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Furby was recently discussed in the middle third of this Radiolab episode: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/more-or-less-human https://www.wnycstudios.org/sto

by js2 8y ago

Furby was recently discussed in the middle third of this Radiolab episode: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/more-or-less-human https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/more-or-less-human If you turn a Furby upside down, it will start saying that it's scared after a bit. So they do an experiment where they ask kids to hold a barbie doll, a Furby, and a hamster upside down to see how long the kid will hold the item upside down before the kid becomes uncomfortable and turns it right side up. The show goes on to interview the guy who designed Furby (Caleb Chung). He defends the Furby as being alive. He then talks about a dinosaur toy he designed (Pleo) that a review site posted a video of the reviewers beating up the dinosaur till it stops functioning[0]. That left him very uncomfortable. He's now working on designing an animatronic baby doll and is cognizant about how to design it so that it discourages (or at least won't encourage) any type of sociopathic behavior. This part starts 20 minutes in and is 20 minutes long. The first third of the episode is about the Turing test. The last third of the episode talks about using VR to allow someone to put themselves in another person's body. I enjoyed the whole episode. Radiolab doesn't publish transcripts, so you'll need to make an hour to listen. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQUCd4SbgM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQUCd4SbgM0

hmhrex 8y ago
I was going to mention this too. It was a great episode that gave me a lot to think about (I have kids)
joshmarlow 8y ago
Here's a negative path that I hope doesn't occur - we build toys that are more lifelike, communicative and designed to invoke empathy, and some children will just become desensitized to empathy triggers. I wonder if there's any research to prove/disprove something like that? Is empathy desensitization a thing?
- mcheshier 8y ago
  Military forces around the world have figured it out - they have a common dehumanizing language to avoid empathy triggers.
  - sa46 8y ago
    Everyone uses the more mild version of dehumanizing language, reduction to abstraction [1], because it's more efficient to consider groups of people and it removes emotions from decisions. For example, when considering latency you might say: The service is experiencing 3 seconds of latency at the 99th percentile with periodic timeouts. You wouldn't say Alice wasn't able to buy medicine because the transaction failed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization
  - mtkd 8y ago
    Since the 11th century Norman conquest we've had pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/lamb
    - s0rce 8y ago
      Minor nitpick, at least in North America sheep meat is mutton. Lamb is the word for a young sheep and also the meat from the animal.
      - nrclark 8y ago
        I thought this too for the longest time - turns out it's actually not true (assuming Wikipedia is to be believed). There aren't any age restrictions on what can be sold as 'lamb', so most American 'lamb' is what the British would call mutton.
        s0rce 8y ago
        interesting, thanks for informing me! I checked wikipedia before commenting but I didn't read far enough, didn't know there was no legislation on lamb age. I wonder how old the "lamb" in the grocery store is? Might explain why there is so much variation in flavor. I can't remember if the lamb was "younger" tasting when I lived in Canada.
        waqf 8y ago
        Thanks for this! I've been wondering for many years why "lamb" in the US is so tough. Wikipedia citation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States Nevertheless, s0rce is correct on the original linguistic point: that the Norman food-word is "mutton", whereas "lamb" is the Germanic word for the young animal.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Yes the uncanny valley can cause that already. For example, in the past, when someone asked you for directions you gave it to them. Now some people are like “don’t you have google?” Same goes for asking for any type of informational help. Before, many people would cook or help people do things like move or pick them up from the airport. Now they can just do it via a gig economy app so why bother. So yeah, parents don’t really pay attention to their kids, friends don’t pay attention to their friends, dating has become shallow, people’s attention spans are lower etc. Why? Because we have new modes of communication with swiping and LOL and we don’t actually want to hear long heartfelt explanations when the shorthand takes far less time so we can fit in more interactions in a single day. Example: https://www.lifehack.org/299404/ https://www.lifehack.org/299404/ https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/smartphones-can-prevent-parents-cultivating-feelings-connection-children-51198/amp https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/smartphones-can-prevent-pare... http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/
