Baby Meets Big Brother For Science

dylanduck writes "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language. I guess that's what happens when your pop works at MIT's Media Lab. Thankfully his parents can switch off the surveillance for 'private' moments and delete short scenes. All the footage is being classified by algorithms."

Comments

The mom...

[crazyjeremy]

Meanwhile, the baby's mother (a hot Brazillian model) is not told about the cameras. The baby's father (the rich MIT geek) is clueless why his buddies picked HIS house to do the experiment.

Re:The mom...

[linguae]

Meanwhile, the baby's mother (a hot Brazillian model) is not told about the cameras. The baby's father (the rich MIT geek) is clueless why his buddies picked HIS house to do the experiment.

There is one problem with that joke. Since when did hot models marry (or even date) us geeks, rich or not? Disprove my conjecture, please.

Wait this sounds familiar

[nizo]

I wonder if the baby's name is Truman?

Re:Wait this sounds familiar

[AltGrendel]

Next time, if it's a girl they could name it Jenni.

Videos

[eldavojohn]

I couldn't get the MOV files to work, something about a codec I was missing. The AVIs worked fine though.

If you can't see them, there are 9 fish eye cameras mounted at certain points of the house and a day passes in 30 seconds (a la National Geographic plant blooming or Requiem for a Dream old lady on crack).

Each camera seems to have a round piece of paper ready to flip up and down to cover it (possibly via light switch in the room/area) should the family choose it to be necessary.

I think this is a wonderful and innovative idea, my only concern resides in the child's rights.

Roy is aware that the project raises ethical issues. But ultimately he thinks he may be providing his son with an incredible gift. "He might be the first person to have a memory that goes back to birth," he says.

I'm going to say I don't agree with even releasing these short clips to the public. I believe that this footage should be collected, protected & anonymity of the child enforced until the child is 18--at which point they will be capable of releasing the footage under whatever license (GPL even, lol) they deem appropriate. I understand that the parents have full custody, I only hope this child is in no way taken advantage of like so many prodigious children are by their parents.

Re:Videos

[955301]

And if the 18 year old releases it, but upon turning 26 finds out an insurance company turned him down because something in the video indicated a health issue predisposing him to cancer?

the 18 year old can still have regrets later...

Baby's first words

[stefanlasiewski]

Suprisingly, the Baby's first words mimick the sounds made by the recording equipment:

"beep"
"zzzzZZZZZZzzz"
"click click click click"

Footage Classifications

[El_Smack]

4% Pooping
26% Fussiness
8% Crying
18% Eating
21% Drooling
22% Peek a Boo
1% Language Acquisition

Re:Footage Classifications

[Pastis]

It's spelled

22% Pick a Boob

Re:Footage Classifications

[dr_dank]

Hey, you plagiarized my job description!

Re:Footage Classifications

[OctoberSky]

I thought Pick a Boob fell under the 18% for eating?

Re:Will parents delete first swear word?

[Snarfangel]

Just wait until some pranksters teach the kid to say "Caltech."

Interaction is the answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not much more for a camera to record here (of the baby).

The baby will make sounds constantly. More and more sounds as time progresses.

The parents (video camera operators?) will from time to time notice sounds that sound like sounds they understand and respond very positively to these sounds.

OH MY!!!!! I just heard the baby say XX OR XX OR XX OR XX (all references to daddy).

All these will be thought to be something profound concerning the babies actions.

But not due to the baby saying them, but because the baby's reaction to the parent who understands them and makes a HUGE ordeal of them.

My daughter had 3 such moments. The first time she said the baby sounds for daddy each of the 3 languages my wife and I speak.

We noticed and more importantly, the baby (our daughter) noticed we noticed.

Babies make sounds all the time (some say of all languages), but parents largely define the importance of those sounds for the babies. The babies merely respond because they like the attention, especially positive, of parents who's faces they see all the time.

I cant help but think this will teach these researchers more about how babies learn to accept new faces or events or actions as normal rather than how they learn languages.

Computational Linguistics

[mailman-zero]

My major is in Computational Linguistics. This sounds like a good idea as far a research goes, but the sad fact is that this will not be enough. We already know a LOT about the developmental stages in which children begin to acquire language and the relationships between the mental dictionary lookup and the rule applying mechanisms that compete with one another to produce the fastest possible production of intelligible sentences. What we don't understand is how it happens. This study will not let us know that.

What would be better is to develop algorithms that try and mimic the learning process we already have observed in native language acquisition and then continue to refine our algorithms until we have perfected that process. We will only know we have it right when you can take those same algorithms, put them to use by exposing it to a different language and have it still learn it right.

Well...

[nosredna]

It worked out well for Ender

I did something like this

[Cthefuture]

when my own child was born. Back then I was working in artificial intelligence (for a commercial application, and I'm no MIT graduate) and I spend the first couple years taking meticulous notes, video, audio recordings and similar. I also worked with a few other children but not as deeply.

What I found is that the sample size was way too small. Almost every child has vastly different development patterns and to see the big picture you need a bigger sample than one kid. We're talking about a huge effort to collect that much data on many children but I think that is what will be required to even begin to understand how it works.

Ever notice that what is easy is hard?

