Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh it's it could happen here. A podcast from CEES
Speaker 2: The Consumer Electronics Show twenty twenty five. I am here
Speaker 2: with my friend and work partner, Garrison Davis. We have
Speaker 2: been trotting the boards, the boards being the Las Vegas
Speaker 2: Convention Center all day. Garrison, today, you started earlier than
Speaker 2: I did because I was catastrophically hungover after getting very
Speaker 2: drunk with the priest last night. Yeah, we had a
Speaker 2: nice dinner and then we set out to experience a
Speaker 2: fresh new hell. And in this case, that fresh new
Speaker 2: hell was what the AI bros Have ready for your children.
Speaker 3: No, it's funny how we both stumbled across AI products
Speaker 3: for kids like the same day, during the exact same time.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Yeah, it really is remarkable that, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess in part just because like that is such
Speaker 2: a focus. I think it has something to do with
Speaker 2: what you saw some of yesterday where and I had
Speaker 2: caught a little the day before where they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they don't really like this stuff. We're gonna have to
Speaker 2: get around it. Like obviously this is inevitable, but like
Speaker 2: people really also seem to not enjoy it very much.
Speaker 2: No one can explain why but I think that this
Speaker 2: may be like, Okay, well, if we get them when
Speaker 2: they're young enough, if we train these kids, we can
Speaker 2: force this on them and they'll have no choice but
Speaker 2: to like it.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to say that because the first thing
Speaker 3: I did today was go to a panel at the
Speaker 3: Venetian titled Raising AI Kids Responsibly, which is maybe the
Speaker 3: best title for any single panel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fucked up.
Speaker 3: The description was a new generation of kids are being
Speaker 3: brought up with AI technologies as a part of their lives.
Speaker 3: How does this affect their learning, entertainment and socialization? Which
Speaker 3: is a good question. Yeah, we should be asking that
Speaker 3: more people, should There four people on the panel Karen
Speaker 3: ruth Wong from Ido, play Lab Partnerships, Nilo Lewick from
Speaker 3: Skyrocket Toys, Melissa Hunter from Family Video Network, and Joshua
Speaker 3: Garrett from a Ready Land. And I'll talk about all
Speaker 3: these all these different companies and people in a sec.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the panel started with Karen ruth Wang from Ido,
Speaker 3: which is the company that first partnered with sessame a
Speaker 3: workshop to start making online apps. So you know, that
Speaker 3: was interesting to me because sessme workshop generally puts a
Speaker 3: lot of care into, like, you know, making media for children.
Speaker 3: This is a company that works with them. So I
Speaker 3: was interested in what she was gonna say, and basically
Speaker 3: she talked not about any products that her company's making,
Speaker 3: but instead research into how like AI is affecting gen Z,
Speaker 3: how gen Z wants to like interact with AI, and
Speaker 3: talked about a whole bunch of research that her company
Speaker 3: has been doing for the past few years on like
Speaker 3: what people you know, my age and you know younger,
Speaker 3: what their attitudes are towards this thing that has become
Speaker 3: like an increasingly encroaching part.
Speaker 4: Of their lives.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to play a series of clips.
Speaker 2: Couldn't be more excited.
Speaker 5: So I was sharing this morning a little bit about
Speaker 5: what they're learning.
Speaker 1: That question is what if the.
Speaker 5: Tech savvy generation is at buying anity?
Speaker 1: Moore. We have a lot of.
Speaker 5: Really interesting opinions and assumptions in our heads that these
Speaker 5: are the ones that are going to be the first
Speaker 5: users and the first ars, and in many ways they are.
Speaker 5: But then the ones that also come with the most
Speaker 5: informed opinions, not just about how badly the tech feels,
Speaker 5: how cringey some of them I be landing, but also
Speaker 5: how it's affecting their sense of humanity.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The very first thing this is literally like the minutes
Speaker 3: into the panels, is like after they do their introductions,
Speaker 3: the first thing to talk about is how gen Z
Speaker 3: is both an early adopter of new tech, but they're
Speaker 3: also kind of the most AI critical.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's cringey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like how it feels cringy and and not just that,
Speaker 3: how it's affecting people's sense of humanity and viewing this like,
Speaker 3: you know, in some ways as like an obstacle to
Speaker 3: get over, but also this is I'm not sure how
Speaker 3: I feel about about, like, you know, Karen and the
Speaker 3: company she's representing here, because in some ways I felt
Speaker 3: like she's probably actually good. She just had to frame
Speaker 3: all of the things she was saying as like shocking
Speaker 3: revelations to all these tech bros. Be like, yeah, actually,
Speaker 3: it turns out kids surprisingly don't want their lives run
Speaker 3: by AI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't want to communicate only with AI.
