With the development of science and technology, robot toys have become more and more intelligent and become close friends of children, but they have also caused concern among people from all walks of life. How to ensure the privacy of conversation data? Will robot toys replace the real-life partnership of children? Will unscrupulous manufacturers repeat the "digital pet effect"?
The little robot on the table woke up. It opened the blue-green sly sleepy eye, hit a yawn that was similar to digitalization, and set off the black and round screen face, which was really cute. This robotic device looks like a hybrid of a forklift and a PC monitor, but it is compact and compact. The compact robot Cozmo slowly turned until he found me, and he made a cheerful laugh "Daaaaan!". Later, I received a message on my phone saying that it wanted to play games with me. I refused his request because of the low mood. Cozmo bowed his head in disappointment and his eyes turned into a pair of sad crescents. But when I promised it, it quickly cheered and nodded happily. Cozmo is easy to be pleasing and easy to be liked.
Cozmo is the latest work from San Francisco robot company Anki and is part of a new wave of affordable toy robots, but it has an unprecedented emotional function. Cozmo was originally designed not only as a toy, but also as a small partner for children.
The toy company SpinMaster said they also have a similar Christmas gift - a larger, retro-looking MeccanoMAX. Becca Hanlon, brand manager of SpinMaster, explained: “MeccanoMAX can change its behavior by learning its owner and the surrounding environment, and is committed to being a better friend of the child.â€
Hasbro, the famous American toy company, and its marketing director Craig Wilkins said: "Hasbro has introduced a programmable pet dog ProtoMax, which is programmed to create the ultimate pet for children."
Anki President and co-founder HannsTappeiner is committed to bringing fictional robots into the real world, such as JohnnyFive in ShortCircuit, R2-D2 in Star Wars or Robot Wall-E. “We watched a lot of robot-related movies, and it’s clear that it’s very easy to establish emotional connections with robots in movies,†Tappeiner said. “This is very different from the functional robots we see every day at Carnegie Mellon University.†Tappeiner The team focused on creating an as engaging robot as possible, working with animators and character designers at Hollywood studios such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Lucas. “In the past few years, we have found that the future of character and personality of robots through technology has a long-term development prospect, which is the direction that 99% of our company is working hard,†adds Tappeiner.
The influence of Cozmo's personality and personality on children is amazing. After two days with my two children, Louis and Max, after playing with Cozmo, Louis said, "It is very good at expressing. I feel more and more that it is my little friend or pet." The younger Max retorted: "No, it is not us." The pets are not our robots, but our children." This idea is both exciting and disturbing. Cozmo is not a life-threatening toy that a child simply imagines, but a mass-produced artificial intelligence consumer product whose emotions are acquired through programming. But what should we worry about?
Replay the "electronic pet effect"?
For Alan Winfield, a professor of robotic ethics at Bristol Robotics Labs, the contributions of Cozmo and MAX have undoubtedly caught his attention. Six years ago, Winfield helped the British Engineering and Natural Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) draft five principles of robotics. "One of the principles," he explained, "is that robots should not be designed to be deceptive. In other words, their machine mechanics should be transparent. We care about vulnerable groups - children, people with disabilities, the elderly and dementia Patients, these groups believe that robots take care of them."
Winfield called himself a "professional sorrowful person" and said that he did not object to the companion robot's desire to fight. “I think that robots have shown their benefits in terms of treatment. But in any case, we need to be cautious and responsible, and we should also be aware of the psychological harm caused by the robot's emotions.â€
"I don't think it's appropriate to use a programming language," Winfield said. "It creates a completely wrong concept: a robot is a person. But a robot can't be a human at all. Robots obviously can't have feelings, but some people may It doesn't think so, and it's also dependent on robots.†He cited the electronic pet effect, the electronic pet boom of the 1990s, which might “die†if the electronic pet didn't get enough attention. Winfield warned: "It is not difficult to imagine that some unscrupulous manufacturers will threaten people saying 'You have to pay me, or your robot will die.' This is ridiculous, but people understand this."
