Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomes the Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says life and
Speaker 1: plastic It's fantastic. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: In today, we're gonna be talking about one of the
Speaker 1: most fun topics we've ever done in a pretty objective sense,
Speaker 1: because we're going to be talking about toys. Yeah. Actually
Speaker 1: a very specific and potentially creepy toy. Yes, a toy
Speaker 1: that has had its share of controversy or controversy over
Speaker 1: the course of its entire existence, although the particular one
Speaker 1: we're talking about now is a version that has not
Speaker 1: yet come out as of the recording of this podcast. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I'm very excited to do some thinking about this
Speaker 1: particular toy, even though I've learned from one of the
Speaker 1: parodies of this toy that thinking gives you wrinkles about
Speaker 1: hot wheels. No, we're going to talk about Barbie, Lauren.
Speaker 1: This idea came from you. Where where did you come
Speaker 1: across this idea? The interwebs. I was on Twitter, i believe,
Speaker 1: and people were posting links to this article about this
Speaker 1: this new Barbie that is coming out. It was just
Speaker 1: debuted at Toy Fair in New York that was at
Speaker 1: the end of February. I think that's a place, by
Speaker 1: the way, that we absolutely need to send some how
Speaker 1: stuff works people next year. If by some how stuff
Speaker 1: works people you mean the three of us, that it
Speaker 1: would be the best option. I mean, if I have
Speaker 1: to give it up, I would do it because I've
Speaker 1: been able to go to E three in the past,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I shouldn't hug all the childlike
Speaker 1: joy out of the office. But I definitely want to
Speaker 1: tend a toy fair at some point. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially because they are coming out with all
Speaker 1: of these wonderful new technologically advanced to ways, and not
Speaker 1: just in terms of like what kind of plastics they use,
Speaker 1: although that's a whole other cool thing. Sure, um, but
Speaker 1: but this this Barbie doll that just debuted is called
Speaker 1: Hello Barbie, and and it kind of Hello World or
Speaker 1: yeah sure, well, except it's it's a WiFi enabled Barbie
Speaker 1: doll that can have conversations with you, Like if you
Speaker 1: talk to this doll, it will talk back. That's nothing
Speaker 1: new because when I was a kid. People my age
Speaker 1: had dolls where you'd pull a string and it would
Speaker 1: say something like who interpreted as burned the house, burned
Speaker 1: the house? Yeah, I've seen that movie. Sure, sure well
Speaker 1: that that kind of thing has existed for a long time.
Speaker 1: There's also the kind of tape deck prerecorded talking dolls,
Speaker 1: like Teddy Ruxpin. Sure, the ones where you would have
Speaker 1: a cassette. You put the cassette in and then the
Speaker 1: bear would move its mouth and in time to the
Speaker 1: words being being a generous way of explaining what it
Speaker 1: was like time such a such a rigid hug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that yeah, that good. That good hard robot hugs
Speaker 1: preparing us for the future. Hug your cassette player. It's
Speaker 1: pretty much the same thing, although your cassette player never
Speaker 1: looked as funny when your older sister put a Slayer
Speaker 1: tape in it, so uhair, Teddy Ruxpan's mouth would not
Speaker 1: necessarily move in time with the lyrics, but it was
Speaker 1: still pretty funny. Does see Teddy Ruxpan rocking out like that? No? Wait, so, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you're talking about something a little bit different than the
Speaker 1: pull string or the cassette player or even the microchip
Speaker 1: style toys. Like when the Star Wars prequels came out,
Speaker 1: all the figurines had microchips that would interact with playsets,
Speaker 1: and you know, you could get them to they would
Speaker 1: stand on a little stand, you push the button and
Speaker 1: they would have quotes from that character from the movie.
Speaker 1: But if you got them in playsets and you put
Speaker 1: different combinations together, they would have full exchanges, dialogue exchanges.
Speaker 1: Simpsons also had a set that was like that. But
Speaker 1: this is even more complex than that. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a concept of having a little speaker in Barbie and
Speaker 1: a little microphone in Barbie, and and uh and in
Speaker 1: using voice recognition so that Barbie knows what you're talking
Speaker 1: about and can respond appropriately. Yeah. So so if you
Speaker 1: if you you know, and I imagine the early versions
Speaker 1: of this, the early stages, a lot of the the
Speaker 1: Barbie dolls will be drawing upon a pretty standard array
Speaker 1: of various questions and and jokes and stories that sort
Speaker 1: of thing that would prompt various responses that then the
Speaker 1: algorithm on the back end, on the cloud side could
Speaker 1: analyze and send the response that Barbie would give to
Speaker 1: the child. So you might have Barbie ask you what's
Speaker 1: your favorite color, or if the child were saying something
Speaker 1: about color, maybe then Barbie would ask, what's your favorite color?
Speaker 1: Because it recognizes the word color and then ends up
Speaker 1: pulling from this. But that's just the beginning, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that the plan Mattel
Speaker 1: has for the Barbie doll, and we'll get more into
Speaker 1: this in a little bit, is for writers to be
Speaker 1: able to build in new things that Barbie can say,
Speaker 1: get the voice actress in to record those those words
Speaker 1: or phrases or whatever, and so the conversation trees can
Speaker 1: get more complex and there can be more of them
Speaker 1: as the life of the the program continues, right, Because
Speaker 1: it's not you're not talking to a single plastic product.
Speaker 1: You're talking to the cloud of responses. Here. There's no
Speaker 1: onboard memory or negligible onboard memory for for this toy.
Speaker 1: It's all being stored and drawn upon through WiFi in
Speaker 1: your house to a cloud of responses. You're talking to
Speaker 1: the mother brain. Yes, there's there's a cyber Barbie which
Speaker 1: has Skynet Barbie, which has all the potential things that
Speaker 1: Barbie can say stored in it. And then your WiFi
Speaker 1: network network communicates to that web server, which then serves
Speaker 1: up the the appropriate response. Okay, so I have never
Speaker 1: personally owned a Barbie doll before, but number one, can
Speaker 1: I get one of these now? And number two how
Speaker 1: much does it cost? But yet? Yeah, not not yet. Um.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it's going to be out in time for the
Speaker 1: holiday season. Yes, it's sometime this fall, is what Mattel
Speaker 1: has been saying. I don't think they gave a specific
Speaker 1: date yet, but they said they're aiming to have it
Speaker 1: out by the fall. They're still working on it, so
Speaker 1: this is still you know, this is something that is
Speaker 1: not yet quite ready for consumer purchase. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: suggested retail price according to an article I saw. I
Speaker 1: did not see this from the tell however, but according
Speaker 1: to an article, the suggested retail price iss. So it's
Speaker 1: not cheap, it's it's a it's a fairly expensive toy. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: you know some some toys, A lot of toys with
Speaker 1: digital components do range up into that price, though most
Speaker 1: you know, non WiFi connected run of the mill Barbies
Speaker 1: are something like ten. Presumably that price also builds into
Speaker 1: it the idea that this this doll is perpetually going
Speaker 1: to be pulling from a service that's going to need
Speaker 1: its own maintenance, right, you know that that's an ongoing
Speaker 1: cost for Mattel. And as far as I know, again,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything, but as far as I know,
Speaker 1: there's no sort of subscription service, like you don't have
Speaker 1: to continue, like like you're you're you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about Mattel holding you hostage and that your child
Speaker 1: is going to come to you and say Barbie doesn't
Speaker 1: talk anymore. Yeah, that's why I started cracking up the
Speaker 1: idea of Barbie being like, oh honey, I'd love to
Speaker 1: continue this conversation. Ask one of your parents to get
Speaker 1: there at a card. It's just a low monthly fee.