Speaker 3: I actually liked what she was saying, It's just her
Speaker 3: presentation of it felt kind of odd at times because
Speaker 3: of who the audience is.
Speaker 2: Get do you get the feeling that she was like
Speaker 2: a bad person trying to help, like other bad people
Speaker 2: sell poison to children, or somebody who was trying to
Speaker 2: like in a way that these guys would listen to
Speaker 2: tell them that what they're doing isn't work.
Speaker 3: Maybe like twenty eighty so like a little bit of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we have to sell some of this, but mostly it
Speaker 3: felt like trying to inform people about how this isn't
Speaker 3: really what people want, and you know, it has a
Speaker 3: lot of actual dropbacks. Here's a clip of Karen talking
Speaker 3: about the sort of questions that they're asking kids to,
Speaker 3: you know, get data on how they feel about AI.
Speaker 4: Here's a few progocative ones.
Speaker 5: You really put tangible expressions what it would be like
Speaker 5: to interact with a potential AI tool. And so we
Speaker 5: asked questions like, Okay, you've recently had a friend breakup.
Speaker 5: What kind of intervention do you want? Do you want
Speaker 5: someone to counsel you through that process, or do you
Speaker 5: want someone to kind of replace that friend for the
Speaker 5: time being, just so you can you know, back yourself
Speaker 5: out from that relationship. So by asking really tangible questions,
Speaker 5: by putting prototypes in front of youth, we were able
Speaker 5: to co design to view insights, but this one it
Speaker 5: always gets all audience members. We put out a provocational
Speaker 5: expression of imagine you could have an AI trained on
Speaker 5: your preferences, on your personalities, live your life for you.
Speaker 5: Imagine they could.
Speaker 2: Swipe your tender for you. They would have the achy.
Speaker 5: Conversations, or they would go through the awkward introductions you
Speaker 5: new person in school. And we heard some really interesting things.
Speaker 5: I want to go on a bad date for myself
Speaker 5: and I want to have that bad vacation. There was
Speaker 5: a really interesting design that being able to live life
Speaker 5: for your selves, that pat.
Speaker 3: Being able to live life for yourself is a badge
Speaker 3: of honor.
Speaker 2: Amazing that human beings don't want a robot to replace
Speaker 2: them in such drudgery as the search for love and
Speaker 2: human connection. Incredible that that teens aren't interested in letting
Speaker 2: a robot go on dates for them.
Speaker 3: No, it's super interesting and like even like the first
Speaker 3: thing she said about you know you like lost some friends.
Speaker 3: Do you want an AI to like to you know,
Speaker 3: like counsel you or like you know, like like like
Speaker 3: talk about your feelings or do you want a friend replacement?
Speaker 3: And no, people don't want a friend replacement.
Speaker 4: And this even like.
Speaker 3: Honor question of like you know, like like AI swiping
Speaker 3: your Tinder for you trying to figure out what your
Speaker 3: preferences are. No, like gen Z wants to live life
Speaker 3: for themselves. It's like it's odd because.
Speaker 2: I because that's what being a person that a person
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 3: But like it's it's odd how that's framed as like
Speaker 3: a surprising revelation.
Speaker 2: Wow, these kids want to live lives.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was. It was a kind of an
Speaker 3: odd panel to go to. She highlighted that the key
Speaker 3: areas of tension in AI for for gen Z is
Speaker 3: twofold a creative expression and human relationships. These are the
Speaker 3: two biggest things that people are concerned about is how
Speaker 3: how will affect your ability to you know, make art
Speaker 3: be creative and what it means for like, you know,
Speaker 3: relationships as a human being, right, especially if you're being
Speaker 3: asked questions about you know, would you let an AI
Speaker 3: like meet someone that you want to date first, have
Speaker 3: have them go through like a first like fake AI
Speaker 3: date to like to like get through like icebreaker questions
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: The amount of people I meet who feel that way
Speaker 2: about like their digital twins or like who take pride
Speaker 2: in having like an AI trained off of their social
Speaker 2: media posts at events like these. It's shocking to me
Speaker 2: because like, do you feel good about saying that a
Speaker 2: chat bot? You feel like it is you that you
Speaker 2: have trained a chatbot to be a reasonable simulacrum of yourself?
