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.

Comments

Funny

[DontBeAMoran]

When it's targeted at kids, people freak out.
When it's targeted at adults, people buy the damn things.

Re:Funny

[DarkOx]

Because adults are presumed to be experienced and rational decision makers. (not always true but a free society sorta requires some degree of this).

If you say "ok google, how long should my penis be" and the response is "according to penisPumpsRUs women prefer a length of 11 inches or more" As an adult you'd question the source, and you'd probably question how reasonable that statement can be based on other experience.

If your 8 year old asks that questions and gets that response...Well the outcome might not be what you'd want as a parent. The fact is we probably don't want a generation of people raised by search results. If the use of television as a baby sitter is any indication parents and teachers will grow complacent and leave kids to be monitored by these devices, and likely won't do much checking up on how those interactions go...

I don't have a policy proposal here, or an opinion about what should or should not be done, but I do understand the concern.

Re:Funny

[Baron_Yam]

>I don't have a policy proposal here, or an opinion about what should or should not be done, but I do understand the concern.

If you're not willing to put in 20 years of effort to properly raise a child, try out 'birth control' or stick to masturbation.

Children are wonderful and all, but they're also a huge responsibility if you're a decent human. Deliberately having a child (or simply not worrying about pregnancy when birth control is more or less ubiquitous) and then abdicating your parenting responsibilities to technology is not the right choice.

And yes, I'm a parent, and yes, I know EXACTLY how difficult a standard that is to meet, and no, I don't actually meet it 100% of the time.

Re: Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing inches with centimeters again.

Re:Funny

[DarkOx]

I am not a parent yet, but my wife and I are currently trying. I totally agree with what you have to say. I was speaking more in the sense of as to if these things should be regulated, or restricted in some way.

I do see technology having a place in helping raise at least very small children. We have done enough baby sitting for friends and family to know for example that Baby monitors are useful! Could you raise a kid without one sure, but being able to put the child down for a nap upstairs while you go on about your activity downstairs where you won't wake them is a good thing.

I can see being able to power on a night light or mobile without mom or day entering the room might be positive thing too. Entering the room your self might be more stimulation than you want to provide when you hope to get the kid to go back to sleep. The question is where is the line of abdication responsibility to technology and using technology to be a better parent? That might not even be the same place in every family.

Re:Funny

[Baron_Yam]

>I am not a parent yet, but my wife and I are currently trying.

Good luck, and may everything go smoothly. I was really relaxed about it until the first ultrasound was scheduled, at which point it became an exercise in hiding my anxieties from my wife until the kid actually came out. And then, despite having experience, freaking out like almost every new parent does. The second kid is almost always easier because you've chilled out a bit.

>Baby monitors are useful!

Yes, especially video ones. (With suitable encryption so you're not providing a video feed to the entire neighbourhood and thus potentially to thieves as well). Don't bother with the motion detector ones, though... they go off constantly and will stress you right out, and the chances of them helping you save a baby from SIDs are about zero percent.

>I can see being able to power on a night light or mobile without mom or day entering the room might be positive thing too.

I have my doubts, but I'd be happy to see a study done on it.

> The question is where is the line of abdication responsibility to technology and using technology to be a better parent? That might not even be the same place in every family.

Absolutely, especially in the case of a 'special needs' child. In normal cases, there's a line between 'getting some relief / taking a break' and neglect, and I think that's not something that is easily codified in legislation. However, there should already be EXISTING legislation protecting the privacy of minors, and if this device is uploading anything it should be outright banned and the product development team slapped across their individual faces.

Re:Skuicked?

[FatdogHaiku]

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.

The merely named the product wrong

[MobyDisk]

It should have been called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

Life Imitates Art

[pz]

"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.