  - klez 8y ago
    I don't know how to say this without seeming offensive, but you seem to have really shitty people around you if this is your experience. The worst I received when asking for directions was a brusque "I don't know" (like, just a couple of times in my whole life). If I ask friends for help, they help. We do dinners together at home and last time I moved, a little army materialized. If you were looking for reasons to shit on the gig economy (and I would have nothing against it) you could find really better reasons.
    - EGreg 8y ago
      Literally as I was about to reply to you, the doorbell rang and the Uber Eats person dropped off the stuff. They said “thank you” and that was the extent of our interaction. Most of the people in my building under 60 don’t know ther upstairs neighbors, or even on the same floor. The streets, once filled with people, are mostly empty. People rarely write letters or postcards and visit less often than before. Dating communication has texting instead of voice (takes too long when you’re multitasking). Heck even with birthday wishes - once thoughtful calls have been replaced with facebook posts where you don’t even look at the person’s wall. If you really think it’s just me, compare photos of the 50s to now. Also here are studies and statistics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the... https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deteriorating-over-five-years-theres-a-likely-culprit-86996 https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deterior... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/6065885... http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be-real-not-virtual-1464899707 http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be...
- gmadsen 8y ago
  so basically Westworld?
  - walrus01 8y ago
    Being able to say "Freeze all motor functions" to a furby-class toy as an industry standardized voice instruction could be handy in the future.
- moate 8y ago
  Actually, studies have been done and shown that isn't the case. https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-beg-not-to-empathy-media-equation https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-b...
- donbright 8y ago
  Not specific to robots, but i found your question very interesting to compare with this video which is specifically about managing empathy, and it's dangers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlwDdzlpuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlwDdzlpuk "Can you run out of empathy" by Kati Morton (professional therapist).
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Is empathy desensitization a thing? Yes. It is a well known process and is successfully used to intentionally create new torturers.
- another-cuppa 8y ago
  > Is empathy desensitization a thing? Factory farming wouldn't exist if that wasn't a thing.
drb91 8y ago
> is cognizant about how to design it so that it discourages (or at least won't encourage) any type of sociopathic behavior. Seems like this could also backfire and discourage taking a computer feigning distress seriously--after all, it is a sort of dishonesty about the nature of the toy, which presumably isn't harmed by turning it upside down.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fenwick67 8y ago
  In the interview, Caleb is still not sure what exactly to do. It sounds like he doesn't take the design lightly, especially since (he thinks) these toys might shape the way people might later interact with actual human babies.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
> you'll need to make an hour to listen. Listen on 2x speed and it only takes 30 minutes :) If you can't handle 2x, start with 1.25x and slowly ramp up.
- sethammons 8y ago
  I'm a big fan. Nearly all my limited YouTube consumption is at 2x. Any audio book I am re-listening to is somewhere between 2 and 3x. However, first pass complex stuff I still prefer around 1x.
- jdhendrickson 8y ago
  I've flirted with this method off and on, but the consensus between me and people I've spoken to who do the same, is a lack of retention comes along with the speed. You get the feeling of learning something and the pleasure associated with that, but none of it sticks. Of course this wont hold true across the board but something to factor in before adopting this method.
  - bsder 8y ago
    I find retention of audio at any speed is lousy. This is why I'm a big fan of transcripts
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Seconded. Audio for learning is like getting a fixed dataset in a linked list, and text/transcript is like getting it in a vector. There's zero benefit from the former, and by losing efficient random access, you can no longer skim/skip/search for things.