Speaker 2: Do you feel good about thinking that? Does that make
Speaker 2: you happy about yourself?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: And the data that person was talking about showed no, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: people actually don't want these things, Like no, that's actually
Speaker 3: is it what anyone wants out of life? This isn't
Speaker 3: what anyone wants out of this technology, right, Like we
Speaker 3: use AI all the time, you know, like like you know,
Speaker 3: like autocomplete. It has a whole bunch of like you know,
Speaker 3: pretty basic uses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it saves me from having to spell certain words
Speaker 2: too many times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we don't want it to like go on
Speaker 3: dates for us. And the whole part of being human
Speaker 3: is having you know, a degree of bad experiences and
Speaker 3: that that helps shape us as people. And this isn't
Speaker 3: like a hurdle to get over. This is like a
Speaker 3: part of what it means to be human. And she
Speaker 3: kind of talked about that a little bit more in
Speaker 3: this last clip that I'll play the next one here.
Speaker 5: I prefer to give opportunities to people over technology. I
Speaker 5: think these are the ones. And again they've seen what
Speaker 5: it's like when people feel replaced. I'll definitely share a
Speaker 5: lot more, but starting off with a few key learnings.
Speaker 5: Gen Z's valid advised some perspective from loved experience, something
Speaker 5: about designing for friction. I'm gonna do like an design
Speaker 5: for friction. In our age of optimization and our age
Speaker 5: of assuming that everything should move as fast as possible
Speaker 5: to make life as smooth as possible. There's something about
Speaker 5: the challenge, and that comes back to play, right, Why
Speaker 5: would we spend so much time to hit a ball
Speaker 5: several hundred yards away. There's something about the joy of achieving,
Speaker 5: the joy of overcoming challenge, the joy of moving through
Speaker 5: your first friend breaker or your boyfriend or girlfriend breakup
Speaker 5: that makes you to a person. And as many times
Speaker 5: as helicopter parents or as people who are design technologies
Speaker 5: assume that the smoothest possible path is the best possible path,
Speaker 5: there's some rush back.
Speaker 2: There, some pushback, some pushback to the idea that like
Speaker 2: you should live a life, your one precious life should
Speaker 2: be lived.
Speaker 3: No, but there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff there.
Speaker 3: Gen Z has great fears about being replaced. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: like having like workforce replacement. Gen Z prefers to actually
Speaker 3: like make connections and network with other people. Our agent
Speaker 3: actually like share opportunities.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In previous panels, this was something that was also talked
Speaker 3: about how millennials were way more like selective about like
Speaker 3: sharing like employment opportunities because they were like so focused
Speaker 3: on making sure that they make it and there's a
Speaker 3: lot more like like open collaboration and sharing sharing opportunities.
Speaker 2: It's harder, so you guys have to be better about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, talking about you know, like designing for friction.
Speaker 3: There's like there's value in something being challenging.
Speaker 2: That was very interesting because the surprise about that because
Speaker 2: it is it is this kind of I'm sure most
Speaker 2: of these people were born to wealth and privilege and
Speaker 2: the first thing that people do with money, the primary
Speaker 2: reason to have money is to reduce friction. The fact
Speaker 2: that that's surprising to anyone that like, no, like friction's
Speaker 2: necessary otherwise you're not a person. I mean, it's like that,
Speaker 2: It's like the ghoule we saw the other night, right,
Speaker 2: Like you know, they're just not really people, you know.
Speaker 3: One thing she kind of closed on in this section
Speaker 3: is talking about how how gen Z does not trust
Speaker 3: AI to understand the nuance of their lives, especially in
Speaker 3: this age of like tech optimization, Like that misses a
Speaker 3: part of what it means to, like, you know, feel
Speaker 3: proud of yourself and the work that you've done. Something
Speaker 3: should have talked about at the very end of the
Speaker 3: panel was like how they hadn't factored in like like
Speaker 3: gen Z, you know, and people in general, right, will
Speaker 3: will feel proud about, you know, making a piece of art,
Speaker 3: and they don't have that same sense of pride for
Speaker 3: an AI generated image no where that's like a screenplay,
Speaker 3: whether it's whatever someone gave an example of, Like you know,
Speaker 3: I have a kid who does creative stuff. They edit videos, right,
Speaker 3: and there is AI tools that make editing videos like easier,
Speaker 3: But if the AI does all the work, they don't
Speaker 3: feel happy about that, Like they don't feel proud, they
Speaker 3: don't feel like they've actually achieved something. And you have
Speaker 3: to feel proud about the work that you've done, so
Speaker 3: like there's actually a sense of like ownership over like
Speaker 3: the art that we create an exact quote was quote
Speaker 3: you can't eliminate life formative aspects, which which is like yes,
Speaker 3: like yeah, you don't ever have any I'm happy someone
Speaker 3: at CS is saying this, the fact that it needs
Speaker 3: to be said at all.