Speaker 1: You can do anything. Yeah, that's just the beginning of
Speaker 1: no of our more cynical and dark commentary we will
Speaker 1: have on this podcast. What I imagined, sorry, was that
Speaker 1: your conversation with Barbie will continue after a brief message
Speaker 1: from our sponsor. Again, and I'm not I'm not criticizing us.
Speaker 1: I think we have to take a very critical eye
Speaker 1: to this approach because it's it's not that the approach
Speaker 1: itself is necessarily right or wrong, but there are ways
Speaker 1: to implement it that are clearly going to be better
Speaker 1: than other ways. Right, there are things that we absolutely
Speaker 1: must be cognizant of in order for something like this,
Speaker 1: which I think the idea of the toy is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I think I think about when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and I would play with toys that having this sort
Speaker 1: of capability to really kind of work with my imagination
Speaker 1: and and to feed off of it with out completely
Speaker 1: supplanting it. So it's not like it's not like you're
Speaker 1: suddenly a passive audience member watching something, you are interacting
Speaker 1: with something. I love this idea, but I also realize
Speaker 1: that with this idea comes some concerns that we have
Speaker 1: to we have to be aware of, and we have
Speaker 1: to make sure are addressed if we want to make
Speaker 1: sure this is done in a responsible way. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I do want to pose it right here at the
Speaker 1: outset that that as goofy and kind of cynical is
Speaker 1: we're all probably going to get about this. I I, personally,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, do think that Mattel
Speaker 1: is making a good faith effort to make this a
Speaker 1: good product that is not scary or so I agree
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Every everything I've read from them
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Yeah. I think I think, uh, if
Speaker 1: we take the messages that we've seen from Mattel and
Speaker 1: we we give them the benefit of the doubts saying
Speaker 1: that this is in fact the direction they want to
Speaker 1: go in, they are they are doing this in a
Speaker 1: way that is uh much more appropriate than how I've
Speaker 1: seen it handled in other recent cases. Then I'll talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit later in this episode. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: certainly do at least like that. In in the statements
Speaker 1: I've seen from Mattel and the people behind this product,
Speaker 1: they seem to be talking about how they want Barbie
Speaker 1: to be having conversations with the children about like their
Speaker 1: feelings and about career aspirations and things, rather than let's
Speaker 1: buy makeup so the boys will like us. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this could definitely be And I think I
Speaker 1: think the other cool thing is that it's a It's
Speaker 1: a toy that will continue to evolve as far as
Speaker 1: its capabilities in communicating because of the way that Mattel
Speaker 1: is trying to continue to write for this doll. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's also cool that that the largely the
Speaker 1: child is going to be the one to drive how
Speaker 1: the toy interacts with the child, right, the child. The
Speaker 1: child's interactions are going to be what guide those kind
Speaker 1: of conversations. So if so, if you have insipid consumerist
Speaker 1: conversations with your Barbie doll, it's your own fault. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that if that's if, if the child is
Speaker 1: interested in that sort of stuff, there's nothing. I don't
Speaker 1: see anything wrong with the doll having a conversation about it,
Speaker 1: you know, sure, sure, And okay, uh, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: get into a little bit here. Be sure we pontificate
Speaker 1: too much more about who's who exactly is behind all
Speaker 1: of this, because of course it's Mattel, which is the
Speaker 1: owner of Barbie. Uh. And they're they're doing this in
Speaker 1: affiliation with a company called toy Talk, which has made
Speaker 1: some interactive speech recognition involving apps like like app games before. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is the first time they've moved into the
Speaker 1: toy market. And the CEO is a guy by the
Speaker 1: name of or In Jacob, who is the former CTO
Speaker 1: of Pixar. So what he thought was, Hey, those toy
Speaker 1: story movies, let's make it real. Well, I mean, he
Speaker 1: worked with Pixar for like twenty years and and everything
Speaker 1: that I've read from him about this product is just
Speaker 1: nothing but excitement about, like like the kind of market
Speaker 1: research that Mattel has done and saying that the number
Speaker 1: one thing that they've always heard from kids, and I
Speaker 1: do love this is a thing that I am so
Speaker 1: excited about. In all of the press releases about this,
Speaker 1: they use kids or boys and girls. It's never specified
Speaker 1: that this is a toy for girls. Just exactly why
Speaker 1: I say child as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it
Speaker 1: just it makes me so happy anyway, So thank you guys,
Speaker 1: if anyone is listening that was responsible for that, Like
Speaker 1: you are just making my heart grow three sizes. It's
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. Um So yeah. Yeah, they're talking about children
Speaker 1: asking for Barbie to be able to talk back to them,
Speaker 1: and that this is them fulfilling this this genuine and
Speaker 1: interesting desire of their of their customer base, right, and
Speaker 1: and doing so in a way that's not limited to
Speaker 1: a vocabulary of fifty phrases or less. Right. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of stuff we've seen in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Barbie has talked before, Yeah, yeah, she has. Barbie
Speaker 1: Apparently Barbie has not really listened before. No, and that's
Speaker 1: really the thing. Yeah, to make this an actual conversation
Speaker 1: as opposed to you are listening to a series of
Speaker 1: very short model hous. So I'm curious how this is
Speaker 1: gonna work? What what? How are they going to um
Speaker 1: build this sort of like answer like question response or
Speaker 1: interaction database. How's that gonna actually function between the cloud
Speaker 1: and the doll and the child interacting with it? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean we can talk about both the technology and
Speaker 1: the the sort of the writing process side of it,
Speaker 1: because it's all part and parcels. So just from a
Speaker 1: pure technology standpoint, we're talking about a doll that has
Speaker 1: some form of WiFi receiver in it that can transmitter. Actually,
Speaker 1: because it can transmit and receive transceiver, I guess I
Speaker 1: should say, um, so it connects to your WiFi network.
Speaker 1: Presumably I would hope it has some form of password
Speaker 1: security that s included, because you want that to be
Speaker 1: a secure point. You don't want it to be an
Speaker 1: entrigue point into your WiFi network. But whatever, so she
Speaker 1: is able to connect into the WiFi network, and then
Speaker 1: you have a button on the belt buckle of the
Speaker 1: Barbie doll that you can press that activates the microphone.
