WEBVTT - Hello Barbie 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.080 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:13.800 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomes the Forward Thinking, the 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.560 podcast that looks at the future and says life and 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:22.000 plastic It's fantastic. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:24.680 In today, we're gonna be talking about one of the 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:29.120 most fun topics we've ever done in a pretty objective sense, 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:33.440 because we're going to be talking about toys. Yeah. Actually 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:37.800 a very specific and potentially creepy toy. Yes, a toy 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:43.640 that has had its share of controversy or controversy over 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.680 the course of its entire existence, although the particular one 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:49.720 we're talking about now is a version that has not 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.360 yet come out as of the recording of this podcast. Yes, 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.000 so I'm very excited to do some thinking about this 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.000 particular toy, even though I've learned from one of the 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:04.920 parodies of this toy that thinking gives you wrinkles about 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:09.080 hot wheels. No, we're going to talk about Barbie, Lauren. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:11.000 This idea came from you. Where where did you come 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:16.160 across this idea? The interwebs. I was on Twitter, i believe, 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.760 and people were posting links to this article about this 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.080 this new Barbie that is coming out. It was just 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.440 debuted at Toy Fair in New York that was at 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:28.520 the end of February. I think that's a place, by 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:30.720 the way, that we absolutely need to send some how 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.120 stuff works people next year. If by some how stuff 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:35.400 works people you mean the three of us, that it 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.800 would be the best option. I mean, if I have 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.280 to give it up, I would do it because I've 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.319 been able to go to E three in the past, 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.160 and I feel like I shouldn't hug all the childlike 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.680 joy out of the office. But I definitely want to 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.200 tend a toy fair at some point. Yeah. Yeah, well, 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.040 I mean, especially because they are coming out with all 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:00.440 of these wonderful new technologically advanced to ways, and not 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:02.840 just in terms of like what kind of plastics they use, 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:05.640 although that's a whole other cool thing. Sure, um, but 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.480 but this this Barbie doll that just debuted is called 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.720 Hello Barbie, and and it kind of Hello World or 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:18.240 yeah sure, well, except it's it's a WiFi enabled Barbie 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:22.400 doll that can have conversations with you, Like if you 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.239 talk to this doll, it will talk back. That's nothing 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.960 new because when I was a kid. People my age 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.200 had dolls where you'd pull a string and it would 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:39.040 say something like who interpreted as burned the house, burned 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.160 the house? Yeah, I've seen that movie. Sure, sure well 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.200 that that kind of thing has existed for a long time. 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:50.840 There's also the kind of tape deck prerecorded talking dolls, 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.919 like Teddy Ruxpin. Sure, the ones where you would have 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:55.919 a cassette. You put the cassette in and then the 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.200 bear would move its mouth and in time to the 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.480 words being being a generous way of explaining what it 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:08.880 was like time such a such a rigid hug. Yeah, 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.520 yeah that yeah, that good. That good hard robot hugs 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:15.880 preparing us for the future. Hug your cassette player. It's 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.240 pretty much the same thing, although your cassette player never 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:21.920 looked as funny when your older sister put a Slayer 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:27.720 tape in it, so uhair, Teddy Ruxpan's mouth would not 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.239 necessarily move in time with the lyrics, but it was 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.120 still pretty funny. Does see Teddy Ruxpan rocking out like that? No? Wait, so, Lauren, 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:36.880 you're talking about something a little bit different than the 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:40.640 pull string or the cassette player or even the microchip 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.120 style toys. Like when the Star Wars prequels came out, 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.360 all the figurines had microchips that would interact with playsets, 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.640 and you know, you could get them to they would 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:52.280 stand on a little stand, you push the button and 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.800 they would have quotes from that character from the movie. 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:56.640 But if you got them in playsets and you put 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:01.880 different combinations together, they would have full exchanges, dialogue exchanges. 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:04.360 Simpsons also had a set that was like that. But 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:08.360 this is even more complex than that. Yeah, this is 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.120 a concept of having a little speaker in Barbie and 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.080 a little microphone in Barbie, and and uh and in 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.040 using voice recognition so that Barbie knows what you're talking 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:25.040 about and can respond appropriately. Yeah. So so if you 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.520 if you you know, and I imagine the early versions 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.280 of this, the early stages, a lot of the the 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:37.440 Barbie dolls will be drawing upon a pretty standard array 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.800 of various questions and and jokes and stories that sort 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:46.080 of thing that would prompt various responses that then the 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.400 algorithm on the back end, on the cloud side could 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.880 analyze and send the response that Barbie would give to 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:58.159 the child. So you might have Barbie ask you what's 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.640 your favorite color, or if the child were saying something 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.840 about color, maybe then Barbie would ask, what's your favorite color? 