[LWATCDR]

This is really kind of funny but the vast majority of people teach their children how to speak yet we don't know how they they teach their children how to speak?
Just like it is easy to write a program that can calculate sin but really hard to write one that can follow verbal directions as well as a a four year old?

In other words it is easy to teach a machine what is taught in school.
It is very hard to teach a machine what is taught by parents.

Proud first words

[khendron]

I hope the kid's first words are something to be proud of.

I once saw a Mother eating some take-out fast food with her gurgling offspring. The kid was very vocal but couldn't say anything more than "goo" and "ga ga." The mother was doing the traditional "say Mommy, say Mommmmeeeee" thing when the kid pointed at the logo on the paper cup and said, very clearly, "McDonalds."

The mother did not look pleased.

Re:Proud first words

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The mother was doing the traditional "say Mommy, say Mommmmeeeee" thing when the kid pointed at the logo on the paper cup and said, very clearly, "McDonalds."

There's one thing I still don't understand. Sure, I know that McDonalds all pervasive advertising campaign virtually assure brand recognition by age three. I know that McDonalds isn't the only company engaged in this. I know how this works.

No. What I don't understand is why it works. Why do children fixate on McDonalds so much? What is the secret sause here? And it's not just McDonalds. Apparently, brand loyalty can be instilled before the third year.

This perplexes me. What's driving these kids to say McDonalds before Mommy?

Re:Proud first words

[gstoddart]

There's one thing I still don't understand. Sure, I know that McDonalds all pervasive advertising campaign virtually assure brand recognition by age three. I know that McDonalds isn't the only company engaged in this. I know how this works.

No. What I don't understand is why it works. Why do children fixate on McDonalds so much? What is the secret sause here? And it's not just McDonalds. Apparently, brand loyalty can be instilled before the third year.

This is hardly scientific, but this is what I think:

1) McDonald's markets into every context children will be, often with characters like Grimace which mirror the big-plush critters like Barney. It's quite insidious.

2) Parents take their kids to McD's as a treat (or when they travel), so the kids associate it as either an exotic treat or a reward for being good. It's an event, it's highly desireable, and they equate it with happy (think, Happy Meal, think birthday parties, think toys in the Happy meal).

3) Kids love french fries, nuggets, and little wee hamburgers specifically because it's some of the first food they can eat by themselves without needing utensils. And parents already feed their children many of these things, McD's just does a better job of it. The image of a wee kid eating french fries is pretty ubiquitous.

4) The sugar, the fat, and the simple carbohydrates. To a young kid who gets to eat food at McD's, they're assured to get a sugar rush, and a whole bunch of simple carbohydrates which give them a further rush. These become the characteristics kids want out of food. (Hence, why the they develop bad food habits when snared so early)

5) Mommy and Daddy take the infant there when they go for food, the child sees a visually stimulating environment, and becomes conditioned to the smells the other features of that environment. In effect, they probably imprint on it before they even *have* language being formed. Heck, I wonder if someone eats McD's and then breast feeds what that does to the child.

6) Secret additive chemicals which are highly addictive -- McCrack as it were. (OK, I made up this last one, but number 4 above more or less says the same thing.) [ But I seem to remember seeing some stuff about how that kind of food actually had a positive effect on your mood, so it's like prozac in food form ]

Really, the sum total of how McD's is presented to kids conspires to equate it with reward, fun, a sugar rush, and the foods they like. In short, every aspect of it gives them maximal reward, and reinforces their desires to have more of it, as well as (possibly) mood-boost from the kind of foods they're eating.

Just my 2 cents (as an avid hater of McDonald's) and all they stand for. :-P

Re:Who cares about the privacy of an infant?

[jerkmonster]

The point is that, though the infant may not be able to "say" anything in its defense, the kid or adult that eventually emerges from said infant may feel weird about its early childhood having been exposed to the world. A society's supposed to take care of those who can't take care of themselves, not take advantage of them.

Obligatory

[GrouchoMarx]

Think of the children!

(Someone had to say it...)

Segfaults?

[19061969]

Quoth the article: "All the footage is being classified by algorithms."

Ha! Just imagine what an algorithm would say when it fills its nappy: "Core dump - segfault at location @r$e."

Iterative refinement

[hey]

First baby thows out an early prototype. eg "Ga-ga". This is praised
however some constructive critism by the clients (parents) is offered - eg "Da-da". Baby then adapts the first prototype and re-demos it for the users and clients. And so on.

By the time version 3 (years) is reached baby is still in the iterative refinement design and development mode. For example: "I eated dinner". The user-clients offer "I ate dinner" as a correction that is a new feature in version 3.5.

Re:Who cares about the privacy of an infant?

[bunions]

The kid or adult that eventually emerges from said infant may feel weird about pretty much any choice the parents make for him/her. Also, "being released to the world" makes it sound like they're showing it on Fox. It's not even clear to me from the article that humans will watch significant chunks of it.

I can see how this argument can be made for a 3 or 5 year-old, since they are starting to have personality and make their own choices. But simply observing infants is pretty much all the same - they sleep, poop and eat.
What's to be embarassed about? "Oh no, the world now knows I was an infant at some point in time and could not control my bowels, I am mortified!"

I'm not really sure how this is 'taking advantage' of the baby, because I don't see how it harms him/her.