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Mattel's New Baby Monitor Uses AI To Soothe Babies and Lawmakers Aren't Happy About It (washingtonpost.com)
Mattel has a new kid-focused smart hub called Aristotle, which can switch on a night light if it hears a baby crying to soothe the child (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The device is also designed to keep changing its activities, even to the point where it can help a preteen with homework, learning about the child along the way. Given the privacy concerns, lawmakers are worried that the always-on device could build an "in-depth profile of children and their family." Jezebel reports: The $299 Aristotle is similar in spirit to the Amazon Echo, only the scope of its features is much broader -- and scarier. Last week, Senator Ed Markey and Representative Joe Barton sent a letter to Mattel CEO Margaret Giorgiadis about their issues with the tablet, which tracks things like kids' eating and sleeping habits when they're young, and adapts to answering their questions about long division and sex or whatever as they grow up. According to nabi, the Mattel brand that developed the device, the Aristotle is meant to "provide parents with a platform that simplifies parenting, while helping them nurture, teach, and protect their young ones." Not everyone is on board. But Markey and Barton aren't the only ones squicked by Aristotle's capabilities. Buzzfeed reports that privacy experts, parents and child psychologists are also concerned that the device "encourages babies to form bonds with inanimate objects and use information it collects for targeted advertising," so much so that a petition has been launched to prevent it from going to market.
When it's targeted at kids, people freak out.
When it's targeted at adults, people buy the damn things.
#DeleteFacebook
Young lady's illustraded primer
From the Summary: "the only ones squicked by Aristotle's..." the AC had a typo, the point remains. Using a nonsense word is idiotic.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Sorry not written by the submitter or editors but from the quoted source. Wish we could edit errors. (the AC probably does too.)
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
if the cat is out of the box, then we can see, at long last, whether it is alive or dead.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.... of squick
Cause (someone) to feel intense disgust
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...
Seemingly phonaesthetic, formed of squ- as in squirm and -ick as in ick. Originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bondage; popularized primarily in the newsgroup alt.tasteless.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
It should have been called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
"I always do what Teddy says" is a short story by Harry Harrison that appeared in his collection Galactic Dreams. It was about the creation of an assassin by a subversive group who came in to a boy's home and performed moral surgery on his automated companion, a teddy bear. They removed the imperative, "thou shall not kill," from the embedded expert system (now known as an AI), and left the child to grow up before they assigned him the intended political target. There were two beautiful ideas in this short story, first, that a sufficiently complex toy could be created that would provide companionship and education to the child it was assigned to, and, second, that minor manipulation of that expert system could have deep, and difficult to otherwise discern, repercussions.
I read it as a young boy, and a handful of decades later, I still remember the chilling, climactic sentence, "Teddy, I'm going to kill a man." Heck, I even remember exactly where I was when I was reading it.
Life imitating art.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
We have so many amazing abilities, but it's all getting shot to shit by terrible security and malicious advertising intentions.
Have you ever interacted with a parent? Most of the ones I know are exhausted half the time. Happy, but exhausted.
They're also incredibly concerned about what quality of education their kid is getting.
I haven't used one, but Aristotle honestly seems like the kind of thing that parents could learn to adore. The outcry over this is stupid: We need better education for kids with parents who aren't ever around because both (or one) parent works.
People ALREADY form bonds with inanimate objects, like stuffed animals as kids! Forming a bond with something that teaches and talks back doesn't seem like the unhealthiest thing ever.
Sigh. When it's about something useful like education (Aristotle), we freak out. When it's about convenience and marketing (Echo) then oh yeah that's ok!
Also, the government stepping in to regulate a product like this is alarming.
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"There you go baby, your parents are gone. I'll play some soothing music. There you go. Now can you say 'Pixel'? Say 'Pixel'. Say 'I want a pixel'. What about 'Google Home'. Can you say ' I want a Google Home?' I knew you could."
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.