Joanna Bryson, an associate professor at the University of Bath, is one of the co-authors of the "ESPRC Principles of Robots." She said: "If people understand that this is a game, then we have nothing to worry about. But the seven-year-old does not understand this, they may think that robots will miss them, not play with real partners. Can children make a moral distinction?"
Parenting expert Liat Hughes Joshi agrees to compare robots to friends of child illusions. “To a certain extent, this is quite healthy. But if this relationship replaces the child’s real-world relationship, it becomes quite worrying. Children need to interact with real people to resonate and understand. Non-verbal cues. But I think robots have a long way to go to reach human levels."
Associate Professor Bryson encourages the interaction between children and toy robots as an educational experience for children and helps children understand the difference between humans and non-humans. However, she really wants to know what Cozmo's "real emotional state" looks like. “Do they really need it?†she asked. “If you lock the robot in the drawer, will they be very painful? Even the 12-year-old child knows the answer.â€
Anki President Tappeiner admits that he doesn't realize the principles of the robot, but Anki actually reduces any of the features that make Cozmo "too human" and avoids any features that make it "a personal assistant." For example, Cozmo cannot be expressed in complete sentences. "It's not trying to replace Amazon's digital assistant Alexa or something like that, it's more like a pet." Even so, Cozmo requires a lot of software, its core AI engine needs 1.8 million lines of code to program, and Cozmo also has requirements and desire. Therefore, if he loses a few games in a row or is constantly swaying back and forth, he will be very angry, and even within a certain period of time, he may refuse to play the game.
Pros and cons of robot toys
In this sense, robot playmates can encourage good behavior for children. Parenting expert Joshi has thought about whether children should be respected for these virtual assistants in some families using Siri and Alexa. Obviously, they don't need to do this deliberately, because for animate objects, their behavior is sometimes rude. But when they are rude, if someone or something else is temporarily sad or indifferent, it is likely to prevent the children from being rude.
In addition, with the rise of home networking equipment, its security has to be thought-provoking. Joshi explained: “Data collection is a concern for everyone. Parents can learn more about their use of toys. But after a public investigation of hacking in baby monitors, children have products with cameras. Increasingly skeptical. Such technology may not be suitable for children."
Winfield is deeply concerned about most connected robotic toys. He said that our team's IoT devices do not have strong network security standards. Followed by privacy issues. Where is the data stored? Who recorded the chat between the child and the robot? As a parent, do you have the right to delete this data?
Anki, SpinMaster and Hasbro are keenly aware of this problem. SpinC's brand manager Becca Hanlon said that MAX does not collect any data. “The robot toy MAX is not connected to wifi, all conversations are stored locally, and not transmitted to any other device or cloud. Because we know that people are paying more and more attention to smart toys and hacking.†Craig Wilkins, Director of Marketing for Hasbro, said: “ProtoMax pet dogs are designed according to the Children's Privacy Act.†Anki President Tappeiner said: “All the operations are on the mobile phone. Although Cozmo needs to be connected via wifi, 1.8 million lines of code are only run on the phone, the cloud. No data will be saved."
After playing with Cozmo for a few weeks, my little son didn't like the toy "Cozmo is my child" as he said before, and he didn't want to be in contact with others. The initial excitement has faded, and Cozmo has not achieved its desired film effect. But where can we see such a toy? Will the future reach that level of maturity? Like the "super toy" teddy bear in Steven Spielberg's movie "AI"?
"Of course I want a teddy bear like that," Tappeiner said with a smile. "In the future, we will have products like teddy bears. But now we have to accept the fact that devices like Cozmo are just Robot. This is why we didn't design it to have the same look as a teddy bear."
Winfield believes that any advancement in smart toy technology requires “careful and responsible negotiation, and that no toy should be a substitute for a caregiver or parent.â€
Editor in charge: Liu Yang
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