    - 3rdAccount 8y ago
      Me 2. That's why I hate lectures. The professor should be able to give notes that people can use.
    - wanderfowl 8y ago
      To be fair, this is very person-specific, and this distinction of preferred learning methods is a common topic in pedagogy. Some folks, myself included, are auditory learners, and will tend to retain more from a spoken lecture than a reading assignment. Some folks just can't retain audio as well as reading something, or need to take notes to retain (even if the notes are not consulted again). This is why being a good teacher requires not just presenting the data in a good way for your learning modality of choice, but for all of them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
canada_dry 8y ago
Some interesting tid bits of toy design in the interview e.g.: "never show the white of the eye above the pupil... it emotes shock/unpleasant surprise", and if you get doll emotions wrong it becomes Chucky. LOL
aiyodev 8y ago
I’ve seen this mentioned in a few places. I feel like it’s becoming the new Stanford Prisoner Experiment, a completely contrived “experiment” that’s bogus science but becomes popular because it reinforces a popular belief. The kids tormented one robot and not the other because doing so with one was fun and the with the other it was not. They were playing. It’s what children do. It doesn’t reveal so insight into the human mind.
- monadgonad 8y ago
  Do you not see the potential for insight there? You said it yourself: > The kids tormented one robot and not the other because doing so with one was fun and the with the other it was not. Why was it fun with one, not the other? Why do we take to certain forms of play? How do toys encourage these forms of play? This is extremely insightful as child’s play is partially the process of practising adult behaviours.
digi_owl 8y ago
> He's now working on designing an animatronic baby doll and is cognizant about how to design it so that it discourages (or at least won't encourage) any type of sociopathic behavior. I suspect it will be a futile effort because: A, the person will know it is not alive. B, stuff like this is done specifically to get people to click the video. Frankly more and more the web is resembling a massive schoolyard, with people egging each other on with dares and promises of rewards if they do some kind of icky or potentially dangerous task. One game i have been following recently released an update that allow twitch viewer to vote on various modifiers to the game play, more often than not to the detriment of the streamer. There also seems to be a rise of "hard" games that are specifically there for streamers and their audience. This so that much like the audience of a gladiator match they get to jeer and name call whenever the streamer slip up and the play character gets mauled by some game mechanic.
djsumdog 8y ago
There are videos of engineers kicking robots to see them recover or self-balance, and people who watching are always like, "OMG why would you kick him?" And then it takes a second to realize .. wait...that's ..that's just a robot. But our brains make that association because it looks human enough. So watching that Pleo video; even though I rationally understood what I was feeling, I still felt bad for the dino and I'm glad I felt it. That was just cruel and disturbing. I know I'm feeling bad for a toy, but our brains evolved to have those types of emphatic responses to identify when other animals or humans are in pain -- similar to pain we can experience. It's a pretty interesting trait, and it's not just purely nurture(vs nature) because we see similar sounds and emphatic reactions on many other mammals. There are quite a few human beings who don't feel that; who can watch animals or people in pain and not feel anything or have their sounds/crys trigger neurological response. Those people usually grow up to run banks, or become CEOs of multinational conglomerates.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Just imagine that the Pleo is infected with a xenomorph... and you're all outta nukes.
- torbjorn 8y ago
  > Those people usually grow up to run banks, or become CEOs of multinational conglomerates. Got a citation? I imagine most people like this would end up in prison and/or socially marginalized. Being incapable of empathy is basically a disability.
  - majos 8y ago
    Low expectation, high variance, I'm guessing.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    The documentary I Am FishHead is a good documentary about psychopathy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB0k7wBzXPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB0k7wBzXPY
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
hemogloben 8y ago
I’ve always though Caleb Chung was being pretty hypocritical in this episode. He not only programmed the pain response behavior, but also must have thoroughly tested it, meaning he or someone at his company must have done a more scientific version of that video.

