7 ms·

Or perhaps it may teach kids the opposite: to understand the meaning of kind words: "please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emoti

Or perhaps it may teach kids the opposite: to understand the meaning of kind words: "please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emotions, and machines do not. If one says "please" automatically in every situation even when talking to speech recognition software, it is possible they don't mean it when they talk to humans.

Jenk 5y ago
Just teach them to say please to Alexa et Al. Much easier and generally better to be polite when you don't need to be, than to be impolite when you're supposed to be, by mistake.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  No, it is more important to be able to express emotions in tone and word placement (the same word "please" have a spectre of meanings), and learning to use it is more important than learning to be formally polite. For example, even without tone, there's quite significant difference between: - Give me a pen please. - Can you give me a pen please? - Please give me a pen.
  - necovek 5y ago
    If you are suggesting to have Amazon Echo react only on polite tone too, that'd probably solve it too.
    - asteroidbelt 5y ago
      Oh sure, and it should also electroshock you if you use incorrect tone when you are trying to be polite.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    All of which you have to teach your kids anyway, and practicing with Alexa means you won't offend people as much whilst getting more practice. Win win.
    - asteroidbelt 5y ago
      No it’s not because Alexa does not provide feedback. You can teach kids to mechanically pronounce correct words, but that is not hard, even a parrot can to do that. But teaching to express and recognize emotions is much harder and Alexa won’t help with that (may even do worse, although unlikely).
  - axaxs 5y ago
    Most politeness is feigned anyways, it still sounds nicer. In your examples, if all 3 were said in the same, monotonous tone, 2 is much nicer to hear, especially compared to just 'give me a pen', which is how most people order food.
- noduerme 5y ago
  This is a terrible idea. Children should never be trained to be "polite" to machines. Nor to treat them like people, nor to take orders from them. Interactions with software are a really bad proxy for teaching kids how to behave around other humans.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    In the face of the alternative being "it's ok to be a dick sometimes, kids".. no. Say please. You've not presented any kind of argument. "This is a terrible idea" .. why?
    - klyrs 5y ago
      OTOH, this does highlight the "other people's children" barn door in your proposal
      - Jenk 5y ago
        Does it? You sure? "Be polite all of the time" has certainly been a lot easier to teach my own kids than "only be polite some of the time, because being polite all of the time is a bad thing" It goes right up there with the philosophy of every thing deserves respect, even the things you don't like.
        klyrs 5y ago
        You and I share these values, and that's how I teach my kid (not that we have voice assistants hanging around). What I'm saying here is that you're teaching your values, but your values aren't universal. Other parents will teach their values, or simply set examples of behaviors that you disagree with. You can't simply solve the problem by teaching your kids. And if my experience is at all typical, your kid will also pick up values from those other people's kids.
        Jenk 5y ago
        Ah, noted and agreed.
necovek 5y ago
"Speech recognition software" responds in a very humanly voice. It's the very reason people want software assistants to have human voices, even female voices, because it makes them feel more at ease. And we don't have those sat-nav assistants saying things like "you made a mistake and missed your turn", even though we know they are robots and that might be a fact. So we are making computers behave like humans, but you then need to know the difference... how?
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  > "Speech recognition software" responds in a very humanly voice. Speech recognition software responds to any voice it was trained to. It will respond to dog barking or morse code it there will be a demand. It responds to "humanly" speech, but it likely mostly ignores the tone. (Although, I imagine eventually Alexa will learn to start different music depending on the tone of the person asking to play the music.) > It's the very reason people want software assistants to have human voices, even female voices, because it makes them feel more at ease. No, it's different reason. Human to assistant and assistant to human is not symmetrical. It's hard to retrain humans to respond to a different form of speech, but it's easy to retrain the model to whatever is needed/used by users.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  If there was an option to have an air traffic controller's voice for turn by turn navigation, I would enable that.
professoretc 5y ago
Just because Alexa is not human doesn't mean I have to discard my humanity when I interact with it.
Zababa 5y ago
> "please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emotions, and machines do not. Maybe I'm the weird one here but I sometimes say "please" to my computer and mean it. I sometimes do that with objects too. It isn't some deep belief or anything like that, but just something I do because I like to show empathy for objects that have served me well.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Pleading with a crashed kernel is the closest I've ever gotten to begging mercy from God. (And just about as useless).
  - Zababa 5y ago
    I talk a lot to my programs but I don't expect anything, it's just a thing I do for myself. Probably a consequence of the pandemic and having spent a lot of time alone with my computer.

