6 ms·

It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell

by skreech 14y ago

It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud"? Same result, more truthful method.

chakalakasp 14y ago
Son, I hate to tell you this, but I invented the Internet to keep you preoccupied as a child. It took me a good half year of coding in my off time, but I finally got it right and, well, your posts and this response are the only human-input things you've read on this screen since you were 7. Love, Pa
- neya 14y ago
  Brilliant reply, sir!
  - critium 14y ago
    when i first read this, i thought you put in SIRI not SIR! That would have been more awesome :)
damian2000 14y ago
I don't think its wrong, its just stretching the truth. Kids know its a machine, but believe that its sensitive to noise.
- rytis 14y ago
  I agree. Furthermore, if you think about it, why are we sensitive to noise? In simple terms, because we have sensors, processing "circuit" and some sort of analogy of "code" that has this primitive logic - "high sound pressure -> pain". Now looking back at a machine - it has microphone, and sound card. So the input mechanism is in place, the only missing bit is the logic that determines machine's reaction to stimuli. Without the scrip, the machine cannot be "upset by the noise", but with the script it actually can be, IMHO. So there is some grain of truth in what the guy is saying to his kids...
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Yes, but if you intentionally altered someone's brain to add a sensitivity, and then say ”gosh, it seems sensitive for some reason...”
ajuc 14y ago
> It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. In 2100 your comment will be evidence of wild anti-AI sentiments popular in our backward times.
- onlyup 14y ago
  No it won't.
- reinhardt 14y ago
  Check your meatspace privilege, human.
- angersock 14y ago
  ahahahahhahaha yeah okay when duke nukem forever is ported to common lisp running on the hurd suuuuure Edit: More seriously, trends in AI seems to be running towards statistical analysis and away from anything that might resemble actual "sentience"--even were we to define such a thing. I doubt that an overgrown Bayes engine would take offense at anything I do.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Brains also tended to run towards statistical analysis.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cnvogel 14y ago
The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Even though I understand that in this case it is for sure a pretty harmless feedback mechanism (stopping the computer game), I don't like the idea at all. Furthermore, on the technical side, it's not too easy to calculate some number corresponding to the perceived loudness level, especially not as some answers suggested to parse the RMS-signal number output by the command-line tools "aplay"/"arecord". You'd need at least to take the (non-linear in amplitude, dependent on frequency) weighting curves shown on the wikipedia-page for "Loudness" into account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness Then, you'd have to take into account how annoying a sound is, which is obviously highly dependant on the circumstances: A colleague might drive you mad with only very quiet squeeking of his chair, but a lound regularly humming machine you might be able to completely mask out mentally so that you don't even remember if it was turned on or off at some day. Putting these technical things back to the (morally questionable) problem at hand: If you don't "punish", "educate" or "feedback" your children according to a quantity that they can actually perceive and whose magnitude they can judge, they will experience this apparatus to be highly unfair. And, additionally, if I would put such a machinery to use, my children would with absolute certainty become masters in creating the most appallingly unpleasant and annoying sounds one can imagine that just don't reach the threshold of the machine. And they would be completely right doing so ;-). Edit: Typos, "tools aplay/arecord".
- dsr_ 14y ago
  The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Do automated traffic lights bother you?
  - ordinary 14y ago
    Traffic lights do not condition humans. Traffic accidents, driving instructors, parents and policemen do. I find myself sharing the grandparent's discomfort. I'm an avid gamer, yet sometimes, when I lie awake at night and mull over the events of the day, I find myself wondering if I've truly mastered the game or if the game has only taught me what succession of button presses and mouse movements give me the highest levels of dopamine.
skriticos2 14y ago
Children are told that a fat man climbs down the chimney on Christmas to deposit presents under a tree and other stories that are total lies. It's probably better that they get a chance this way to figure out not to believe everything without question.
- Jach 14y ago
  I second the idea that it's good for kids to be able to learn things on their own and not have all the answers immediately given to them. However if I had a kid I'd try my hardest not to intentionally lie--if they pick up the Santa lie or other lies from other kids, I'll neither confirm nor deny them and let them figure it out. (I might give hints toward avenues of testing a belief, though... but especially the importance of making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences...)
  - jjsz 14y ago
    Off topic: I disagree, when I have kids I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it, if this includes telling it Santa Clause is not real- I'm going to do it. I rather have him learn from me then some snob egotistic kid who thinks he knows the secrets of life preaching about how unfair it is that other parents are lying to his friends or another ignorant kid, who is figuring it all by himself, confusing my kid. Having a kid who is aware might pay off..or not, like someone in the top said, us without kids don't know how the robot methodology isn't going to work. On Topic: Putting the tv to a certain volume level and a tablet, with a voice monitoring application- if it passes a certain threshold it will change the channel to a 1 minute pre recorded message telling him not to yell, sounds more productive than a white screen and a notification for you to go to the room and explain to him why that keeps happening or sending him to the room for yelling to loud after a few warnings. We can all agree there's a certain level of yelling one can stand from kids!
    - abstractbill 14y ago
      I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it Good luck staying married, with that attitude. If you don't parent as a team, you'll fail in much worse ways than doing the "wrong" thing wrt Santa.
kawera 14y ago
An interesting book by Donald Norman on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automobiles/dp/020162236X http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automo...
CodeMage 14y ago
Because the "truthful" method doesn't get the desired results. I'm a father (and I also remember something about being a kid) and I can tell you that 4 year old kids are unbelievably egocentric. A lot of the rules adults try to impose that are perfectly reasonable to anyone with enough empathy seem completely arbitrary to a 4 year old. So, "don't yell because that distracts/bothers me" is an "arbitrary" rule coming from a "cranky" dad. "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud" gets translated into "I don't want you to yell", which is, again, an "arbitrary" rule kids don't care about. On the other hand, "computer doesn't like loud sounds" is a perfectly "reasonable" rule, because the computer is "in charge" of letting you play the game. You disturb the computer, the computer reacts. And you can't argue with it or try to manipulate it. Crying at it or throwing a temper tantrum won't do any good. It has no mouth, so you can't have a conversation with it. In short, you have to follow its rules. If you want to avoid having the kids jump to the "logical" conclusion that the machine is a person, you can formulate it differently: instead of saying "the computer doesn't like loud sounds", you can say "the computer is a machine that doesn't work well when there's a lot of yelling". Then again, someone else already pointed out that kids believe that an old, fat man can come down their chimney and leave gifts in a matter of minutes -- and do so for every kid in the freaking world -- without suffering any psychological scars from an "untruthful" method of influencing their behavior (because Santa brings gifts only to kids who are "good"), so I don't see what the big deal is with going through a short period of believing the machine is a person.
- maeon3 14y ago
  When I discover anyone has deceived me successfully, my shields are up around them, forever, because a deceiver is always a deceiver, I always have to spend more cpu cycles to wonder: "Are they deceiving me now"? This could be an elaborate lesson for the kid to teach them about deception. But it looks to me like this is a dysfunctional family in the making. When you break the bond of trust, it takes YEARS to get it back, and for me, it's like 5 years. Father is playing with fire here, and I'd kick that guy in the shins and post an image to reddit for all to laugh, why? Because it's FUNNY!
  - stch2 14y ago