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.800 Because it recognizes the word color and then ends up 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.599 pulling from this. But that's just the beginning, right, I mean, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.680 this is one of those things that the plan Mattel 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.120 has for the Barbie doll, and we'll get more into 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.640 this in a little bit, is for writers to be 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.560 able to build in new things that Barbie can say, 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:29.080 get the voice actress in to record those those words 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.480 or phrases or whatever, and so the conversation trees can 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.679 get more complex and there can be more of them 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:41.080 as the life of the the program continues, right, Because 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.839 it's not you're not talking to a single plastic product. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:48.080 You're talking to the cloud of responses. Here. There's no 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.320 onboard memory or negligible onboard memory for for this toy. 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:56.359 It's all being stored and drawn upon through WiFi in 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:00.120 your house to a cloud of responses. You're talking to 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:05.920 the mother brain. Yes, there's there's a cyber Barbie which 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.640 has Skynet Barbie, which has all the potential things that 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.360 Barbie can say stored in it. And then your WiFi 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.840 network network communicates to that web server, which then serves 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:21.159 up the the appropriate response. Okay, so I have never 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.840 personally owned a Barbie doll before, but number one, can 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:27.480 I get one of these now? And number two how 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:31.200 much does it cost? But yet? Yeah, not not yet. Um. 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.360 Supposedly it's going to be out in time for the 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.159 holiday season. Yes, it's sometime this fall, is what Mattel 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:40.120 has been saying. I don't think they gave a specific 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.279 date yet, but they said they're aiming to have it 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:44.960 out by the fall. They're still working on it, so 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:47.080 this is still you know, this is something that is 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:51.000 not yet quite ready for consumer purchase. Uh. And the 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.320 suggested retail price according to an article I saw. I 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:56.880 did not see this from the tell however, but according 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:01.280 to an article, the suggested retail price iss. So it's 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.919 not cheap, it's it's a it's a fairly expensive toy. Sure, sure, 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.719 you know some some toys, A lot of toys with 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:13.080 digital components do range up into that price, though most 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.320 you know, non WiFi connected run of the mill Barbies 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.960 are something like ten. Presumably that price also builds into 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.800 it the idea that this this doll is perpetually going 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.720 to be pulling from a service that's going to need 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.800 its own maintenance, right, you know that that's an ongoing 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:36.360 cost for Mattel. And as far as I know, again, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:38.000 I haven't seen anything, but as far as I know, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.600 there's no sort of subscription service, like you don't have 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.600 to continue, like like you're you're you don't have to 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.520 worry about Mattel holding you hostage and that your child 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:49.480 is going to come to you and say Barbie doesn't 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.520 talk anymore. Yeah, that's why I started cracking up the 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.400 idea of Barbie being like, oh honey, I'd love to 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.680 continue this conversation. Ask one of your parents to get 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.320 there at a card. It's just a low monthly fee. 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:10.200 You can do anything. Yeah, that's just the beginning of 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.080 no of our more cynical and dark commentary we will 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.640 have on this podcast. What I imagined, sorry, was that 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.240 your conversation with Barbie will continue after a brief message 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:25.320 from our sponsor. Again, and I'm not I'm not criticizing us. 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.440 I think we have to take a very critical eye 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.640 to this approach because it's it's not that the approach 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.960 itself is necessarily right or wrong, but there are ways 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.720 to implement it that are clearly going to be better 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.880 than other ways. Right, there are things that we absolutely 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.199 must be cognizant of in order for something like this, 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.960 which I think the idea of the toy is phenomenal. 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:50.000 I think I think about when I was a kid 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.280 and I would play with toys that having this sort 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:57.560 of capability to really kind of work with my imagination 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.360 and and to feed off of it with out completely 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.600 supplanting it. So it's not like it's not like you're 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:08.840 suddenly a passive audience member watching something, you are interacting 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.520 with something. I love this idea, but I also realize 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.840 that with this idea comes some concerns that we have 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:18.680 to we have to be aware of, and we have 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:20.719 to make sure are addressed if we want to make 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.600 sure this is done in a responsible way. Absolutely, and 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:25.719 I do want to pose it right here at the 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.040 outset that that as goofy and kind of cynical is 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:31.880 we're all probably going to get about this. I I, personally, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.040 I don't know about you guys, do think that Mattel 