The emotional connection to machines is of particular concern with children, who have not yet developed the sophisticated ability of adults to perceive and mana

The emotional connection to machines is of particular concern with children, who have not yet developed the sophisticated ability of adults to perceive and manage simulated emotions. One of my favorite anecdotes: > Children today will be the first to grow up in constant interaction with these artificially more or less intelligent entities. So what will they make of them? What social category will they slot them into? I put that question to Peter Kahn, a developmental psychologist who studies child-robot interactions at the University of Washington. > In his lab, Kahn analyzes how children relate to cumbersome robots whose unmistakably electronic voices express very human emotions. I watched a videotape of one of Kahn’s experiments, in which a teenaged boy played a game of “I Spy” with a robot named Robovie. First, Robovie “thought” of an object in the room and the boy had to guess what it was. Then it was Robovie’s turn. The boy tugged on his hair and said, “This object is green.” Robovie slowly turned its bulging eyes and clunky head and entire metallic body to scan the room, but just as it was about to make a guess, a man emerged and announced that Robovie had to go in the closet. (This, not the game, was the point of the exercise.) “That’s not fair,” said Robovie, in its soft, childish, faintly reverberating voice. “I wasn’t given enough chances to. Guess the object. I should be able to finish. This round of the game.” “Come on, Robovie,” the man said brusquely. “You’re just a robot.” “Sorry, Robovie,” said the boy, who looked uncomfortable. “It hurts my feelings that,” said Robovie, “You would want. To put me in. The closet. Everyone else. Is out here.” > Afterward, Kahn asked the children whether they thought the machine had been treated unjustly. Most thought it had. Moreover, most believed that Robovie was intelligent and had feelings. They knew that they were playing with a robot, but nonetheless experienced Robovie as something like a person. https://newrepublic.com/article/117242/siris-psychological-effects-children https://newrepublic.com/article/117242/siris-psychological-e...