Don't think there is a better illustration of AI-in-everything-whether-we-want-it-or-not than an AI bro buying an AI toy for his child who played with it for a bit and then seemed singularly unimpressed with the AI and turned it off.
He keeps turning it back on, and she keeps turning it off.
He keeps turning it back on, and she keeps turning it off.
Comments
Humans may be made obsolete at everything else, including enjoyment of life, but we’ll always be Matrix glitch-detectors.
Hey #AI; your utopia seems like ‘Hell is other people’; what’s the point?
No Exit
Children have fantasy! They want to play on their own! They don’t need a stupid technology talking with them or tell them how to play.
I hope there exist more children like this wonderful 6yo 💗
nobody wants your AI trash
Hope your execs were a lot more cynical at sales pitches than some of my upper management
Eventually someone will get the formula right and make a very engaging AI companion. Let's just hope it's not somebody like Elon Musk, an evangelist who'd like to educate kids into a sociopathic belief system.
AI: "Try jumping off of a bridge."
Random AI enthusiast/tech bro: "I should give this technology to my child."
I get it now.
AI scares me silly.
You keep turning that sucker off, kid!
https://bsky.app/profile/disabilitystor1.bsky.social/post/3lebxxni5q224
When we were allowed to use computers/the internet again, the kids asked us not to.
We have had more focus, happier kids, and better social engagement than we have had for years.
The kids know.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/startup-will-brick-800-emotional-support-robot-for-kids-without-refunds/
No THC or CBD or ABC
It did show me though how *frighteningly* quick she is on the uptake on this so I'm looking for a compact camera around €150 for her b'day coming up in spring, then we can go take pics together 😊
Hashtag profits-before-people or something.
My grandparents were really excited, but he played with it for ten minutes and never again.
She never spends long playing with the self-moving toys, but for a good while a simple emery board on a string was one of her favorite things to bat, lick and chew.
Creepy.
Children are highly impressionable and this was his way attempting to acclimate his daughter to an AI friend, despite her repeated rejections.
As a father, I'm absolutely going to hate on him, full stop.
So of course he's upset at the idea of children imagining and playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wey8nauEyA4
This will probably set back that guys plans to bring that robot step mom online.
Quit trying to adjust her settings, sick freak
"I'll be mash"
He knows which side of the wall his daughter will be on. Oh yes. He knows.
"Hey, kids! Wake up and let me tell you the story of the eighteen fingered man!"
I really don't know how you could get a bigger clue?
They don't understand play but insist on AI toys.
They don't understand or have any experience with education, but insist that Ai will "revolutionize" schools and universities.
As if you understand everything if you know AI. Very chilling.
What toys appeal to a 6 year old.
Presenting simplifications as the totality of the truth is fundamental to the traditional authoritarian approach to education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children
it’s clearly a kneejerk refusal to learn.
they’re bad software developers on top of being odious ppl
"What's Git?"
"You're kidding, right?"
Zero knowledge of unit testing, etc.
(Which is to say, yes, agreed.)
And people are surprised that techbros lean fascist.
Also I remember when this essay was new and its comments were full of racist, xenophobic programmers. You can see those types on Reddit and Y Combinator whining about it even years later.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
As someone that has AuDHD, most tech intentionally manipulates my dopamine receptors and makes me want to continue “multitasking” to find the next new spark. They’re made it purpose built to be addictive.
It’s very difficult to overcome.
Indeed I think we need to be a bit bored at times. That is were single use device excel
Even with adhd im better off getting “bored” as that eventually leads me to something else naturally.
Meanwhile phones and computers I can get distracted for hours looking for the next dopamine hit.
(I am only including the new text in the alt text, otherwise it would be too big).
Voice Assistant tech became the norm since we can choose when to interact and it's models are trained on trying to find the nearest simple answer to a response.
It's so annoying to see how these people are finding new ways to stuff AI into something to overcomplicate it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/pv392h/pov_our_cats_ignoring_the_150_cat_tree_and/
so yeah, you are 100% right. it should be all about their imaginations.