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:37.360 is making a good faith effort to make this a 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.640 good product that is not scary or so I agree 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:43.120 or anything like that. Every everything I've read from them 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.360 is pretty cool. Yeah. I think I think, uh, if 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:50.400 we take the messages that we've seen from Mattel and 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.760 we we give them the benefit of the doubts saying 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:56.080 that this is in fact the direction they want to 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.920 go in, they are they are doing this in a 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:04.040 way that is uh much more appropriate than how I've 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.600 seen it handled in other recent cases. Then I'll talk 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:10.120 about a little bit later in this episode. Yeah, I 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:13.160 certainly do at least like that. In in the statements 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.120 I've seen from Mattel and the people behind this product, 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.200 they seem to be talking about how they want Barbie 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.520 to be having conversations with the children about like their 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:24.920 feelings and about career aspirations and things, rather than let's 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.600 buy makeup so the boys will like us. Yeah. Yeah, 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.760 I mean this could definitely be And I think I 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:32.240 think the other cool thing is that it's a It's 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:36.880 a toy that will continue to evolve as far as 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.960 its capabilities in communicating because of the way that Mattel 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.080 is trying to continue to write for this doll. Uh. 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:47.440 I think it's also cool that that the largely the 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.080 child is going to be the one to drive how 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.200 the toy interacts with the child, right, the child. The 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.319 child's interactions are going to be what guide those kind 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.800 of conversations. So if so, if you have insipid consumerist 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.880 conversations with your Barbie doll, it's your own fault. I'm 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.600 just saying that if that's if, if the child is 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.280 interested in that sort of stuff, there's nothing. I don't 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.120 see anything wrong with the doll having a conversation about it, 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:16.400 you know, sure, sure, And okay, uh, well, let's let's 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.920 get into a little bit here. Be sure we pontificate 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.839 too much more about who's who exactly is behind all 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.000 of this, because of course it's Mattel, which is the 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.400 owner of Barbie. Uh. And they're they're doing this in 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.600 affiliation with a company called toy Talk, which has made 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:38.559 some interactive speech recognition involving apps like like app games before. Um, 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.360 but this is the first time they've moved into the 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.000 toy market. And the CEO is a guy by the 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.040 name of or In Jacob, who is the former CTO 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:50.360 of Pixar. So what he thought was, Hey, those toy 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.560 story movies, let's make it real. Well, I mean, he 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.520 worked with Pixar for like twenty years and and everything 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:00.320 that I've read from him about this product is just 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.200 nothing but excitement about, like like the kind of market 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.120 research that Mattel has done and saying that the number 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.360 one thing that they've always heard from kids, and I 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:12.640 do love this is a thing that I am so 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.120 excited about. In all of the press releases about this, 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:19.480 they use kids or boys and girls. It's never specified 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:21.920 that this is a toy for girls. Just exactly why 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:24.120 I say child as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.640 just it makes me so happy anyway, So thank you guys, 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:28.880 if anyone is listening that was responsible for that, Like 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.559 you are just making my heart grow three sizes. It's 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.800 it's beautiful. Um So yeah. Yeah, they're talking about children 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.520 asking for Barbie to be able to talk back to them, 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.280 and that this is them fulfilling this this genuine and 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.840 interesting desire of their of their customer base, right, and 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.280 and doing so in a way that's not limited to 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:55.640 a vocabulary of fifty phrases or less. Right. That's yeah, 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:57.760 that's the kind of stuff we've seen in the past. Yeah, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:02.760 but Barbie has talked before, Yeah, yeah, she has. Barbie 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:07.320 Apparently Barbie has not really listened before. No, and that's 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.839 really the thing. Yeah, to make this an actual conversation 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.760 as opposed to you are listening to a series of 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.080 very short model hous. So I'm curious how this is 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.640 gonna work? What what? How are they going to um 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.559 build this sort of like answer like question response or 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:29.960 interaction database. How's that gonna actually function between the cloud 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.080 and the doll and the child interacting with it? Okay, well, 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:35.920 I mean we can talk about both the technology and 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.040 the the sort of the writing process side of it, 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:41.480 because it's all part and parcels. So just from a 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.520 pure technology standpoint, we're talking about a doll that has 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:48.080 some form of WiFi receiver in it that can transmitter. Actually, 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.120 because it can transmit and receive transceiver, I guess I 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.640 should say, um, so it connects to your WiFi network. 