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Couple things I'd like to keep track of here. Amazon's digital assistant is now modeling proper behavior for kids in the form of (rewarding) please's and thank you's. She's too real, and if kids interact with a thing (still pushing the term intelligentity) that's a lot like a person, and yet treating it like a servant by barking orders or calling it mean names, then in 20 years we'll have a society of jerks running around.
I must admit, at the outset I was disappointed to see some friends of mine talk to Siri with complete and utter disrespect, calling her the most vile names in the book, and snapping orders at her like a sub-human degenerate dirtbag.
I was also disappointed to see the headlines after the civil servant robot in Washington DC fell ("jumped") into the fountain - they joked about it committing suicide, as if suicide was something we joke about. Apparently as long as it's a robot doing it, suicide is a joke. I get it; if it's not alive, then how can it kill itself.
But the problem here is that it no longer matters if the thing is "alive" or not. What matters is if it -seems- like a human. We feel bad when robots stuggle. Maybe you remember the Boston Dynamics fail videos? They elicit empathy in us.
We are about as social as a social creature can get. Everything we do is part of an intricate, complex, social web of meaning. And everything we do is recorded by those around us as a model of how to interact with others. When you throw your video game controller at the TV as an adult, your kid sees that and thinks that's how you're supposed to treat your stuff, including the people in your life. This may be microscopic, but it adds up. If we all treat very human-like robots like sub-humans, then we end up with a society of kids who grow up learning to treat each other like crap.
You want your kid to be a misogynist? Just treat your wife like crap. You want your kid to be a jerk in general? Just talk to Siri and Alexa and the ATM machine etc like they're sub-human and you'll give them a shining example of how to do it. You want a young person who feels bad about themselves and is considering suicide to think that life is a joke? Make fun of things that "committ suicide." And the more human these things are, the stronger the effect.
Robots have already become like humans. That was the point from the beginning. We see faces in trees for ****'s sake; we want our robots to be made in our own image. But if we're going to -make- them like humans, then we need to -treat- them like humans.
Post Script
Final question then - can we still talk trash about the weather? "Ew, it's gross out here," she says on a humid day. Maybe that's not a nice thing to say to the weather; maybe the weather has feelings too? Let's start with the robots and wait for geoengineering to make a robot out of our weather.
Notes
Amazon Alexa to reward kids who say: 'Please'
Apr 2018, BBC
The Touchy Task of Making Robots Seem Human - But Not Too Human
Jan 2017, WIRED
Robots Have Feelings Too aka In Other News Suicide Is Funny Again
Jul 2017, Network Address
To See You Staring Back At You (regarding the Uncanny Valley)
Jan 2017, Network Address
Boston Dynamics Robot Fail Videos
(you're not getting a link, search for yourself and you will be rewarded with a daily dose of empathy)
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