Jenk 5y ago

Just teach them to say please to Alexa et Al. Much easier and generally better to be polite when you don't need to be, than to be impolite when you're supposed to be, by mistake.

asteroidbelt 5y ago
No, it is more important to be able to express emotions in tone and word placement (the same word "please" have a spectre of meanings), and learning to use it is more important than learning to be formally polite. For example, even without tone, there's quite significant difference between: - Give me a pen please. - Can you give me a pen please? - Please give me a pen.
- necovek 5y ago
  If you are suggesting to have Amazon Echo react only on polite tone too, that'd probably solve it too.
  - asteroidbelt 5y ago
    Oh sure, and it should also electroshock you if you use incorrect tone when you are trying to be polite.
- Jenk 5y ago
  All of which you have to teach your kids anyway, and practicing with Alexa means you won't offend people as much whilst getting more practice. Win win.
  - asteroidbelt 5y ago
    No it’s not because Alexa does not provide feedback. You can teach kids to mechanically pronounce correct words, but that is not hard, even a parrot can to do that. But teaching to express and recognize emotions is much harder and Alexa won’t help with that (may even do worse, although unlikely).
- axaxs 5y ago
  Most politeness is feigned anyways, it still sounds nicer. In your examples, if all 3 were said in the same, monotonous tone, 2 is much nicer to hear, especially compared to just 'give me a pen', which is how most people order food.
noduerme 5y ago
This is a terrible idea. Children should never be trained to be "polite" to machines. Nor to treat them like people, nor to take orders from them. Interactions with software are a really bad proxy for teaching kids how to behave around other humans.
- Jenk 5y ago
  In the face of the alternative being "it's ok to be a dick sometimes, kids".. no. Say please. You've not presented any kind of argument. "This is a terrible idea" .. why?
  - klyrs 5y ago
    OTOH, this does highlight the "other people's children" barn door in your proposal
    - Jenk 5y ago
      Does it? You sure? "Be polite all of the time" has certainly been a lot easier to teach my own kids than "only be polite some of the time, because being polite all of the time is a bad thing" It goes right up there with the philosophy of every thing deserves respect, even the things you don't like.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        You and I share these values, and that's how I teach my kid (not that we have voice assistants hanging around). What I'm saying here is that you're teaching your values, but your values aren't universal. Other parents will teach their values, or simply set examples of behaviors that you disagree with. You can't simply solve the problem by teaching your kids. And if my experience is at all typical, your kid will also pick up values from those other people's kids.
        Jenk 5y ago
        Ah, noted and agreed.

necovek 5y ago

"Speech recognition software" responds in a very humanly voice. It's the very reason people want software assistants to have human voices, even female voices, because it makes them feel more at ease. And we don't have those sat-nav assistants saying things like "you made a mistake and missed your turn", even though we know they are robots and that might be a fact. So we are making computers behave like humans, but you then need to know the difference... how?

asteroidbelt 5y ago
> "Speech recognition software" responds in a very humanly voice. Speech recognition software responds to any voice it was trained to. It will respond to dog barking or morse code it there will be a demand. It responds to "humanly" speech, but it likely mostly ignores the tone. (Although, I imagine eventually Alexa will learn to start different music depending on the tone of the person asking to play the music.) > It's the very reason people want software assistants to have human voices, even female voices, because it makes them feel more at ease. No, it's different reason. Human to assistant and assistant to human is not symmetrical. It's hard to retrain humans to respond to a different form of speech, but it's easy to retrain the model to whatever is needed/used by users.
908B64B197 5y ago
If there was an option to have an air traffic controller's voice for turn by turn navigation, I would enable that.

professoretc 5y ago

Just because Alexa is not human doesn't mean I have to discard my humanity when I interact with it.

Zababa 5y ago

> "please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emotions, and machines do not. Maybe I'm the weird one here but I sometimes say "please" to my computer and mean it. I sometimes do that with objects too. It isn't some deep belief or anything like that, but just something I do because I like to show empathy for objects that have served me well.

noduerme 5y ago
Pleading with a crashed kernel is the closest I've ever gotten to begging mercy from God. (And just about as useless).
- Zababa 5y ago
  I talk a lot to my programs but I don't expect anything, it's just a thing I do for myself. Probably a consequence of the pandemic and having spent a lot of time alone with my computer.