Speaker 1: At that point, you can speak to the microphone which
Speaker 1: is in Barbie's necklace in this doll, and then it
Speaker 1: will send that message to the cloud based server which
Speaker 1: will use speech and voice recognition algorithms to analyze that,
Speaker 1: and Barbie will respond and will try to respond in
Speaker 1: a way that matches whatever was said to Barbie. So
Speaker 1: if you said again something that mentioned color, she might
Speaker 1: ask you what your favorite color is ye, Or if
Speaker 1: you say, uh, you know, I really want to be
Speaker 1: a veterinarian when I grow up, then maybe she'll start
Speaker 1: talking to you about how to be a veterinarian. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you're saying it's time to go to bed now,
Speaker 1: she said, would you me to tell you a story?
Speaker 1: You know, it could be that sort of stuff and
Speaker 1: let's defy mom and stay up rebel against the system.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Originally this is going to be based upon
Speaker 1: whatever Mattel has kind of accumulated upon the launch of
Speaker 1: the product, where they've had a voice actress come in
Speaker 1: record the lines for Barbie, and they have this this
Speaker 1: range of things to draw upon. What they will also
Speaker 1: be able to do is analyze the incoming messages sent
Speaker 1: by children who have talked into the microphone and got
Speaker 1: sent up to the cloud based server to see the
Speaker 1: sort of things that kids are talking about and then
Speaker 1: be able to address those things more directly. Have writers
Speaker 1: look at that and say, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: kids who were talking about this one thing that we
Speaker 1: didn't even we didn't even consider when we were first
Speaker 1: writing all the potential dialogue here. So let's write some
Speaker 1: new things. Get the voice actress back in where record
Speaker 1: some stuff. As it turns out, rocks are really popular,
Speaker 1: so let's get someone to talk about geology. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: could very well be something like that, or maybe there's
Speaker 1: some story that ends up having everyone suddenly really interested
Speaker 1: in marine biology, and it might be let's let's have
Speaker 1: some some interesting stuff around that with exactly, And the
Speaker 1: idea being that this in this way, you could have
Speaker 1: a continuously evolving toy, one that would be able to
Speaker 1: have new interactions and you would not have that case
Speaker 1: of hearing the same thing said four thousand times and
Speaker 1: your your child gets bored with this toy. You know toy, uh,
Speaker 1: so you know it has it has a promise of
Speaker 1: continuing and perhaps even you could argue increasing value because
Speaker 1: of the different interactions that can happen. So that's the
Speaker 1: the idea, and really, ultimately it's not that that complicated,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's a pretty simple system, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that you do have to consider it's a
Speaker 1: very sophisticated algorithm to to recognize speech and voice so
Speaker 1: that you can actually send appropriate responses back down. But
Speaker 1: everything else is you know, fairly simple. A transceiver and
Speaker 1: a microphones really and in a battery source, some power
Speaker 1: sources all you need for the doll and uh. That
Speaker 1: is is kind of the basics for how this works
Speaker 1: and how it's supposed to continue to operate over you know,
Speaker 1: however long Mattel supports it. I can imagine one of
Speaker 1: the reasons Mattel might be looking at things like this,
Speaker 1: apart from just you know, admirable ambition and pushing the
Speaker 1: boundaries of what toys can do, is that apparently Barbie
Speaker 1: sales have been down. One of you all put a
Speaker 1: note in the outline about this, and I was reading
Speaker 1: about it. The sales have been down recently, and I
Speaker 1: can sort of understand why, because people have been kind
Speaker 1: of getting real about Barbie for a long time now.
Speaker 1: Think about her unrealistic body proportions, and that might not
Speaker 1: be a healthy thing to be, you know, pounding into
Speaker 1: kids brains that you should somehow be looking like a
Speaker 1: neptune in our glass monster, or presenting this kind of
Speaker 1: narrowly constrained, old fashioned face of femininity. Um. And I
Speaker 1: mean people have sort of rightly been asking the question
Speaker 1: for a long time, like where's Barbie the bomb disposal officer?
Speaker 1: And where's Barbie the astrophysicist? And it's gotten Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's a real short punt. So yeah, so I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised a lot of parents have been less inclined to
Speaker 1: push Barbie dolls on their kids these days. Even if
Speaker 1: Barbie has been improving lately, there's sort of a lot
Speaker 1: of catching up to do in terms of I don't
Speaker 1: know what you might call the sort of like progressive
Speaker 1: credentials of Barbie. Um. But you can also see for
Speaker 1: this reason why they'd want to take Barbie in a
Speaker 1: new direction, have Barbie do something that Barbie has never
Speaker 1: done before, right, and so so it makes sense to me,
Speaker 1: and and frankly, I'm interested to see what a toy
Speaker 1: like this could do. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I has been the seventy whatever dollar price tag, but
Speaker 1: I was kind of thinking, oh man, I'd almost buy
Speaker 1: one of these that just to see what it's capable of.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't mean to throw a suggestion into
Speaker 1: your heads or anything, but we do work for a
Speaker 1: company called how Stuff Works, and this is something worthwhile
Speaker 1: of research, I would say, so technically we could probably
Speaker 1: see about buying one of these on the company dime.