by js2 8y ago

hmhrex 8y ago

I was going to mention this too. It was a great episode that gave me a lot to think about (I have kids)

joshmarlow 8y ago

Here's a negative path that I hope doesn't occur - we build toys that are more lifelike, communicative and designed to invoke empathy, and some children will just become desensitized to empathy triggers. I wonder if there's any research to prove/disprove something like that? Is empathy desensitization a thing?

mcheshier 8y ago
Military forces around the world have figured it out - they have a common dehumanizing language to avoid empathy triggers.
- sa46 8y ago
  Everyone uses the more mild version of dehumanizing language, reduction to abstraction [1], because it's more efficient to consider groups of people and it removes emotions from decisions. For example, when considering latency you might say: The service is experiencing 3 seconds of latency at the 99th percentile with periodic timeouts. You wouldn't say Alice wasn't able to buy medicine because the transaction failed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization
- mtkd 8y ago
  Since the 11th century Norman conquest we've had pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/lamb
  - s0rce 8y ago
    Minor nitpick, at least in North America sheep meat is mutton. Lamb is the word for a young sheep and also the meat from the animal.
    - nrclark 8y ago
      I thought this too for the longest time - turns out it's actually not true (assuming Wikipedia is to be believed). There aren't any age restrictions on what can be sold as 'lamb', so most American 'lamb' is what the British would call mutton.
      - s0rce 8y ago
        interesting, thanks for informing me! I checked wikipedia before commenting but I didn't read far enough, didn't know there was no legislation on lamb age. I wonder how old the "lamb" in the grocery store is? Might explain why there is so much variation in flavor. I can't remember if the lamb was "younger" tasting when I lived in Canada.
      - waqf 8y ago
        Thanks for this! I've been wondering for many years why "lamb" in the US is so tough. Wikipedia citation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States Nevertheless, s0rce is correct on the original linguistic point: that the Norman food-word is "mutton", whereas "lamb" is the Germanic word for the young animal.
EGreg 8y ago
Yes the uncanny valley can cause that already. For example, in the past, when someone asked you for directions you gave it to them. Now some people are like “don’t you have google?” Same goes for asking for any type of informational help. Before, many people would cook or help people do things like move or pick them up from the airport. Now they can just do it via a gig economy app so why bother. So yeah, parents don’t really pay attention to their kids, friends don’t pay attention to their friends, dating has become shallow, people’s attention spans are lower etc. Why? Because we have new modes of communication with swiping and LOL and we don’t actually want to hear long heartfelt explanations when the shorthand takes far less time so we can fit in more interactions in a single day. Example: https://www.lifehack.org/299404/ https://www.lifehack.org/299404/ https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/smartphones-can-prevent-parents-cultivating-feelings-connection-children-51198/amp https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/smartphones-can-prevent-pare... http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/
- klez 8y ago
  I don't know how to say this without seeming offensive, but you seem to have really shitty people around you if this is your experience. The worst I received when asking for directions was a brusque "I don't know" (like, just a couple of times in my whole life). If I ask friends for help, they help. We do dinners together at home and last time I moved, a little army materialized. If you were looking for reasons to shit on the gig economy (and I would have nothing against it) you could find really better reasons.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Literally as I was about to reply to you, the doorbell rang and the Uber Eats person dropped off the stuff. They said “thank you” and that was the extent of our interaction. Most of the people in my building under 60 don’t know ther upstairs neighbors, or even on the same floor. The streets, once filled with people, are mostly empty. People rarely write letters or postcards and visit less often than before. Dating communication has texting instead of voice (takes too long when you’re multitasking). Heck even with birthday wishes - once thoughtful calls have been replaced with facebook posts where you don’t even look at the person’s wall. If you really think it’s just me, compare photos of the 50s to now. Also here are studies and statistics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the... https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deteriorating-over-five-years-theres-a-likely-culprit-86996 https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deterior... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/6065885... http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be-real-not-virtual-1464899707 http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-beat-the-blues-visits-must-be...
gmadsen 8y ago
so basically Westworld?
- walrus01 8y ago
  Being able to say "Freeze all motor functions" to a furby-class toy as an industry standardized voice instruction could be handy in the future.
moate 8y ago
Actually, studies have been done and shown that isn't the case. https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-beg-not-to-empathy-media-equation https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-b...
donbright 8y ago
Not specific to robots, but i found your question very interesting to compare with this video which is specifically about managing empathy, and it's dangers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlwDdzlpuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlwDdzlpuk "Can you run out of empathy" by Kati Morton (professional therapist).
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Is empathy desensitization a thing? Yes. It is a well known process and is successfully used to intentionally create new torturers.
another-cuppa 8y ago
> Is empathy desensitization a thing? Factory farming wouldn't exist if that wasn't a thing.

drb91 8y ago

> is cognizant about how to design it so that it discourages (or at least won't encourage) any type of sociopathic behavior. Seems like this could also backfire and discourage taking a computer feigning distress seriously--after all, it is a sort of dishonesty about the nature of the toy, which presumably isn't harmed by turning it upside down.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fenwick67 8y ago
In the interview, Caleb is still not sure what exactly to do. It sounds like he doesn't take the design lightly, especially since (he thinks) these toys might shape the way people might later interact with actual human babies.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

> you'll need to make an hour to listen. Listen on 2x speed and it only takes 30 minutes :) If you can't handle 2x, start with 1.25x and slowly ramp up.