Speaker 2: Very bleak, very sad.
Speaker 4: It's really bleak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dating people, making friends, being social, doing whatever it
Speaker 2: is you do for a living as yourself is what
Speaker 2: life is like.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think last thing that you talked about it is
Speaker 3: like gen Z aren't technophobes, but they do have strong boundaries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good, and they.
Speaker 3: Have to reinforce their own sense of self because we're
Speaker 3: constantly being bombarded with you know, slop content, influencers, podcasts,
Speaker 3: live streams like everything you know, TikTok social media. So
Speaker 3: we have strong boundaries on how tech it like integrates
Speaker 3: into our lives and a lot of the way these
Speaker 3: tech bros want AI to like become more invasive.
Speaker 4: We are not super into now.
Speaker 2: Like all they're offering people is like this machine will
Speaker 2: do everything that you actually want to do with your time,
Speaker 2: and also you won't have a job, Like that's what
Speaker 2: big tech is promising gen Z.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's why I started my day.
Speaker 2: Speaking of gen z Z stands for zillions of dollars
Speaker 2: that will get if you listen to these ads and
Speaker 2: we're back.
Speaker 3: So unfortunately, that panel wasn't just talking about how kids
Speaker 3: maybe don't want AI to run their lives. It also
Speaker 3: had two other people from AI products. The first one
Speaker 3: that I'll mention is called ready Land, which I think
Speaker 3: I think partnered with Amazon ors to some degree. It
Speaker 3: at least uses like Amazon Alexa's. It's essentially a chooser
Speaker 3: and adventure story book with like a natural physical copy
Speaker 3: that Alexa will read to you and you can talk
Speaker 3: to it, so you can talk to characters and choose
Speaker 3: different pathways. I was more skeptical out of it at first,
Speaker 3: because I just don't like AI's reading books to kids.
Speaker 3: But this became more like an interactive story thing, and
Speaker 3: it actually seemed kind of good at what it was doing.
Speaker 3: And then the guy behind it clarified ready Land is
Speaker 3: not using AI to generate new content for kids. It's
Speaker 3: all like pre programmed, like human paths, you know, just
Speaker 3: with so many variables already built in based on you know,
Speaker 3: like if you're making food in one of these books,
Speaker 3: or like you know, a kid wants to go on
Speaker 3: like a weird side quest. The AI already has like
Speaker 3: stuff for how to handle that. You knows how to
Speaker 3: say these words and knows how to stitch together these things.
Speaker 3: But it's not actually generating new content itself. It's if
Speaker 3: everything is like pre baked, it can be assembled in
Speaker 3: many different ways. Okay, so every time you read a
Speaker 3: book to the kid, it'll be slightly different because the
Speaker 3: kid will respond to certain plot elements. The kid can
Speaker 3: like talk to talk to characters, ask questions. So like
Speaker 3: this was this was actually pretty interesting. The fact that
Speaker 3: it's simply not even generating new content makes it miles
Speaker 3: better than any of these other.
Speaker 2: AI Kids products. That it's actually just kind of using
Speaker 2: some of the tech that makes up AI. Exactly how
Speaker 2: you to make something humans wrote more reactive exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like it's it's it's it's actually like a
Speaker 3: pretty interesting piece of technology, and it's not just Alexa
Speaker 3: reading a story book. It has like a large interactive
Speaker 3: element which you know that makes the Alexa part, you know,
Speaker 3: actually useful. And then there was this other product, what
Speaker 3: was this What was this one called? It's from a
Speaker 3: company called Skyrocket Toys hoe the AI Teddy.
Speaker 4: Bear or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Poka Hoe the AI bear, which does generate live
Speaker 3: content with with guardrails. He did say, oh good, but
Speaker 3: the AI content both comes from the input and the output.
Speaker 3: He talked about guardrails, you know, he said, you know,
Speaker 3: chat gpt does have internal guardrails, but the reliability is suspect,
Speaker 3: which there certainly is, considering just last week there was
Speaker 3: a piece of news about chat gpt helping someone build
Speaker 3: a bomb.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, which they used in just this magical city.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: So he did say that, like guardrail reliability can be suspect,
Speaker 3: but there is a difference when you have certainly like
Speaker 3: like more like child friendly features turned on. But he
Speaker 3: admitted that like moderation is part of the challenge.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He basically how this works is you have an app
Speaker 3: synced up with this AI teddy bear that talks with
Speaker 3: a not very pleasing voice.
