Robot Becomes One of the Kids 186
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that toddlers treat a small robot as a peer rather than a toy. A team from the University of California, San Diego, placed Sony's QRIO in a classroom of kids aged 18 months to 2 years and watched them interact. Over time the children grew to treat the robot as one of them — playing games with the robot, hugging it, and covering it up with a blanket when its batteries ran down."
They do the same with a dog.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example.. take this sentence:
Would that be news worthy? No. Why? Because its in the nature of most children to play games and take cares of others(because that is what people do to them.) This does not mean they see it as a peer. They see it as a pet.
yeah.. (Score:3, Insightful)
why is this so groundbreaking?
SF writers got it wrong about "androids..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Human beings are sufficiently capable of anthropomorphizing... or empathizing... to treat even obviously non-humanoid things as human. (As witness the bonding between humans and pets).
Robots only need to be reasonably human-like in appearance and behavior, and humans will meet them more than halfway.
And, of course, and unfortunately, human beings are also capable of treating actual human beings as not human.
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SF writers got it wrong about "androids..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:1, Insightful)
From personal experience, if your child is trying to post into the VCR, make sure your wallet is out of reach - otherwise you'll never find all those cards.
Cheers
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surpised. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only person... (Score:3, Insightful)
Human-assisted... (Score:4, Insightful)
So it isn't just a robot, artificially intelligent enough to fool toddlers. It's something of a human-controlled puppet, with them telling it to do more advanced things than it could figure out on its own.
So, I guess, basically a PR stunt for Sony.
Re:Awww...... (Score:3, Insightful)
And he notes that the male pronoun is the default in the English language - and does not imply gender. (English lacks gender, unlike many other languages.)
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the difference?
Re:I can just see it now... It will become a crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They do the same with a dog.. (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a famous experiment where a researcher had his child interact with a Chimp to see if the Chimp would exhibit human behavior. He found out after a while his child actually started to act like the chimp.
I wonder if the kids acted similar to the robot?