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:59.079 Presumably I would hope it has some form of password 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:01.960 security that s included, because you want that to be 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:04.719 a secure point. You don't want it to be an 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:09.000 entrigue point into your WiFi network. But whatever, so she 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.240 is able to connect into the WiFi network, and then 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:15.920 you have a button on the belt buckle of the 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.800 Barbie doll that you can press that activates the microphone. 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.840 At that point, you can speak to the microphone which 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.240 is in Barbie's necklace in this doll, and then it 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.680 will send that message to the cloud based server which 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.000 will use speech and voice recognition algorithms to analyze that, 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:39.360 and Barbie will respond and will try to respond in 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:43.080 a way that matches whatever was said to Barbie. So 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:46.000 if you said again something that mentioned color, she might 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.200 ask you what your favorite color is ye, Or if 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.680 you say, uh, you know, I really want to be 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.840 a veterinarian when I grow up, then maybe she'll start 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.920 talking to you about how to be a veterinarian. Maybe 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:59.160 if you're saying it's time to go to bed now, 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.240 she said, would you me to tell you a story? 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:03.960 You know, it could be that sort of stuff and 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:09.920 let's defy mom and stay up rebel against the system. 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.840 Uh So, Originally this is going to be based upon 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:18.680 whatever Mattel has kind of accumulated upon the launch of 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.520 the product, where they've had a voice actress come in 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.280 record the lines for Barbie, and they have this this 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.680 range of things to draw upon. What they will also 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.560 be able to do is analyze the incoming messages sent 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.600 by children who have talked into the microphone and got 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.040 sent up to the cloud based server to see the 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.640 sort of things that kids are talking about and then 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.880 be able to address those things more directly. Have writers 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:46.560 look at that and say, there are a lot of 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:48.600 kids who were talking about this one thing that we 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.680 didn't even we didn't even consider when we were first 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.320 writing all the potential dialogue here. So let's write some 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.080 new things. Get the voice actress back in where record 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.560 some stuff. As it turns out, rocks are really popular, 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.120 so let's get someone to talk about geology. Yeah, it 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.800 could very well be something like that, or maybe there's 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.120 some story that ends up having everyone suddenly really interested 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.240 in marine biology, and it might be let's let's have 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:20.200 some some interesting stuff around that with exactly, And the 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:22.120 idea being that this in this way, you could have 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:26.400 a continuously evolving toy, one that would be able to 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:30.240 have new interactions and you would not have that case 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.400 of hearing the same thing said four thousand times and 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:40.040 your your child gets bored with this toy. You know toy, uh, 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:42.920 so you know it has it has a promise of 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:47.840 continuing and perhaps even you could argue increasing value because 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.920 of the different interactions that can happen. So that's the 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.480 the idea, and really, ultimately it's not that that complicated, 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:59.480 you know. It's it's a pretty simple system, apart from 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:01.000 the fact that you do have to consider it's a 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:07.320 very sophisticated algorithm to to recognize speech and voice so 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.560 that you can actually send appropriate responses back down. But 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.440 everything else is you know, fairly simple. A transceiver and 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.679 a microphones really and in a battery source, some power 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:23.000 sources all you need for the doll and uh. That 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:26.280 is is kind of the basics for how this works 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:30.040 and how it's supposed to continue to operate over you know, 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.000 however long Mattel supports it. I can imagine one of 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:36.399 the reasons Mattel might be looking at things like this, 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.600 apart from just you know, admirable ambition and pushing the 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.479 boundaries of what toys can do, is that apparently Barbie 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.320 sales have been down. One of you all put a 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:46.720 note in the outline about this, and I was reading 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.439 about it. The sales have been down recently, and I 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.360 can sort of understand why, because people have been kind 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.840 of getting real about Barbie for a long time now. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.840 Think about her unrealistic body proportions, and that might not 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.440 be a healthy thing to be, you know, pounding into 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.320 kids brains that you should somehow be looking like a 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:09.880 neptune in our glass monster, or presenting this kind of 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:15.119 narrowly constrained, old fashioned face of femininity. Um. And I 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:17.439 mean people have sort of rightly been asking the question 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.680 for a long time, like where's Barbie the bomb disposal officer? 