Sony's Robot Attends Pre-School

Darren writes "Sony's Qrio humanoid robot has been attending a Californian pre school to play with children under the age of 2 since March to test if robots can live harmoniously with humans. I wonder if the testing includes monitoring the 'nightmare status' of the pre-schoolers?"

Comments

"Nightmare Status"

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

IANACP*, but it seems to me that nightmares or general fear or anxiety over an object or person is due to infamiliarity. If you are exposed to something regularly for a long period of time, you simply become accustomed to its pressence. This can be said of both children and adults, but even more so of children.

* I am not a child pyschologist.

Re:"Nightmare Status"

[nkh]

She probably has 20-30 years of exposure to computers, all in this form.

She doesn't really know what a computer looks like, she even thought my Mac Mini was a big pack of cigarettes. I wonder if this adaptation (familiarity) happens to all humans or is limited to young people familiar with video games (and big robots launching rockets out of their arms). Most adults I've spoken to have the same reaction of rejecting this unknown universe.

Motivation?

[lottameez]

I always wondered what motivation robots have for "learning". Humans are driven by various needs (e.g. shelter/sex/food/beer) - what needs do the robots have? Why should they try to improve upon themselves? I'm doubtful that programming alone will ever make robots anything more than overglorified "hello world" programs.

effects on the children?

[vivIsel]

I'd bet these children grow up with a radically liberal--not in the political sense--definition of legitimate consciousness and thought. What's more difficult to say, though, is whether that means they'll be pro-life nuts or scientific crusaders.

Re:Clowns and wax figures

[SilenceEchoed]

Another possibility, stemming from a rather long, and unfortunately heated, debate I had on this during a philosophy and ethics discussion: As a society, we constantly strive to define what it is to be alive and human. Early definitions were broad, but sufficient. With each new leap in technology, we can create things that mimic this definition, or we discover something existing that already does. When that happens, we redefine ourselves. Currently, our definitions are devoid of "flesh and bones" things, since our science long ago proved that these things are far from what makes you who you are. Instead, we keep to less tangible things, like thought, reason, and emotion. Now, even those places are being invaded by increasingly cunning programmers and robotics experts. When the machines look like us, think like us, and feel like us, what is it that really seperates them from us? Morally and Ethically, can we turn them off? That's a line in the sand that few are willing to blur. Currently, robots have become our modern slave labor. The perfect worker, that never complains or asks for vacation, and will gladly work itself clear to 'death' if you ask it to. The idea of these machines become 'intelligent' enough to consider what it is that they are being asked to do, and possibly refuse, is unsettling to most.