Speaker 1: And you cannot wait to disassemble a Hello Barbie. Also
Speaker 1: like we've got extra mix guys, we could have guest
Speaker 1: star Barbie. That's true on this podcast. I'm totally in
Speaker 1: favor of this. I'm not even joking, like, alright, alright
Speaker 1: at any rate? Okay, Well, to talk about the implications
Speaker 1: of this, Barbie, I think we could just do a
Speaker 1: really quick refresher on sort of the history of speech recognition,
Speaker 1: like where are we now in in speech recognition and
Speaker 1: how do we get here? Right? Well, if if you
Speaker 1: look back at the history the timeline of speech recognition
Speaker 1: and voice recognition, a lot of them also include things like, uh,
Speaker 1: the representation of voice, like the syntheiz synthesizing voice. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to bother with any of that that that
Speaker 1: dates all the way back to the nineteen thirties, But
Speaker 1: if you're getting into actual speech and voice recognition, in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine you had John Pierce of Bell Labs
Speaker 1: essentially state that it was going to be decades away
Speaker 1: because it was going to require artificial intelligence. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, it didn't take that long for at least
Speaker 1: the early advances in speech recognition and voice recognition to
Speaker 1: to really kind of get get the ball rolling. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, you had a guy named Linny Baum
Speaker 1: from from Princeton University who used the hidden Markov modeling
Speaker 1: approach to speech and voice recognition. That's largely a pattern
Speaker 1: recognition methodology where you start to be able to to
Speaker 1: narrow down categories of stuff based upon input uh, and
Speaker 1: that ended up being the basis for a lot of
Speaker 1: speech and voice recognition over the next few decades. DARPA
Speaker 1: got involved in the early seventies and created these SPEE
Speaker 1: Each Understanding Research Program, which involved a ton of different
Speaker 1: research facilities and universities, had some decent funding for five
Speaker 1: years and really got things off the ground. You have
Speaker 1: the founding of Speech Works, which is a company that
Speaker 1: creates over the telephone automated speech recognition technology. By nine
Speaker 1: you started getting dictation speech recognition software, although it was
Speaker 1: somewhat limited. You had to speak each word very distinctly
Speaker 1: from every other word. You couldn't just speak without pauses,
Speaker 1: a problem for check off very likely, UH. But several
Speaker 1: different UH entities came out with speech recognition software that year,
Speaker 1: including Kurtzwile. We'll talk about Kurtswile a little bit later
Speaker 1: as well, or at least I'll mention him. By a
Speaker 1: company called Dragon Systems released a continuous speech dictation software,
Speaker 1: so you could just speak the way I am now
Speaker 1: and it could continue a leading to natural language recognition, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least to the point where it could transcribe it,
Speaker 1: if not understand it. By the late nine Microsoft really
Speaker 1: began to invest heavily in voice and speech recognition companies
Speaker 1: like Kurtzwil and in Tropic. By two thousand seven, Sirie
Speaker 1: Incorporated was founded UH it would be incorporated into Apple
Speaker 1: iPhones by two thousand eleven. Two thousand eight, Google would
Speaker 1: introduce Google Voice Search to iPhones. So this was the
Speaker 1: point where we were getting into more of the natural
Speaker 1: language recognition, not just being able to transcribe, but to
Speaker 1: actually parse it and and figure out what a person
Speaker 1: was asking for. Uh. And we're still on that journey, right,
Speaker 1: We're not at the destination yet. So right now, we've
Speaker 1: got voice commands being incorporated into all sorts of technology, smartphones,
Speaker 1: smart television's, uh, set top boxes, video game consoles, security
Speaker 1: systems in some cases. Uh. And we're still, like I said,
Speaker 1: trying to get to that point where natural language is
Speaker 1: no longer a barrier, where I can speak to a
Speaker 1: machine the way I would speak to a person and
Speaker 1: the machine would quote unquote understand what I'm saying and
Speaker 1: respond appropriately. So that's kind of where we're at. So
Speaker 1: I mean, so really, whatever you think about this Barbie doll,
Speaker 1: it is awesome technologically speaking that that this is this
Speaker 1: kind of technology that you know that DARPA and Great
Speaker 1: Hurts While have worked on is coming to a Barbie doll. Right,
Speaker 1: That's it's gonna be something that a child can interact with.
Speaker 1: But obviously there is some controversy, oh mega controversy in
Speaker 1: the case of this, I mean, and and it's understandable.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about a toy that children are
Speaker 1: going to interact with regularly, and it's one that can
Speaker 1: pick up and transmit voices to a separate server and
Speaker 1: get responses back. But beyond that, if writers are going
Speaker 1: to write new content based upon the things that children
Speaker 1: are saying to this doll, that means people are looking
Speaker 1: at what your kids are saying. And it could very
Speaker 1: well be a case of is this technological advantage worth
Speaker 1: the fact that we are going to have to give
Speaker 1: up some privacy in the process, and that amount of
Speaker 1: privacy may depend upon the way your kid interacts with
Speaker 1: the doll, or whether or not the kid carries the
Speaker 1: doll everywhere. And perhaps you maybe you work for the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense and you can't have a doll in
Speaker 1: the house that could potentially record something you say and
Speaker 1: upload it. That seems like an extreme example, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who work in very sensitive
Speaker 1: jobs who could not have something like this in their
Speaker 1: homes and be completely free of fear that it was
Speaker 1: going it was never going to come back and haunt them.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, well, I mean, and you know, furthermore, this
Speaker 1: is a toy being marketed two kids by a giant corporation,
Speaker 1: and how much how much can we trust this giant corporation, Like,
Speaker 1: are are they genuinely doing this because they want to
Speaker 1: provide an awesome thing to kids? Or are they doing it?
Speaker 1: Are they doing it to make money? Are they doing
Speaker 1: it to hear your child's innermost thoughts? You know? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the innermost thoughts thing is the one I think is
Speaker 1: probably the least likely, simply because I've listened to kids
Speaker 1: talk and I don't I couldn't really care less. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely being grew up the old man in that case.
Speaker 1: But but seriously, I don't. I don't think that's as
Speaker 1: big a concern as the fact that I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: children may end up speaking to a doll and say
Speaker 1: things that they wouldn't say to perhaps other people, because
Speaker 1: it's a doll that they're talking to, not a person,
Speaker 1: And that could end up doing things like what if
Speaker 1: the kid is is expressing uh an opinion about a
Speaker 1: parent in a way that could be misinterpreted. Perhaps everything
Speaker 1: in the home is fine, but it could be miss interpreted.
Speaker 1: Or let's say that the kid is expressing an opinion
Speaker 1: that isn't being misinterpreted. These are some serious ethical questions.
Speaker 1: If you've got people who are reviewing this stuff and
Speaker 1: they're seeing some statements that are raising eyebrows. What's their
Speaker 1: role in that? Do they report that? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it's hello, Barbie going to be giving testimony at
Speaker 1: divorce proceedings. This is a serious question. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's not the intent, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it could never be the intent because that would bring
Speaker 1: Mattel into liability issues that no company wants to get into.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things that you really once
Speaker 1: you think beyond the the original scope and purpose of
Speaker 1: the toy, you know that there are a lot of problems,
Speaker 1: whether it's a privacy issue or ethics and morality however
Speaker 1: you want to define it. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that this raises. And the thing is that we
Speaker 1: all have this technology, or maybe not all of us,
Speaker 1: but many of us have this kind of technology and
Speaker 1: corporated into a lot of the stuff we have right now.
Speaker 1: But we're adults, and it's a little different when you're
Speaker 1: an adult and you can make that decision and as
Speaker 1: opposed to and presumably you could be cognizant enough to
Speaker 1: turn things off if you needed to, as opposed to
Speaker 1: being a kid. Yeah, yeah, I'm just picturing, like what
Speaker 1: kind of conversation you have to have with your child,
Speaker 1: like like, so, honey, this is Barbie. She'll talk back
Speaker 1: to you now. Also by she, I mean a team
Speaker 1: of script writing adults in California somewhere who are strangers. So, baby,
Speaker 1: don't tell Barbie anything like like, how do you you know?
Speaker 1: And it's six and eight. Don't press Barbie's belt buckle.