Speaker 2: Oh I got to hear it.
Speaker 4: Do you want me to pull this up?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, okay, But basically you put in a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of story inputs, being like, I want the story set
Speaker 3: in this place, I want it featuring these types of characters.
Speaker 3: I want this archetype to be the villain or it
Speaker 3: has like dozens and not hundreds of like archetypal things
Speaker 3: that you can like click and then the teddy bear
Speaker 3: will will generate a new story. So it is generating
Speaker 3: new content, but with like pre baked characters. Okay, so
Speaker 3: then it'll sit together the story. The weirder you make
Speaker 3: the variables, the weirder the story is going to be. Well,
Speaker 3: let me play a clip for Robert here, Peter Nilo.
Speaker 6: It's a bright and shiny January morning, the perfect time
Speaker 6: for another story. Did you know that in Las Vegas,
Speaker 6: where our story takes place, they have a gigantic Barris
Speaker 6: feel called the high Roller. It's taller than the Statue
Speaker 6: of Liberty.
Speaker 2: So sol in real world events in places based on
Speaker 2: the setting that.
Speaker 1: Achieves what am I told you?
Speaker 6: There's a mystery waiting to be un ground at the
Speaker 6: consumer electronics show.
Speaker 1: There's excitement here.
Speaker 2: That guy like sitting there talking almost rolling his eyes
Speaker 2: at his own product while it yaps in his lap
Speaker 2: is a perfect like he clearly didn't think about how
Speaker 2: that would look because it does not make an appealing
Speaker 2: ad for the product.
Speaker 3: No, so it doesn't sound good. So yeah, they generated
Speaker 3: a story set in Cees in Las Vegas, and he
Speaker 3: would occasionally interrupt the bear to like explain what it
Speaker 3: was doing. So that was the other product, not nearly
Speaker 3: as polished or like really really as thoughtful as like
Speaker 3: the AI story book. But you know, maybe if you
Speaker 3: are tired of having to, you know, talk to your kid,
Speaker 3: you can just get one of these teddy bears to.
Speaker 2: Yeah throw thrown front raise it. I mean, it looks
Speaker 2: like you could probably handle all of the physical contact
Speaker 2: they need too, so you don't even need to ever
Speaker 2: touch your child. And in fact, you can just have
Speaker 2: chat GPT root that through the bear and never even
Speaker 2: see your own flesh and blood. Like I think ideally
Speaker 2: you would have them cut out of there, you know,
Speaker 2: really surgically remove that baby, you know, a month or
Speaker 2: two early, and that way you can kind of absolutely
Speaker 2: minimize the amount of time that you ever spend in
Speaker 2: contact with your spawn.
Speaker 3: One other thing I will add is that the ready
Speaker 3: Land guy the AI story book, pecifically, when talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, the importance of guardrails, he said that there's
Speaker 3: multiple levels to safety. Right, an AI kids robot that
Speaker 3: swears right, It's one thing that's it's pretty easy to
Speaker 3: avoid Actually, like that's that's pretty easy.
Speaker 2: There's a limited number of swear words, right, and.
Speaker 3: You could just like you could just block out certain
Speaker 3: things from happening. Yeah, you can build that in. But
Speaker 3: another aspect that's really important to safety is like the
Speaker 3: accuracy of the things it's saying, right, Like, what if
Speaker 3: it's saying something that's supposed to be you know, some
Speaker 3: like factual statement about the world that's just that just
Speaker 3: like isn't true or can actually like lead to danger, Right,
Speaker 3: what if it tells your kid to do something which
Speaker 3: is actually kind of dangerous, or what if it says
Speaker 3: like not even not even directly telling them, but you know,
Speaker 3: it says something that if the kid then tries to
Speaker 3: do that, it's really dangerous. And like this is why
Speaker 3: their storybook program. You know, it does not generate new content,
Speaker 3: So everything it says is like it's like already pre approved,
Speaker 3: like it already is going to have you know, like
Speaker 3: verified like verified safe you know sentences versus this ai
Speaker 3: Teddy Bear. Because it is generating new content, you know,
Speaker 3: it could if things go horribly wrong, you know, talk
Speaker 3: about drinking bleach. You know, yeah, theoretically, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just just like something you know, like things can go wrong.