by skreech 14y ago

chakalakasp 14y ago

Son, I hate to tell you this, but I invented the Internet to keep you preoccupied as a child. It took me a good half year of coding in my off time, but I finally got it right and, well, your posts and this response are the only human-input things you've read on this screen since you were 7. Love, Pa

neya 14y ago
Brilliant reply, sir!
- critium 14y ago
  when i first read this, i thought you put in SIRI not SIR! That would have been more awesome :)

damian2000 14y ago

I don't think its wrong, its just stretching the truth. Kids know its a machine, but believe that its sensitive to noise.

rytis 14y ago
I agree. Furthermore, if you think about it, why are we sensitive to noise? In simple terms, because we have sensors, processing "circuit" and some sort of analogy of "code" that has this primitive logic - "high sound pressure -> pain". Now looking back at a machine - it has microphone, and sound card. So the input mechanism is in place, the only missing bit is the logic that determines machine's reaction to stimuli. Without the scrip, the machine cannot be "upset by the noise", but with the script it actually can be, IMHO. So there is some grain of truth in what the guy is saying to his kids...
- Evbn 14y ago
  Yes, but if you intentionally altered someone's brain to add a sensitivity, and then say ”gosh, it seems sensitive for some reason...”

ajuc 14y ago

> It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. In 2100 your comment will be evidence of wild anti-AI sentiments popular in our backward times.

onlyup 14y ago
No it won't.
reinhardt 14y ago
Check your meatspace privilege, human.
angersock 14y ago
ahahahahhahaha yeah okay when duke nukem forever is ported to common lisp running on the hurd suuuuure Edit: More seriously, trends in AI seems to be running towards statistical analysis and away from anything that might resemble actual "sentience"--even were we to define such a thing. I doubt that an overgrown Bayes engine would take offense at anything I do.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Brains also tended to run towards statistical analysis.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cnvogel 14y ago