Speaker 1: And it's not that kids are incapable of of parsing
Speaker 1: that kind of information from you. It's just that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about whether or not parents would be having
Speaker 1: those kind of conversations with your kids. And I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm inherently squeaked out by the idea of
Speaker 1: stranger listening to anyone's speech, Like I find that very creepy. Now, personally,
Speaker 1: we don't know to what extent any child's interaction with
Speaker 1: this doll would be identifiable to a specific person. We
Speaker 1: do know that they are supposed to be customized so
Speaker 1: that the doll learns the child's name over time and
Speaker 1: can actually say the child's name, But again, we don't
Speaker 1: know necessarily that that is associated with a particular I
Speaker 1: d I mean, it could be that on the mattel side,
Speaker 1: the server side, that every doll essentially is given the
Speaker 1: unique identifier. That doesn't that is not directly connected to
Speaker 1: an actual human being's personal identity. Sure, sure there's no
Speaker 1: profile that's saying like, hey, this is Susie Johnson. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be. But but as we all know, it
Speaker 1: does not take very much information for any system of
Speaker 1: sufficient depth to identify a person based on just a
Speaker 1: few pieces of data, right, Like we have discussed that
Speaker 1: if if you give out your your zip code, that alone,
Speaker 1: like your zip code and maybe the the uh, the
Speaker 1: make and model of your car, can be enough to
Speaker 1: identify a specific person. Like that, it gets to this
Speaker 1: thing where there doesn't need to be that much data
Speaker 1: out there for a person to be directly identifiable. And again,
Speaker 1: unless you're monitoring everything the child is saying to the doll,
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, there are other ways of course the child
Speaker 1: the child might end up saying things that just that
Speaker 1: just identify who the kid is based upon the things
Speaker 1: that are being said. Um, there are other questions as well,
Speaker 1: For example, uh, is the information encrypted? It better be, like,
Speaker 1: because if it's not encrypted, then that then someone listening
Speaker 1: in could hear this stuff? Yeah, and that's the concern
Speaker 1: about anything that's going on over any kind of internet,
Speaker 1: but especially WiFi. Yeah, there was one of the examples.
Speaker 1: I was going to bring up the Samsung Smart TV.
Speaker 1: Did you guys hear about the brujah about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So smart TV that has voice interactivetivity with it voice
Speaker 1: commands and uh, this was one of those things that
Speaker 1: the media really ran with and some people object to
Speaker 1: the fact that they that Samsung was kind of singled
Speaker 1: out in this way. But here's the story. So the
Speaker 1: Daily Beast did this look at the policies of Samsung
Speaker 1: accord that relate directly to the smart TV, and it
Speaker 1: mentioned that the the stuff you said to the television
Speaker 1: would get recorded and sent to a third party, which
Speaker 1: raised a lot of eyebrows. They're like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want I don't want to television spying on me and
Speaker 1: sending this stuff to a third party that's going to
Speaker 1: end up using it for marketing, research or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever purposes. And Samsung I was saying, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: The third party is there to work on the voice
Speaker 1: recognition to make sure that the system gets more robust
Speaker 1: and more usable over time. And uh, and this is
Speaker 1: a system that you initiate by using a specific phrase
Speaker 1: in this case would be high TV and then whatever
Speaker 1: command you wanted to say, just as if you were
Speaker 1: using an Xbox one and you wanted to use the connect,
Speaker 1: you would say xbox and then the command. So it's
Speaker 1: an activation phrase. It's not recording everything all the time,
Speaker 1: always and sending it off someplace. That was more or less.
Speaker 1: The story of the media kind of went with was
Speaker 1: that you essentially have an open mic to the Internet.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that Samsung really didn't do
Speaker 1: very well was that they had said the communication was
Speaker 1: encrypted so that when you use your television, added an
Speaker 1: encryption layer so that anyone who intercepted that message would
Speaker 1: not be able to see what it actually said. Turns
Speaker 1: out it was unencrypted. It was unencrypted, and then it
Speaker 1: was sending a transcript of what you said Matt to
Speaker 1: you or TV, and the transcript was also unencrypted, So
Speaker 1: two chances for someone listening in to see what you
Speaker 1: had said. Now, granted, you were probably saying something like
Speaker 1: volume up or volume down, but there's the potential that
Speaker 1: you could have also had another conversation going on that
Speaker 1: got picked up or other elements that could have been
Speaker 1: picked up, and it raised the question of well, what
Speaker 1: if someone were to get access to the hardware remotely
Speaker 1: or otherwise and activated so that the MIC is always
Speaker 1: on and unencrypted, then you just have a bug. You
Speaker 1: You have got an electronic bug that's also an appliance
Speaker 1: in your house share And at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: like like pick your paranoia poison. You know, are you
Speaker 1: worried about a hacker getting into your system and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know figuring out when you're home and when
Speaker 1: you're not home and when it's safe for someone to
Speaker 1: go break in. Are you worried about the n s
Speaker 1: A listening to what you say and you know, the
Speaker 1: New American Gestapo eventually coming and busting down your door? Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea being that even if no one is actively
Speaker 1: listening to you, we know that there are organizations like
Speaker 1: the n s A that are fully capable of building
Speaker 1: out this enormous database of recorded material and then being
Speaker 1: able to search for it again using things like speech
Speaker 1: and voice recognition and transcription services where using a search
Speaker 1: algorithm they can pull up stuff just using keywords. So
Speaker 1: even if you're saying, well, no one is directly monitoring
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. That stuff is being put in
Speaker 1: a is potentially being put in a place where it
Speaker 1: could be reviewed at a later date, and it's still there.
Speaker 1: And whether you feel like, well, I don't do anything wrong,
Speaker 1: that's not the point. It's a privacy issue, not necessarily
Speaker 1: you know, someone doing something right or wrong. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: said this before on the podcast, I believe. But anybody
Speaker 1: who ever makes the argument that well, if you're not
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide, right, just
Speaker 1: say okay, can I read all your email? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's ridiculous. You know. Anybody who says that
Speaker 1: just hasn't thought about the issue. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: people want certain things private. Yeah, And there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that necessarily. So the you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of potential concerns with this this doll.
