Children 'At Risk of Robot Influence' (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Forget peer pressure, future generations are more likely to be influenced by robots, a study suggests. The research, conducted at the University of Plymouth, found that while adults were not swayed by robots, children were. The fact that children tended to trust robots without question raised ethical issues as the machines became more pervasive, said researchers. They called for the robotics community to build in safeguards for children. Those taking part in the study completed a simple test, known as the Asch paradigm, which involved finding two lines that matched in length. Known as the conformity experiment, the test has historically found that people tend to agree with their peers even if individually they have given a different answer. In this case, the peers were robots. When children aged seven to nine were alone in the room, they scored an average of 87% on the test. But when the robots joined them, their scores dropped to 75% on average. Of the wrong answers, 74% matched those of the robots.

Comments

Mechanical response

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

They were asking the wrong questions of adults, who are just as easily swayed.

Robbie 247 (robot voice): "Let..me..masturbate..you."

"Ok."

See? Easy to sway.

Alternately

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that children tended to trust anyone and anything without question raised ethical issues

That's how school works.
That's how advertising works.
That's how most social interactions work.

The kids who raise questions are punished. The kids who blindly obey are often rewarded, rarely dead, and sometimes scarred for life unable to speak of their trauma. In any case, they don't complain to warn others of the danger of compliance, at least not in a timely manner.

The robots in this story are just a controlled proxy for other voices.