The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Even though I understand that in this case it is for sure a pretty harmless feedback mechanism (stopping the computer game), I don't like the idea at all. Furthermore, on the technical side, it's not too easy to calculate some number corresponding to the perceived loudness level, especially not as some answers suggested to parse the RMS-signal number output by the command-line tools "aplay"/"arecord". You'd need at least to take the (non-linear in amplitude, dependent on frequency) weighting curves shown on the wikipedia-page for "Loudness" into account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness Then, you'd have to take into account how annoying a sound is, which is obviously highly dependant on the circumstances: A colleague might drive you mad with only very quiet squeeking of his chair, but a lound regularly humming machine you might be able to completely mask out mentally so that you don't even remember if it was turned on or off at some day. Putting these technical things back to the (morally questionable) problem at hand: If you don't "punish", "educate" or "feedback" your children according to a quantity that they can actually perceive and whose magnitude they can judge, they will experience this apparatus to be highly unfair. And, additionally, if I would put such a machinery to use, my children would with absolute certainty become masters in creating the most appallingly unpleasant and annoying sounds one can imagine that just don't reach the threshold of the machine. And they would be completely right doing so ;-). Edit: Typos, "tools aplay/arecord".

dsr_ 14y ago
The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Do automated traffic lights bother you?
- ordinary 14y ago
  Traffic lights do not condition humans. Traffic accidents, driving instructors, parents and policemen do. I find myself sharing the grandparent's discomfort. I'm an avid gamer, yet sometimes, when I lie awake at night and mull over the events of the day, I find myself wondering if I've truly mastered the game or if the game has only taught me what succession of button presses and mouse movements give me the highest levels of dopamine.

skriticos2 14y ago

Children are told that a fat man climbs down the chimney on Christmas to deposit presents under a tree and other stories that are total lies. It's probably better that they get a chance this way to figure out not to believe everything without question.

Jach 14y ago
I second the idea that it's good for kids to be able to learn things on their own and not have all the answers immediately given to them. However if I had a kid I'd try my hardest not to intentionally lie--if they pick up the Santa lie or other lies from other kids, I'll neither confirm nor deny them and let them figure it out. (I might give hints toward avenues of testing a belief, though... but especially the importance of making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences...)
- jjsz 14y ago
  Off topic: I disagree, when I have kids I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it, if this includes telling it Santa Clause is not real- I'm going to do it. I rather have him learn from me then some snob egotistic kid who thinks he knows the secrets of life preaching about how unfair it is that other parents are lying to his friends or another ignorant kid, who is figuring it all by himself, confusing my kid. Having a kid who is aware might pay off..or not, like someone in the top said, us without kids don't know how the robot methodology isn't going to work. On Topic: Putting the tv to a certain volume level and a tablet, with a voice monitoring application- if it passes a certain threshold it will change the channel to a 1 minute pre recorded message telling him not to yell, sounds more productive than a white screen and a notification for you to go to the room and explain to him why that keeps happening or sending him to the room for yelling to loud after a few warnings. We can all agree there's a certain level of yelling one can stand from kids!
  - abstractbill 14y ago
    I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it Good luck staying married, with that attitude. If you don't parent as a team, you'll fail in much worse ways than doing the "wrong" thing wrt Santa.

kawera 14y ago

An interesting book by Donald Norman on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automobiles/dp/020162236X http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automo...

CodeMage 14y ago

Because the "truthful" method doesn't get the desired results. I'm a father (and I also remember something about being a kid) and I can tell you that 4 year old kids are unbelievably egocentric. A lot of the rules adults try to impose that are perfectly reasonable to anyone with enough empathy seem completely arbitrary to a 4 year old. So, "don't yell because that distracts/bothers me" is an "arbitrary" rule coming from a "cranky" dad. "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud" gets translated into "I don't want you to yell", which is, again, an "arbitrary" rule kids don't care about. On the other hand, "computer doesn't like loud sounds" is a perfectly "reasonable" rule, because the computer is "in charge" of letting you play the game. You disturb the computer, the computer reacts. And you can't argue with it or try to manipulate it. Crying at it or throwing a temper tantrum won't do any good. It has no mouth, so you can't have a conversation with it. In short, you have to follow its rules. If you want to avoid having the kids jump to the "logical" conclusion that the machine is a person, you can formulate it differently: instead of saying "the computer doesn't like loud sounds", you can say "the computer is a machine that doesn't work well when there's a lot of yelling". Then again, someone else already pointed out that kids believe that an old, fat man can come down their chimney and leave gifts in a matter of minutes -- and do so for every kid in the freaking world -- without suffering any psychological scars from an "untruthful" method of influencing their behavior (because Santa brings gifts only to kids who are "good"), so I don't see what the big deal is with going through a short period of believing the machine is a person.

maeon3 14y ago
When I discover anyone has deceived me successfully, my shields are up around them, forever, because a deceiver is always a deceiver, I always have to spend more cpu cycles to wonder: "Are they deceiving me now"? This could be an elaborate lesson for the kid to teach them about deception. But it looks to me like this is a dysfunctional family in the making. When you break the bond of trust, it takes YEARS to get it back, and for me, it's like 5 years. Father is playing with fire here, and I'd kick that guy in the shins and post an image to reddit for all to laugh, why? Because it's FUNNY!
- stch2 14y ago