Speaker 1: Now Mattel's part has they they've said that the things
Speaker 1: that are going to be recorded are meant specifically for
Speaker 1: building out that database of of potential things that Barbie
Speaker 1: could talk about to improve the doll, to improve the doll,
Speaker 1: to improve speech and voice recognition as well, which is
Speaker 1: an element of AI, so that is also an admirable
Speaker 1: thing to do. And they've said that they will not
Speaker 1: use it for marketing purposes. Now I don't know if
Speaker 1: that means they won't. They might still use it for
Speaker 1: marketing research like a focus group. So for example, of
Speaker 1: kids say that, you know, they talked to Barbie and
Speaker 1: say that they really wish they had such and such
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, like some idea, whatever access or
Speaker 1: or place to place exactly, like something that's something specific
Speaker 1: than then maybe Mattel would say, we should do another
Speaker 1: run of that, you know, or we should build out
Speaker 1: this thing and market it because that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: That's why don't we have geologist Barbie. Let's do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that's a lot different from having Barbie say to
Speaker 1: the kid, uh, you know you like shoes, you should
Speaker 1: really look at this shoe accessory set that's available in
Speaker 1: stores right now. That would be totally different. Were like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I really want a pony. I'm the saddest Barbie ever
Speaker 1: because I don't have a pony, but if only you
Speaker 1: got you know, my pony Princess from Mattel or well,
Speaker 1: I mean the other thing would be like, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: good to see you again. Barbie's got a question for you,
Speaker 1: what features do your parents really want in a luxury
Speaker 1: city that that would also be inappropriate. And Mattel, for
Speaker 1: its part, is said that that's not gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: and and like we said, Mantel has been very good
Speaker 1: about responding to this sort of thing. It's clear that
Speaker 1: they have paid attention to some of the other stories
Speaker 1: that have come out over the past and and and
Speaker 1: I don't think necessarily that they need to abandon this idea,
Speaker 1: although there are petitions for that, right. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a couple of petitions out there that have a few
Speaker 1: thousand signatures each. I I don't think that I personally,
Speaker 1: Although I I approve everyone's right to petition for things
Speaker 1: that they like or don't like, I don't think that
Speaker 1: that is going to be enough to stop production on
Speaker 1: the toy or anything. And I think ultimately the best
Speaker 1: way of not uh supporting it is not to buy
Speaker 1: the toys, you know. I mean, maybe if you're afraid
Speaker 1: that people you meet on the street are carrying a
Speaker 1: Hello Barbie surreptitiously on their person and pressing the belt
Speaker 1: buckle repeatedly. In that case, you might need to get
Speaker 1: new friends. I mean, it seems like boycotts or boycotts
Speaker 1: and petitions for banning things are rarely effective for new
Speaker 1: like new products and new works of art, where they
Speaker 1: typically just bring more publicity. What I think what I
Speaker 1: think it might do, however, is really convinced Mattel that
Speaker 1: they need to make sure there are they are doing
Speaker 1: their due diligence in presenting this in the most responsible way,
Speaker 1: so making sure things like that encryption is in place,
Speaker 1: making sure that there is the capability to password protect
Speaker 1: any sort of WiFi connectivity so that Barbie does not
Speaker 1: become an entry point to hackers getting access to your
Speaker 1: WiFi network. Because we we talked about this on I
Speaker 1: think an episode of tech Stuff maybe, But there was
Speaker 1: the story about the baby monitors that had here. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about where where there were internet connected baby monitors
Speaker 1: that got hacked by somebody who has started yelling at
Speaker 1: babies to tell them to wake up well and and
Speaker 1: hacked in the sense that if if it doesn't have
Speaker 1: password protection, or it has password protection but there is
Speaker 1: a default password that no one ever bothers to change,
Speaker 1: then you don't. There's not really any hacking necessary. It's
Speaker 1: essentially an open connection for you to to access. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: so if you know it needs to have something that
Speaker 1: would prevent that from happening, you don't. Again, you don't
Speaker 1: want someone to hack into the toy and have Barbie
Speaker 1: say inappropriate things to your kid. That would be that
Speaker 1: would be all I would be upset. You know. I
Speaker 1: have another question that may or may not be interesting.
Speaker 1: I'll see what you'll think before we get into the
Speaker 1: reasons that I think that this is actually really cool
Speaker 1: and could lead to good advances. Uh. The question would be,
Speaker 1: is this necessarily a good thing in how children's speech develops?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if we've ever had a
Speaker 1: situation before in history where children are going to be
Speaker 1: interacting back and forth continuously with a with a truly
Speaker 1: reactive electronic agent, And I wonder how much that would
Speaker 1: affect the way a child learns to speak. If this
Speaker 1: is a toy that you're giving to a very young
Speaker 1: child who's you know, still developing their own speech patterns,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, Well, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of um talking robotic books and apps
Speaker 1: and computer programs that for certainly the past decade, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen or twenty years, even children have been using
Speaker 1: to learn to read or to uh increase the vocabulary
Speaker 1: stuff like that, sure, or even just you know, in
Speaker 1: playing games. That's something that I think that more kids
Speaker 1: of this up and coming generation are more used to.
Speaker 1: So I haven't personally read research about it, although you know,
Speaker 1: I would say that since the things that Barbie says
Speaker 1: are completely controlled by the the by Mattel, they can
Speaker 1: make certain that Barbie is speaking properly, is using grammar properly.
Speaker 1: You could even have Barbie be able to answer questions
Speaker 1: about that sort of thing if that ended up being
Speaker 1: uh of interest. Now, I doubt that we would ever
Speaker 1: get to a point where we have Barbie correcting people's grammar,
Speaker 1: because I think that would I think that would just
Speaker 1: be obnoxious. Barbie is like, ain't ain't a word stupid?
Speaker 1: Or or I want that toy. They're right, like if
Speaker 1: the if if if the if the child says I
Speaker 1: did good on my test, and just know you did
Speaker 1: well on your test, which is odd because you don't
Speaker 1: know how to say well versus good. That that would
Speaker 1: have been you know, yeah, yeah, but I think that
Speaker 1: you know the fact that you could you The nice
Speaker 1: thing is that Barbie is not just randomly constructing sentences
Speaker 1: from a huge group of potential words where she could
Speaker 1: start speaking like Yoda, She's going to be speaking in
Speaker 1: a way yeah scripted. I think you make a good point, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I I maybe I was overestimating the degree to which
Speaker 1: this is different than things that came before. I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking because because it seems to be offering something that's
Speaker 1: a sort of heightened level of interactivity that actually learns
Speaker 1: from the child. But yeah, children already do interact with
Speaker 1: a lot of like sort of speech driven electronic media
Speaker 1: things that talk at them, just maybe not quite in
Speaker 1: the same way as we're talking here, So maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it wouldn't make that big a difference. It also it
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, I understand why some people are
Speaker 1: finding this sort of creepy because it reminds me of
Speaker 1: what my initial reaction was when Google Now came out.
Speaker 1: And Google Now is like I I get these little
Speaker 1: little notifications on my phone, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are prompted by my browsing habits using Google Chrome, and
Speaker 1: all of this is because I have, you know, my
Speaker 1: Android phone, connects through a Google account, so it's all
Speaker 1: in that same sort of playhouse. And if I pull
Speaker 1: up those those things, if I've done something like searched
Speaker 1: for flights to a different city, uh, then it might
Speaker 1: give me information about that city, like things that are
Speaker 1: happy thing at the time when I was doing the search, saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: this weekend at that city you were interested in? Is
Speaker 1: this thing? So if you're gonna go there, you might
Speaker 1: want to check this out. At first, it starts seeming
Speaker 1: creepy because it's like, how does this thing know so much?