Speaker 3: So it's not just about you know, avoiding bad words
Speaker 3: or talking about sex or you know those types of
Speaker 3: like like inappropriate things. It's also making sure it's not
Speaker 3: like hallucinating or saying things that could like lead to
Speaker 3: dangerous situations.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, the good news is that I don't think
Speaker 2: these are going to be wildly successful products. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess we'll see. But these are super expensive and like,
Speaker 2: did you get a price point for that bear?
Speaker 3: I did not hear a price point for the bear.
Speaker 2: I'm curious as to what they're going to be charging
Speaker 2: for it. I mean, we'll see if any of this
Speaker 2: stuff really does take off. I wouldn't consider optimism to
Speaker 2: hope this stuff takes off, but like, they don't seem
Speaker 2: like great products to me, so I guess we'll see.
Speaker 2: I read something very interesting that is related exactly, and
Speaker 2: it probably was he might have been talking about like
Speaker 2: that weird bear or something. I read something very interesting
Speaker 2: on the subject of like AI children's toys from a
Speaker 2: guy who was like an AI developer. This was from
Speaker 2: a post on Twitter by Alex Volkov. I got my
Speaker 2: six year old daughter an Ai tooy for her birthday
Speaker 2: that arrived for Christmas instead. She unpacked it all excited.
Speaker 2: I explained that this isn't like other toys, that this
Speaker 2: one has AI in it. She of course knows what
Speaker 2: AI is has seeing the things I've built and interacted
Speaker 2: with them, chatted with chat GBT and Santa Mode, knows
Speaker 2: that Daddy is doing AI, etc. So a very interesting
Speaker 2: experiment happened. After Magical Toys reached out and fixed the
Speaker 2: issue reference below. She started playing with this dino, chatted
Speaker 2: with it, and then learned to turn it off and
Speaker 2: doesn't want it to talk anymore. She still loves playing
Speaker 2: with it, dressed it up. It now has paper shoes
Speaker 2: in the top hat that we made together. But every
Speaker 2: time I asked her if she liked to chat with it,
Speaker 2: she says no. The few times turned it back on
Speaker 2: and she did speak with it for a bit, and
Speaker 2: then she just turned it off again, not wanting to engage.
Speaker 2: I gently asked why, and I wasn't really able to
Speaker 2: understand where there's the resistance. It's not weird to her.
Speaker 2: In fact, at one point she was pretending that Dinah
Speaker 2: was a baby and was turned on. So I told
Speaker 2: her let's ask it to pretend to be a baby,
Speaker 2: and it obliged and said okay, So he asked it
Speaker 2: to cry. Granted, they don't have an amazing advanced voice
Speaker 2: mode like open AI, so it did its best, but
Speaker 2: it sounded weird, which made her laugh really hard. It
Speaker 2: was basically making crying sounds like talking. And also there
Speaker 2: are still technical issues. The voice is sometimes choppy, so
Speaker 2: it could be that it's still uncanny for her. I'm
Speaker 2: honestly fascinated about why the AI aspect of this didn't
Speaker 2: connect with my six year old.
Speaker 4: Because it's creepy, because it's people.
Speaker 2: They don't like it. Nobody wants this. Yeah, ick yeah, ick.
Speaker 2: I know this is a sample size of one kid here,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure many many things will change. I she'll
Speaker 2: grow and learn to interact with more ais in different forms.
Speaker 2: But the first toy contact was interestingly almost a complete failure.
Speaker 4: That is tristing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find that fucking fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no one wants this, even six year olds. You're like, hey,
Speaker 3: I would prefer just a regular toy I can play with.
Speaker 2: I would prefer all pretend it's a robot. But I
Speaker 2: don't want it to be a robot that talks to me.
Speaker 4: Poe. The AI bear is fifty dollars on Amazon.
Speaker 2: Oh that's not bad. Actually, no, that's good. Okay, good,
Speaker 2: all right, Well maybe maybe we.
Speaker 3: Can even maybe order one and see and see what
Speaker 3: we can get out of it. Yeah, all right, we're
Speaker 3: gonna go on another break and return to talk once
Speaker 3: again about AI products for your children.
Speaker 4: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2: So we went and saw something else today while you
Speaker 2: were at a different chunk of the event talking to
Speaker 2: yet another flying car company promises to revolutionize the ease
Speaker 2: with which we can all do nine to elevens. Super
Speaker 2: excited for that future. By the way, I stumbled upon
Speaker 2: the booth for a company called TCL.
