one of them.
He bought an Amazon Echo about three years ago
shortly after the birth of his daughter.
He uses it to go shopping but also as a way
to connect to all the other digital devices in his home.
You were saying that her speech has really evolved
to sort of cater to Alexa.
- It was actually pretty fascinating
to watch that unfold because she had
to learn to ask questions of it
very differently than of my wife and I.
And even things like she,
she had a binky, right?
Alexa's not responding when you have a pacifier
in your mouth, period (laughter) so it actually helped
us kind of coach her out of taking that out of her mouth
and she became significantly more articulate,
I would say, quickly, as a result
of wanting to speak with Alexa.
- She's very social with Alexa,
but she doesn't treat it the same way she might
treat her stuffed animals, for example.
- Yeah, yeah.
Her stuffed animals, like most three year olds I'm sure,
particularly girls with dolls,
they have conversations with them.
So, she'll ask them questions, obviously they don't respond,
she's telling them about her day.
Alexa, she clearly knows is for queries.
So, she asks questions, she gets an answer
or she gets a result, and it's less conversational
than with her stuffed animals, I would say.
Dr. Rachel Severson has been studying the impacts
of AI and robotics on childhood development
for over a decade.
How do kids react to stuffed animals differently
than they do to robotic animals, let's say?
- So, first of all, kids are very clear
what the stuffed animal, pet or dog,
that it is a stuffed animal and that any
sort of persona that they're
attributing to it is simply pretend.
With a robotic dog, when we look at how
they are answering questions about the sorts
of attributes that it might have so,
you know, does it have biological attributes,
does it have mental states, can it be a friend,
does it have moral standing?
We see actually very similar answers
to what they're doing with the stuffed animal,
however the critical difference is that
in this case they're not pretending.
And they are really truly believing that
it has these characteristics.
- Kids seem to know that robots
and artificially intelligent things
aren't just objects, so what do they think they are?
Have you asked her yet?
- Yeah, we did ask her and
she clearly had never thought about it before.
So I asked her, okay, where does Alexa live, okay?
"She lives in our house."
And she then came up with the fact that
she thought Alexa might be a musician so,
which kind of personifies Alexa,
but clearly links it to music.
But I think the most telling element of it was
that she had never actually thought about
like what on earth is this thing?
- I'm really curious what they think IA is
or what do they think these robots are?
- It doesn't fit neatly into, you know,
living things or non-living things,
or animates or inanimates,
but it's in this in-between space
and we don't know exactly what
that portends for their development.
So we know that pretend play, imaginary play,
is really important in children's development.
You know, roughly 2/3 of kids engage in pretend play
and they do this through a pretty long period of time
and one of the things that we think might
be happening with robotic toys
is that they don't allow kids opportunities
to engage in pretend play.
And that is because they already have a persona embedded
and a script that they're running
and it doesn't give kids the opportunity
to generate a persona and then,
you know, put it onto this entity.
- There's still a ton of research
to be done in the way that AI
and robotics effects childhood development,
especially on how this technology impacts kids
over time as they get older.
While assistants like Alexa may encourage kids
to be a bit more articulate earlier,
in general, robots may not be
the best educational tools in the long run.
As Dr. Severson says, it's developmentally important
for kids to play and imagine,
and robots tend to inhibit that instinct
and that's really important to keep in mind
as more artificially intelligent toys
and educational tools for children come on the market.
(upbeat music)
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