2. dang man, just let her play with her toys
Does AI slop garbage suck? No! It is the kids who are wrong!
At least it hasn't quite gone to "my child is doing it wrong." Yet.
I want to say I don't train models on content that isn't my own. I don't publish models or sell them. Fuck that.
I intend to get around to changing it when I have time to sit down and make something.
"NO! It's everyone who isn't a techbro who's wrong! And a Luddite too for good measure!"
Nobody actually enjoyed playing with Teddy Ruxpin.
dinosaur has an off switch.
At least dad participated as far as helping make a hat for the dino.
I'd like less "talky" AI and more "walky" AI.
Teaching a dino to play soccer would be fun. Talking to it is just silly.
Those things had a similar issue with low battery and fed the kids' nightmares for a generation
Stories like this make me empathize with the parents obsessed with screen time.
And you know what, it makes sense.
Our education system in the US is so focused on never fucking up once, passing tests, that no one feels like they can afford fucking up, even though making mistakes is how we LEARN.
What these generative tools do structurally is aggregate and homogenize. They(by definition) produce median output.
I bet she agrees with me, too.
Of course she would turn it off.
The kid said no, deal with it chump!
The problem is the appalling lack of curiosity - about ANYTHING. People who are determined not to learn anything will find a way to avoid learning.
Daughter had some entity entering her space that was profoundly confident it knows more than her about everything, and wouldn’t STFU about it.
She, at a young age, realized she is under no obligation to listen to that.
turns more into a kind of Rorschach test
A"I": either tries to data mine it's surroundings or working from an already datamined template to provide a fixed set of entertainment for a one or two play thing.
Literally the toy version of a one-trick-pony.
Playing with toys, especially talking to them and having them 'talk back', builds social skills and empathy. You must imagine yourself as another being and think how they're react to what you're saying.
/s just in case
I've realized a lot of my characters are somewhat sociopathic. Ah, well, "write what you know".
I remember mainly grey beams and blue joiners (with some themed differences, and different colored joiners for some different angles and functions).
https://collectorarchive.com/gnp001
second thought: but can you make it do brutalism?
Girder and Panel was Kenner and Construx was Fisher Price.
G&P discontinued when Star Wars became Kenner's priority.
Construx was a few years later.
I wonder how an Eliza machine would react to its descendants, the Large Language Model next-word-guesser (which is all ChatGPT is, and all AI built from the ChatGPT model.):
Eliza: "So, why do you think you are intelligent, ChatGPT?"
If you look at some of the literature from that period, you'll see people saw intelligence and understanding in a program that fit in a few pages of BASIC. Humans project inner life on things.
Every time I was working with Eliza, trying to work it into a self-contradiction, I would always, sooner or later, start arguing with it like it was a person.
The Turing Test is not to tell if computers are smart, it's to tell if HUMANS have finally wised up.
That thing is literally talking out of its ass, in a stressed-out, domineering voice that keeps redirecting her without picking up what she’s already doing.
It’s like having to play with Child Elon.
Speaker is in the back, so it’s faceless.
Kid shows it a little outfit she’s making for it, and it fawns like an awkward adult, then talks over her.
“THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!Want to play a game? Or hear a fact??” it bleats.
She IS playing. It has no idea.
STFU, Child Elon. Here’s your paper hat and booties.
Link if you need it though: https://x.com/altryne/status/1873222505734811762?t=wPfmKoW0pL5r1uYaETy7HQ&s=19
Dudes so blinded by his love for AI he can't see his daughter enjoy toys.
A toy with A.I. can be interesting for an adult, but be a big stupidity for a child. Every now and then it would be good to go back to being a child, especially to understand the simplicity of their minds.
I'm only posting to let everyone know I understood the reference
(it's all my 18mo likes now apparently)
Who would have thunk it?
And to steal from Terry Pratchett: if you don’t precisely phrase what you want per its parameters, it will only tell you to go read the manual. (And it gets increasingly frustrated and passive-aggressive about it.)
The manual is in a corrupted zip file that won’t open.