Speaker 1: And then you realize, oh, it's just taking the information
Speaker 1: that I'm using in all of my activities and kind
Speaker 1: of cohalating it and curating it in an easy, easily
Speaker 1: digestible way. So it seems creepy, you know, in you know,
Speaker 1: a first glance, but then it just becomes really useful.
Speaker 1: I could see the same sort of reaction with this,
Speaker 1: the idea being that it's a doll that gradually gets
Speaker 1: to know more and more about the child and how
Speaker 1: to interact with that child based upon the things that
Speaker 1: the child seems interested in. Yeah. So, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I think we should look at some of the cool
Speaker 1: things that this could actually do for the future, because
Speaker 1: it seems like a toy like this is more advantageous
Speaker 1: than just that it's fun for kids, Like we could
Speaker 1: actually learn things from it. Sure, for example, I'm in
Speaker 1: how to keep developing a speech recognition for one thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that we've seen lots
Speaker 1: of development over the last several decades, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of slowed down, Like this is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: actually why I think it's amazing that kurtzwil is a
Speaker 1: futurist who believes in the singularity, because he has this
Speaker 1: very strong belief that singularity is just a couple of
Speaker 1: decades away, very very close now. Uh. And yet he
Speaker 1: also worked heavily in speech and voice recognition, where it's
Speaker 1: clear that technological progression does not does not go at
Speaker 1: the same rate for every kind of technology. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and things tend to plateau during certain cultural or
Speaker 1: economic or technology technological challenges. You'll have something happening you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, well, we kind of hit a roadblock.
Speaker 1: And it's not that we're never going to get around it,
Speaker 1: it's just it slowed us down. Right, We're not We're
Speaker 1: not progressing at that same uh you know geouh geometric
Speaker 1: rate that we were earlier and uh so, but it
Speaker 1: does mean that we can continue to improve on that,
Speaker 1: which is part of artificial intelligence. So uh it means
Speaker 1: that it's helping push the discipline of artificial intelligence further,
Speaker 1: which is exciting. Yeah, the mad scientist in me thinks,
Speaker 1: like man with proper consent, you could use this to
Speaker 1: learn fascinating things about the development of language and humans.
Speaker 1: But then again, I'm sure there are tons of questions
Speaker 1: about how it would be difficult to wrangle that kind
Speaker 1: of experimentation ethically well, especially like you. You'd also have
Speaker 1: to factor in so many other different variables, things like
Speaker 1: the region that you're talking about the Now. Granted, you
Speaker 1: also have to keep in mind this is a very
Speaker 1: expensive toy and it also requires that you have that
Speaker 1: WiFi connection. Now. Granted, because the toy is so expensive,
Speaker 1: it's probably pretty safe to bet that the people who
Speaker 1: are buying it are also people who have WiFi. But
Speaker 1: it means it means that if you were doing any
Speaker 1: kind of social study on that, you're looking at a
Speaker 1: particular democratic Yeah, if you were trying to base it
Speaker 1: on who who just bought them naturally, as opposed to
Speaker 1: like where you you know, gave them to control. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you went into the wild and yeah, so that
Speaker 1: they could actually use it, because I mean, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know why, I guess you're for research.
Speaker 1: You brought kids in then sure, but I think you
Speaker 1: could do that in a way that would be that
Speaker 1: would not require, uh, the the actual doll, Like in
Speaker 1: that sense you would you could just set up a
Speaker 1: camera and microphone in a in a room and have
Speaker 1: regular toys for the kid to play with. Because yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you could have the interactive doll and that
Speaker 1: would help you just listen to the kid's responses. But
Speaker 1: you don't need the interactive doll, Like there's no you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be looking at the back end at all. For
Speaker 1: the Mainly, I'm just saying we need to learn more
Speaker 1: about the evil heart of man from what children say
Speaker 1: to their dolls, because a lot of what they say
Speaker 1: to their dolls is quite disturbing. Also, really, I don't
Speaker 1: remember ever having disturbing conversations with my action. This is
Speaker 1: the thing. People abuse their dolls, don't they, especially especially Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's a thing I encountered when I was a child.
Speaker 1: I remember this anyway one feeling bad now. I never
Speaker 1: abused my action figure. I went on adventures. But so
Speaker 1: back to happy Land. I want to see hello Barbie
Speaker 1: based art tech projects. I had an idea just earlier
Speaker 1: as we were talking. So you've seen um Twitter bots
Speaker 1: play spam tennis right where, Like we talked about that
Speaker 1: in a podcast not too long ago, the one about
Speaker 1: what happens when a robot breaks the law? You can
Speaker 1: get bots talking to each other. They're they're designed to
Speaker 1: respond when people talk to them. What have If a
Speaker 1: bot talks to a bot, they just keep talking back
Speaker 1: and forth, garbage. What happens if you have Barbie talk
Speaker 1: to Barbie? I wonder, I wonder if she if she's
Speaker 1: good enough to to hear that it's another Barbie talking
Speaker 1: and to be like, hey, fellow self, how are you doing? Oh?
Speaker 1: I have great, fellow self. I don't know like that
Speaker 1: or or what I imagine is they could actually do
Speaker 1: the thing that Doc Brown talks about Back to the
Speaker 1: Future too, where if you see yourself from the future,
Speaker 1: you could destroy the entire universe. Yeah, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: imagine a g I Joe place that just starting to
Speaker 1: smolder in the background. It's just affecting like toys. Um.
Speaker 1: I I suspect that while we I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: who initiates conversations using this toy, right I don't, I
Speaker 1: assume that it's the child. So I assume that you
Speaker 1: hold down the belt buckle that activates the microphone and
Speaker 1: the child ends up saying something or the owner whomever
Speaker 1: says something into the microphone that prompts the beginning. So uh,
Speaker 1: you would first have to be able to time that
Speaker 1: out just right right, so that you get the first
Speaker 1: response from Barbie number one as you're holding down the
Speaker 1: belt buckle for Barbie number two, so that the response
Speaker 1: from Barbie one goes into the microphone of Barbie two.