Speaker 4: A pretty big company, fairly large.
Speaker 2: Yeah, large crime and make a lot of TVs stuff
Speaker 2: like that. They had a couple of things. They had
Speaker 2: an AI laundry machine.
Speaker 3: So many air laundry bots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was the worst because it's like this
Speaker 2: little almost a soft rounded pyramid shape. It hangs your laundry.
Speaker 2: They say they can't do folding yet, so it just
Speaker 2: sort of like picks up dry laundry and holds it like.
Speaker 4: It just suspends it in the air.
Speaker 2: It suspends it in the air inside of itself. And
Speaker 2: also it can only do a kilogram of laundry. The
Speaker 2: only thing they had in there was like handkerchiefs and scarfs,
Speaker 2: So it's like probably a couple of thousand dollars, but
Speaker 2: you can AI can clean your handkerchiefs and scarfs.
Speaker 3: As opposed to my regular washing machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they had a washing machine that it can
Speaker 2: identify and count exactly what clothes are in it, how
Speaker 2: many of them there are, and it'll tell you the
Speaker 2: soil level and YadA YadA, YadA YadA. Like I'm sure
Speaker 2: some people changing will want this shit, but it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the only people who have a lot of money and
Speaker 2: want to spend it on a laundry machine, because I
Speaker 2: don't see that it actually reduces the amount of work
Speaker 2: you need to do at this point. But the thing
Speaker 2: they had at the booth that caught my eye was
Speaker 2: a robot toy for kids. AI Space Me is the
Speaker 2: name of the robot. Baby Yoda was a partial inspiration
Speaker 2: because like a Ferby, Yeah Ferby, there's some porg in there.
Speaker 2: It's a two part toy. The interior part is like
Speaker 2: a swaddled up almost looking little porg thing with a
Speaker 2: cute face, and the eyes are reasonably good, like they
Speaker 2: did a decent job of the eyes not looking creepy,
Speaker 2: but like that blink and change color and contract and expand,
Speaker 2: and then it's got like two little flapper arms that
Speaker 2: can like wiggle, and its seeded inside almost like the
Speaker 2: Aliens and Independence Day. It's seated inside like this large
Speaker 2: rolling body frame that allows it to move around on
Speaker 2: the ground. And so it's supposed to like be your
Speaker 2: child's friend. And the that was upsetting to me because
Speaker 2: they had this video ad that would play every so
Speaker 2: often and it was very creepy, and you know, I
Speaker 2: thought back to when we were doing the interview with
Speaker 2: the guy who had like the robot for old people.
Speaker 2: He was like, it's very important that it not tell
Speaker 2: them it loves them. That it like always reiterate that
Speaker 2: it's a false thing. This robot just keeps telling the kid,
Speaker 2: I love you, like I care for you. When the
Speaker 2: lady did a demo, she was like, it's a toy
Speaker 2: that actually knows and cares about your child and like, no,
Speaker 2: it's not, No, it's not don't say that. That shouldn't
Speaker 2: be legal for you. To say that for you to
Speaker 2: sell this to children and tell them it's an intelligent
Speaker 2: being that loves them is like deeply abusive in my opinion,
Speaker 2: Like that is actually child abuse because it's not alive anyway.
Speaker 2: So I had to bring Garrison over because you needed
Speaker 2: to see it.
Speaker 4: Oh and saw it, I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm gonna play a little clip from the ad,
Speaker 2: so I want you to hear the way this thing sounds.
Speaker 1: Reminds us.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I found that profoundly upsetting disturbing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your kid can like pick it up and like walk
Speaker 2: with it. It'll like talk to them, It'll make up stories.
Speaker 2: It'll like look at pictures your kid draws and then
Speaker 2: generate them into like live AI videos. You can put
Speaker 2: a pin on and it will record stuff that your
Speaker 2: kid does and play it back to you at night
Speaker 2: as a video. So again, absolutely minimize on the amount
Speaker 2: of time you have to spend with your child.
Speaker 4: It's in the car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes over your car, so that like it's
Speaker 2: talking to you from the screens in your car, like.
