It’s interesting to me that he has grown up speaking at the Echo and slowly learning how to communicate with it in much the same way that he is learning to communicate with other people. His communicative learning progress is definitely a lot slower with the Echo than with me, but that makes sense since he spends a lot more time with people than with the Echo. Even still, I was very impressed the other day when he woke the Echo (and then promptly told it to “stop”, which has been in his vocabulary for a while now).
I’m not sure there’s any real point to this outside of just an interesting (to me) anecdote. And I guess it’s probably time I take the Echo out of his room, or at least figure out how to lock it down, so he doesn’t get into anything age-inappropriate or buy 500 cans of tomato sauce or something.
Anybody else have any interesting experiences with their little ones learning to communicate with smart devices?
To me the biggest issue is the relative one way economic (let us set aside the intangibles, because one cant feed themselves on such) proposition of these devices (upfront cost of "paying" [more like renting since its default locked in to a provider] for the device, and the free "work" people provide with their queries). Reminds me of the proposition of the collect your dna as a service companies.
I guess the incentives of everyone running an instance of sphinx, and sharing models/feedback error corrections continuously with each other in the background with the ubiquity of torrenting now and decreasing reliance on the Amazons in the middle isn't here yet.
(It actually has a few answers for this)
I think a lot of us grew up with siblings in the same room. Rooms didn’t lock. Parents not looking but knowing all too well what’s going on. Schools reporting on behavior by phone or by letter that as a kid you didn’t get to see.
I think for me the notion of ‘privacy’ was just being left alone with no one bothering me. It’s only as an adult that I have a clear perimeter where no one should be able to step in. In that regard having a lot of your doings leaked to parents might not be that impacting.
Imo the biggest problem when introducing children to these devices is how to get them to understand that this is very different from an actual human. Even if you find proper wording that a 4yo would understand, these words are easily overwhelmed by the fact that you can talk to it like a normal person. It's already interesting to watch children slowly grasp the concept of (video) calls, but then taking the next step and understanding there isn't a person at the other end of the Alexa dot is yet another step, because if it isn't a human, what else is it?
I disagree. It was super stressful/impactful to me as a child. Knowing my parents would be called for misbehavior at school put undue stress on me all day after getting “an orange ticket” or later, detention. I’d get punished at school then punished worse at home.
Once, in first or second grade, my uncle divulged some petty thing I said to him in passing to my parents leading to a sit down talk. I was uncomfortable and angry. This damaged my trust.
Indeed, but those were your family members. You knew them well and there was context, for good or ill.
But in this case the device is a bunch of strangers. Perhaps no one stranger listening in, but everything being processed off site and added to the profile Amazon or Google is building about you.
The 6 year old's pronunciation is not perfect and I could see a lot of frustration when he was initially using it. The drive to use the device has driven him to take his time and really focus on pronunciation so he can play the song or video's that he likes.
They understand it's a computer. But we all tend to treat it as an assistant. A really touching moment was when he used the Home to call "Santa." After he finished that call and we walked away, I saw/listened in My Activity that he asked to call God.
Our kids know I can see anything they ask. As well as any time spent on devices. I don't see this as very different from my upbringing. And I haven't noticed any regression in trust.
I think such privacy concepts are too abstract for a child to be concerned about. You'd be hurting their view of technology and enforcing an idea of Big Brother if you were to teach them a voice assistant is a bunch of strangers listening to you.
It is (was?) easy to control your browser's history. It is impossible to control what these devices send to google/amazon.
Your browser's search history only gets populated when you, well, search. These devices are collecting information 24/7, regardless if you are actively engaged with them.
Some obvious predictions for Alexa Babies:
1. They will develop lifelong bonds with Alexa/Amazon.
2. They will have lower IQs than their exclusively-human-taught peers and (in more extreme cases) be considered intellectually and developmentally disabled.
3. The derogatory term "Alexa Baby" will come to define a generation who's parents failed them, ultimately leading to the redefinition of "child abuse" and "bad parenting".