Speaker 1: Then you'd have to time it out so that you
Speaker 1: could do the same thing with Barbie number two starts
Speaker 1: speaking to Barbie water. Somebody can come up with like
Speaker 1: some kind of little large we know setup that that
Speaker 1: has them go back and forth. Use your fingers too,
Speaker 1: I mean it, I'm just thinking you hear about the
Speaker 1: TVs that you want you have to be able to
Speaker 1: say things to them rather than pressing buttons with your fingers. Look,
Speaker 1: I love a Rube Goldberg device as much as the
Speaker 1: next guy. I'm just saying it's not always necessary to
Speaker 1: do something simple, but uh, I mean I would also
Speaker 1: be interested to see what would happen, Like how long
Speaker 1: would that exchange go before it would break down? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And just how how can Vin sing? Is this actually
Speaker 1: going to be to to a kid? Like? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: you know, because the age range for for toys like
Speaker 1: this is pretty enormous in terms of childhood. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, at anything from you know, like older than
Speaker 1: the age of might eat Barbie's hand and die up
Speaker 1: through up through puberty. You know, at least is within
Speaker 1: the marketing range of this kind of toy. So is
Speaker 1: it going to be the thing like when we were
Speaker 1: kids and talking toys came out and we were just like,
Speaker 1: this is the lamest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: I went on adventures with maybe again, you sound like
Speaker 1: you were much better adjusted than I was, Jonathan, But
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think this is a pretty cool idea,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm excited to see where speech recognizing toys
Speaker 1: go in the future. It is way cooler than what
Speaker 1: they had when I was a kid, which was just
Speaker 1: like you know the polsterring talking toys, Well, there's a
Speaker 1: snake in my boots, or the I think they had
Speaker 1: some diaper wedding baby dolls when I was a kid. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and and perennially talking about career aspirations is just cooler
Speaker 1: than wedding diapers. Well, and this technology, this this ability
Speaker 1: to UH for for speech and voice recognition and responses
Speaker 1: and using voice control as a user interface, is something
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to see creep into more and
Speaker 1: more technology around us. And I think the objections to
Speaker 1: Hello Barbie do bring up some points that we need
Speaker 1: to be aware of just moving forward in general, especially
Speaker 1: like we've talked about the Internet of Things a lot
Speaker 1: on this show, and I love the idea of the
Speaker 1: Internet of things, but even I as someone who is
Speaker 1: truly enthusiastic about that technology, I recognize that with the
Speaker 1: wrong implementation or the wrong level of awareness, it could
Speaker 1: end up being problematic at best because the fact that
Speaker 1: there are some really serious privacy concerns and some security
Speaker 1: issues that you have to think about make sure you
Speaker 1: design everything properly. There was a recent story about people
Speaker 1: hacking into WiFi networks using a nest thermostat as an
Speaker 1: entry point. So that's the sort of stuff that you
Speaker 1: have to be aware of. If you're going to have
Speaker 1: this interconnectivity with all these different devices, you need to
Speaker 1: make certain that you keep security at a level that
Speaker 1: is going to be manageable but also effective enough to
Speaker 1: discourage most attacks. Now, keep in mind, most of us
Speaker 1: are pretty safe from the the the leite hackers out there.
Speaker 1: It's it's the folks that have access to tools but
Speaker 1: are not necessarily uh willing to go and put forth
Speaker 1: a lot of effort to break into a security system
Speaker 1: that we need to really be cognizant of most of us. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you hold an important position somewhere or you are
Speaker 1: in the public eye, then it may be different for you,
Speaker 1: But for the most of us, we just have to
Speaker 1: worry about that lower level of security. But still means
Speaker 1: that we need to keep that in mind, and I
Speaker 1: think that's just gonna be something that we have to
Speaker 1: look for, both for speech and voice recognition type of
Speaker 1: of technologies and just general technologies that gather information about
Speaker 1: the area and send it off somewhere in order for
Speaker 1: there to be a reaction in your environment. Because that's
Speaker 1: always going to pose a potential privacy issue, and if
Speaker 1: we're aware of it, we can implement this technology properly
Speaker 1: in a way that benefits us without putting us to
Speaker 1: great risk. At least that's that's my kind of opinion
Speaker 1: about it. I know some people are a little more
Speaker 1: more cautious than I am, and I don't blame them
Speaker 1: one bit in that case, Uh, put put electrical tape
Speaker 1: over your webcam viewers, and don't buy your kid at
Speaker 1: Barbie Dollar. I know, I know people people who are
Speaker 1: just as enthusiastic about technology as I am, who regularly
Speaker 1: put a post it note over a web am. I
Speaker 1: know folks who are you know, they're not, and they're
Speaker 1: not paranoid that they just they recognize the potential that
Speaker 1: this technology has means of both benefiting us and possibly
Speaker 1: being a security or privacy issue, and and acknowledging that
Speaker 1: is the responsible thing to do. Acknowledging it and making
Speaker 1: sure that we are as responsible as possible moving forward
Speaker 1: means that we can ensure that we have the cool,
Speaker 1: awesome future and not the creepy orwellian future. Joe, what
Speaker 1: do you think you've been kind of quiet? I'm just listening.
Speaker 1: You're just recording everything for the future, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that we've literally recorded this and you can literally go
Speaker 1: back and listen to it whatever you want. Well, yeah, later,
Speaker 1: I'm going to analyze the transcript and then figure out
Speaker 1: how to sell you a car that will be a
Speaker 1: heck of us doll. Doll, you have a much better
Speaker 1: shot at Jonathan. I know you don't dry, but hey,
Speaker 1: if you take a bunch of dolls together, you can
Speaker 1: use them as a sled to get down the street.
Speaker 1: I used to go on sledding adventures with my action figures.
Speaker 1: Well that about wraps up this episode forward thinking, Do
Speaker 1: you guys have any other closing thoughts you want before
Speaker 1: we we say goodbye to our beloved listeners. I think
Speaker 1: I'm more creeped out by a sled made of barbies
Speaker 1: than I am by like random strangers listening to things
Speaker 1: that my hypothetical children say into a microphone. So good job, Joe,
Speaker 1: you found something that totally creeps me out. Maybe I'd
Speaker 1: be more creeped out about this if I had kids.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just seems pretty interesting to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's to also be fair, none of us in
Speaker 1: this room have kids, So we're we're also coming from
Speaker 1: this from the standpoint of people who are interested in
Speaker 1: technology but also aware of the potential pitfalls. But we
Speaker 1: don't have a personal steak in this efficient paranoia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but so if you, guys, if if you are
Speaker 1: in the market, either your yourself, if you are in
Speaker 1: this this demographic that is interested in owning this doll
Speaker 1: or or if you do have children and have an
Speaker 1: opinion about all of this, let us know. How can
Speaker 1: they do that? Jonathan, Well, they can write to us,
Speaker 1: And I would recommend writing to us. If you're going
Speaker 1: to express an opinion that's going to take more than say,
Speaker 1: a hundred forty characters, send us an email. That email
Speaker 1: addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Or you can drop us a line on Twitter, on
Speaker 1: Google Plus. On Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus, we
Speaker 1: are f W thinking. Go to Facebook search FW thinking
Speaker 1: will pop right up. You can leave us a message
Speaker 1: and uh, if you have suggestions for future topics, definitely
Speaker 1: let us know. We've got a list of those that
Speaker 1: we're going through. And we love hearing from you guys,
Speaker 1: and and your ideas are fantastic. Often you suggest things
Speaker 1: that just hadn't occurred to us, and they end up
Speaker 1: being some of our strongest and most interesting episodes. So
Speaker 1: please continue to let us know what you think and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward
Speaker 1: Thinking dot Com Problem brought to you by Toyota. Let's
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