Speaker 3: The video like like taking taking this thing every like
Speaker 3: everywhere the kid goes. It's like the kid's main interaction
Speaker 3: with the world. Yeah, is with this little rolling like
Speaker 3: plastic furbie and yeah, like like talking about like like
Speaker 3: expressing like love and like how damaging this must be
Speaker 3: for like a four year old to have. Like the
Speaker 3: first thing that it constantly expressed like love and affection
Speaker 3: for is this little rolling robot that's that you're gonna
Speaker 3: throw in the garbage in like you know, four years
Speaker 3: when you're when you're like too old for it. How
Speaker 3: like traumatizing and like deeply fucked up. That's gonna be
Speaker 3: for your for like your sense of self and like
Speaker 3: love and affection.
Speaker 2: The mix of things that we're trying to have this do.
Speaker 2: Like the other ones were build as toys, this was
Speaker 2: built as like a friend for your child.
Speaker 4: As well as like a home assistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's supposed to also act as like it'll change
Speaker 2: that you can hook it into your smart home so
Speaker 2: it can change the temperature. Like they did a little
Speaker 2: in person demo where like a woman pretending to be
Speaker 2: a mom talked with it about like planning planned a
Speaker 2: birthday party for her kid with it, Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: like put food in her Amazon cart and like change
Speaker 2: the temperature inside because more people were coming over. One
Speaker 2: of the things they advertise is is security mode, where
Speaker 2: it like travels around your house at night and acts
Speaker 2: as a sentry watching your home like wild stuff.
Speaker 3: No, it's it was Honestly, I've seen a few like
Speaker 3: disturbing things, you know, all of like the the new
Speaker 3: drone tech to have like solar powered drones that can
Speaker 3: stay in the air to drop bombs is like bad,
Speaker 3: But like this type of stuff is like really dehumani. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it really like viscerally upsets me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think probably very bad for children. Everything
Speaker 2: they showed us was incredibly curated, Like I when we
Speaker 2: watched this live thing where she was having a very
Speaker 2: fluid conversation with it that was clearly scripted. Yes, and
Speaker 2: so I wonder how well this thing actually works in practice.
Speaker 3: We never got an actual like live down.
Speaker 2: No, because they always show it perfectly recognizing the kid,
Speaker 2: perfectly recognizing like what's in their you know, little kid
Speaker 2: drawings and stuff. What it's supposed to be to make beautiful,
Speaker 2: creepily shiny AI moving versions and stuff. So like, I
Speaker 2: wonder how much less good it's going to be in
Speaker 2: reality than the thing that they've showed us. But it's
Speaker 2: definitely some amount shittier than what they've displayed already. And
Speaker 2: part of why I think that is, like we went
Speaker 2: to check out the booth that this other the South
Speaker 2: Korean company just called I think sk had like a
Speaker 2: they called it a quantum security camera that was AI enabled,
Speaker 2: And then thinking about how like in the ads, it
Speaker 2: always like recognized the kid and its parents and are
Speaker 2: drawing accurately. Well, this one when I flipped off the
Speaker 2: camera with both middle fingers, recognized it and wrote up
Speaker 2: a description of a man giving the camera a thumbs up.
Speaker 2: Like I'm really curious for when these things hit the
Speaker 2: market and people start buying them, like what sort of
Speaker 2: fucked up stuff it'll do, and how kind of big
Speaker 2: the seams are. I don't expect a long life for
Speaker 2: this thing, which is going to be funnier because like
Speaker 2: there was already a big eight hundred dollars like Children's
Speaker 2: Companion AI toy that failed last year and the company
Speaker 2: shut off access to them, and like so parents had
Speaker 2: to explain to their kids who had bonded with this
Speaker 2: thing that it was dying forever. And that's especially excited
Speaker 2: to because they they've built a robot that talks to
Speaker 2: your kid and tells it it loves them, and eventually
Speaker 2: that robot is going to be taken away from the
Speaker 2: child by the company when it no longer becomes profitable.
Speaker 2: And that's I'm excited for that, like new ground and
Speaker 2: how to fuck up kids. Anyway, that's what I got, Garrison.
Speaker 3: What an uplifting ces adventures again?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, that's all Yeah, it's all great. All right, everybody, Well,
Speaker 2: this has been behind the bastards. No it's not, or
Speaker 2: no it's not. What is this? This has been? It
Speaker 2: could happen here? A podcast by somebody who is slowly
Speaker 2: going insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we're like four days in Vegas now we
Speaker 3: still have one more days.
Speaker 2: I'm out of my mind. I'm completely broken.
Speaker 3: Uh, hopefully tomorrow we'll have our final of our like
Speaker 3: on the ground coverage with our with our cees bestined show. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so ed always going to be maybe.
Speaker 4: A high note. So see you there.
Speaker 2: It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3: Can now find sources for it could happen here, listed
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