sethammons 8y ago
I'm a big fan. Nearly all my limited YouTube consumption is at 2x. Any audio book I am re-listening to is somewhere between 2 and 3x. However, first pass complex stuff I still prefer around 1x.
jdhendrickson 8y ago
I've flirted with this method off and on, but the consensus between me and people I've spoken to who do the same, is a lack of retention comes along with the speed. You get the feeling of learning something and the pleasure associated with that, but none of it sticks. Of course this wont hold true across the board but something to factor in before adopting this method.
- bsder 8y ago
  I find retention of audio at any speed is lousy. This is why I'm a big fan of transcripts
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Seconded. Audio for learning is like getting a fixed dataset in a linked list, and text/transcript is like getting it in a vector. There's zero benefit from the former, and by losing efficient random access, you can no longer skim/skip/search for things.
  - 3rdAccount 8y ago
    Me 2. That's why I hate lectures. The professor should be able to give notes that people can use.
  - wanderfowl 8y ago
    To be fair, this is very person-specific, and this distinction of preferred learning methods is a common topic in pedagogy. Some folks, myself included, are auditory learners, and will tend to retain more from a spoken lecture than a reading assignment. Some folks just can't retain audio as well as reading something, or need to take notes to retain (even if the notes are not consulted again). This is why being a good teacher requires not just presenting the data in a good way for your learning modality of choice, but for all of them.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

canada_dry 8y ago

Some interesting tid bits of toy design in the interview e.g.: "never show the white of the eye above the pupil... it emotes shock/unpleasant surprise", and if you get doll emotions wrong it becomes Chucky. LOL

aiyodev 8y ago

I’ve seen this mentioned in a few places. I feel like it’s becoming the new Stanford Prisoner Experiment, a completely contrived “experiment” that’s bogus science but becomes popular because it reinforces a popular belief. The kids tormented one robot and not the other because doing so with one was fun and the with the other it was not. They were playing. It’s what children do. It doesn’t reveal so insight into the human mind.

monadgonad 8y ago
Do you not see the potential for insight there? You said it yourself: > The kids tormented one robot and not the other because doing so with one was fun and the with the other it was not. Why was it fun with one, not the other? Why do we take to certain forms of play? How do toys encourage these forms of play? This is extremely insightful as child’s play is partially the process of practising adult behaviours.

digi_owl 8y ago

> He's now working on designing an animatronic baby doll and is cognizant about how to design it so that it discourages (or at least won't encourage) any type of sociopathic behavior. I suspect it will be a futile effort because: A, the person will know it is not alive. B, stuff like this is done specifically to get people to click the video. Frankly more and more the web is resembling a massive schoolyard, with people egging each other on with dares and promises of rewards if they do some kind of icky or potentially dangerous task. One game i have been following recently released an update that allow twitch viewer to vote on various modifiers to the game play, more often than not to the detriment of the streamer. There also seems to be a rise of "hard" games that are specifically there for streamers and their audience. This so that much like the audience of a gladiator match they get to jeer and name call whenever the streamer slip up and the play character gets mauled by some game mechanic.

djsumdog 8y ago

There are videos of engineers kicking robots to see them recover or self-balance, and people who watching are always like, "OMG why would you kick him?" And then it takes a second to realize .. wait...that's ..that's just a robot. But our brains make that association because it looks human enough. So watching that Pleo video; even though I rationally understood what I was feeling, I still felt bad for the dino and I'm glad I felt it. That was just cruel and disturbing. I know I'm feeling bad for a toy, but our brains evolved to have those types of emphatic responses to identify when other animals or humans are in pain -- similar to pain we can experience. It's a pretty interesting trait, and it's not just purely nurture(vs nature) because we see similar sounds and emphatic reactions on many other mammals. There are quite a few human beings who don't feel that; who can watch animals or people in pain and not feel anything or have their sounds/crys trigger neurological response. Those people usually grow up to run banks, or become CEOs of multinational conglomerates.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Just imagine that the Pleo is infected with a xenomorph... and you're all outta nukes.
torbjorn 8y ago
> Those people usually grow up to run banks, or become CEOs of multinational conglomerates. Got a citation? I imagine most people like this would end up in prison and/or socially marginalized. Being incapable of empathy is basically a disability.
- majos 8y ago
  Low expectation, high variance, I'm guessing.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  The documentary I Am FishHead is a good documentary about psychopathy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB0k7wBzXPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB0k7wBzXPY
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

hemogloben 8y ago

I’ve always though Caleb Chung was being pretty hypocritical in this episode. He not only programmed the pain response behavior, but also must have thoroughly tested it, meaning he or someone at his company must have done a more scientific version of that video.