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:27.119 And where's Barbie the astrophysicist? And it's gotten Yeah, but 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.760 that's a real short punt. So yeah, so I'm not 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.119 surprised a lot of parents have been less inclined to 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.400 push Barbie dolls on their kids these days. Even if 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.880 Barbie has been improving lately, there's sort of a lot 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.760 of catching up to do in terms of I don't 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:42.879 know what you might call the sort of like progressive 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.679 credentials of Barbie. Um. But you can also see for 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.399 this reason why they'd want to take Barbie in a 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:51.080 new direction, have Barbie do something that Barbie has never 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.400 done before, right, and so so it makes sense to me, 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.680 and and frankly, I'm interested to see what a toy 0:18:57.760 --> 0:18:59.600 like this could do. I mean, I don't know if 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.760 I has been the seventy whatever dollar price tag, but 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.440 I was kind of thinking, oh man, I'd almost buy 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.640 one of these that just to see what it's capable of. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.359 I don't I don't mean to throw a suggestion into 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.239 your heads or anything, but we do work for a 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:19.360 company called how Stuff Works, and this is something worthwhile 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:23.800 of research, I would say, so technically we could probably 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:26.440 see about buying one of these on the company dime. 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.600 And you cannot wait to disassemble a Hello Barbie. Also 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.280 like we've got extra mix guys, we could have guest 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:39.439 star Barbie. That's true on this podcast. I'm totally in 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.480 favor of this. I'm not even joking, like, alright, alright 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:47.120 at any rate? Okay, Well, to talk about the implications 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:48.840 of this, Barbie, I think we could just do a 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:52.760 really quick refresher on sort of the history of speech recognition, 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:55.720 like where are we now in in speech recognition and 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:58.200 how do we get here? Right? Well, if if you 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.520 look back at the history the timeline of speech recognition 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.920 and voice recognition, a lot of them also include things like, uh, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.840 the representation of voice, like the syntheiz synthesizing voice. I'm 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:10.520 not going to bother with any of that that that 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:12.679 dates all the way back to the nineteen thirties, But 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:15.080 if you're getting into actual speech and voice recognition, in 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.720 nineteen sixty nine you had John Pierce of Bell Labs 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:19.960 essentially state that it was going to be decades away 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.119 because it was going to require artificial intelligence. As it 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.960 turns out, it didn't take that long for at least 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:30.280 the early advances in speech recognition and voice recognition to 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.920 to really kind of get get the ball rolling. In 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.200 the nineteen seventies, you had a guy named Linny Baum 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.320 from from Princeton University who used the hidden Markov modeling 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:43.080 approach to speech and voice recognition. That's largely a pattern 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:47.480 recognition methodology where you start to be able to to 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:51.439 narrow down categories of stuff based upon input uh, and 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:54.040 that ended up being the basis for a lot of 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.439 speech and voice recognition over the next few decades. DARPA 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.000 got involved in the early seventies and created these SPEE 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.119 Each Understanding Research Program, which involved a ton of different 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.880 research facilities and universities, had some decent funding for five 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:11.119 years and really got things off the ground. You have 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:13.480 the founding of Speech Works, which is a company that 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:17.800 creates over the telephone automated speech recognition technology. By nine 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.520 you started getting dictation speech recognition software, although it was 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:27.159 somewhat limited. You had to speak each word very distinctly 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:35.320 from every other word. You couldn't just speak without pauses, 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:41.760 a problem for check off very likely, UH. But several 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:46.480 different UH entities came out with speech recognition software that year, 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:49.440 including Kurtzwile. We'll talk about Kurtswile a little bit later 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.840 as well, or at least I'll mention him. By a 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.840 company called Dragon Systems released a continuous speech dictation software, 0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:58.760 so you could just speak the way I am now 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.320 and it could continue a leading to natural language recognition, yeah, 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.600 at least to the point where it could transcribe it, 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:10.040 if not understand it. By the late nine Microsoft really 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:13.400 began to invest heavily in voice and speech recognition companies 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:17.040 like Kurtzwil and in Tropic. By two thousand seven, Sirie 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.800 Incorporated was founded UH it would be incorporated into Apple 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:24.040 iPhones by two thousand eleven. Two thousand eight, Google would 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.720 introduce Google Voice Search to iPhones. So this was the 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.959 point where we were getting into more of the natural 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.200 language recognition, not just being able to transcribe, but to 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:37.679 actually parse it and and figure out what a person 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:41.280 was asking for. Uh. And we're still on that journey, right, 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:44.720 We're not at the destination yet. So right now, we've 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.920 got voice commands being incorporated into all sorts of technology, smartphones, 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:54.760 smart television's, uh, set top boxes, video game consoles, security 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.399 systems in some cases. Uh. And we're still, like I said, 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:00.960 trying to get to that point where natural language is 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:03.639 no longer a barrier, where I can speak to a 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.359 machine the way I would speak to a person and 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.520