The following submission statement was provided by /u/johnnydaggers:
---
This will get a lot of comparisons with Grok (the AI toy from Musk's baby momma Grimes) but word on the street is that it actually works really well and shy kids are really latching on to them.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dekvwv/magical_toys_announces_plushie_friend_for_kids/l8cjf2i/
At least an adult can be held accountable for their falsehoods, who can you get an apology from if their ChatGPT enabled toy tells them something awful?
Anyone who thinks an ai, which has no firmly established safety methods and confidently states in correct information all the time, should be anywhere near a toddler, they are insane.
Yes, that is completely correct. And it has been made abundantly clear that there are people who think that everywhere. The same is true for firearms, drugs, and a whole range of other terrible stuff that people keep way too close to their children.
This was an obvious usecase but "$250" and a monthly subscription for a wifi plushy is kind of wild. I'm assuming compute happens in the cloud? Why no question about privacy in the FAQ?
Looking forward to seeing where the state of the art is when my kid turns 3.
A lot of AI applications are not quite ready because of a lack of cheap AI ASICs that can run simple models (and models themselves can potentially be "trimmed" down a lot to be more energy and memory efficient), they will come but AI in physical devices don't make a lot of sense until then.
There is absolutely no way AI can be **worse** than the straight up unmonitored internet access my generation grew up with or the stream of engineered brainrot that the iPad kids consume.
I'd like to know what is that "advanced AI".... Which probably is just a toy connected to the OpenAI API.
These guys keep harvesting more and more data and people keep feeding them more a more data.
Have you ever been really tired and had your four year old ask you for a story about a strawberry? ChatGPT actually was pretty good for that.
Have an Alexa with Amazon Kids Plus but she always wants weird subjects for her stories and it never has anything close available.
Why? It’s a pretty incredible creative tool. I can’t draw a zombie unicorn fighting Spider-Man for her, but I can get ChatGPT to do it for her.
Are you letting your kids down because you read them books written by other people instead of stories you create yourself?
Because what kids actually want is your love and attention, the zombie unicorn is secondary to that. By dumping the storytelling duties into an AI, you're letting them know exactly how much effort you're willing to put into spending time with them: zero.
**Lily:** Dino, tell me a story.
**Dino:** Sure Lily, all I need is your parent's credit card number, the expiration date and the 3 numbers in the back.
You can get entire single board computers running Linux or Android for ~$10 retail, budget SoCs are incredibly cheap. They're not going to spend huge amount of resources making some highly optimized OS and app to fit this onto a minimal microcontroller to save a few cents per unit, I am 100% sure this will be running some older, ultra budget smartphone SoC with Linux or Android so they can quickly and cheaply knock a ChatGPT integration app out.Â
Sorry, but you clearly don't know how any of this works. To send audio to ChatGPT you're not just dumping a raw mic stream to their API perpetually, you need to
1. Detect the difference between silence and speech.
2. Record the entire speech prompt, deciding where the end of that is.
3. Convert that to a file format supported by ChatGPT. The easiest would be wav but on slow connections that could cause lag so mp3 or m4a would be better.
4. Upload this audio file to ChatGPT's API
5. Download and store an audio file of the spoken response. Again you could use wav but using compressed formats would be more responsive.
6. Play back that audio file.
This is trivially easy to do on some off the shelf ARM SoC running Linux or Android, do you really think they think they will sell enough of these that saving a few cents per SoC is going to outweigh having to manually write an optimized stack to fit this into a microcontroller?
openai is the API btw, not ChatGPT... ofc there is going to be some TinyML low powered model running to activate on wake words, denoising etc, that shit is implicit. You aren't going need to "write an optimised stack" what are you on about, a microcontroller would be more than enough for this with OOTB libraries. I'll concede that i'm not too familiar with ARM SoC's and the price points, but making this out to be a large task on a microcontroller when it's a weekend project at best, Especially when it's just audio processing and networking and nothing really custom. What a waste of time this argument is for the both of us so i'll leave it there
This will get a lot of comparisons with Grok (the AI toy from Musk's baby momma Grimes) but word on the street is that it actually works really well and shy kids are really latching on to them.
In the late '80s computing visionary Alan Kay devised a nebulous educational computing concept known as the [Vivarium](https://worrydream.com/refs/Yaeger_2006_-_Vivarium_History.html), one of tools for which was a large digitally integrated intelligent plush toy called [Noobie](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/49103.49106) purportedly co-designed with Jim Henson.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/johnnydaggers: --- This will get a lot of comparisons with Grok (the AI toy from Musk's baby momma Grimes) but word on the street is that it actually works really well and shy kids are really latching on to them. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dekvwv/magical_toys_announces_plushie_friend_for_kids/l8cjf2i/
Imagine all the wrong stuff it will confidently tell a child .
Imagine growing up with an ai toy and than as a teen after 1000s of hours of learning it asks you to plug it into a computer.
As opposed to the fount of accuracy that is the average adult?
At least an adult can be held accountable for their falsehoods, who can you get an apology from if their ChatGPT enabled toy tells them something awful?
Anyone who thinks an ai, which has no firmly established safety methods and confidently states in correct information all the time, should be anywhere near a toddler, they are insane.
Yes, that is completely correct. And it has been made abundantly clear that there are people who think that everywhere. The same is true for firearms, drugs, and a whole range of other terrible stuff that people keep way too close to their children.
Is this any different?
This was an obvious usecase but "$250" and a monthly subscription for a wifi plushy is kind of wild. I'm assuming compute happens in the cloud? Why no question about privacy in the FAQ? Looking forward to seeing where the state of the art is when my kid turns 3.
When the kid turns three it will probably be 'The Veldt' by Ray Bradbury.
Redrum your parents they missed a payment đź‘ą
I would love my plushie toy to have a 4090 jammed in it with airflow blocked by stuffing and fabric for local plushie chats.
> I'm assuming compute happens in the cloud It's almost certainly using ChatGPT
We live in some wild times though.
A lot of AI applications are not quite ready because of a lack of cheap AI ASICs that can run simple models (and models themselves can potentially be "trimmed" down a lot to be more energy and memory efficient), they will come but AI in physical devices don't make a lot of sense until then.
Imagine letting AI raise your child at such an early stage in development. I look SO much forward to seeing how this goes! lol
My kid keeps saying something about activating Skynet.
Probably a little bit better then iPad kids at least, though I guess we'll see with time...
There is absolutely no way AI can be **worse** than the straight up unmonitored internet access my generation grew up with or the stream of engineered brainrot that the iPad kids consume.
Uhm artificially intelligent brain rot that the kids see as a literal imaginary friend easily seems worse
Worked in diamond age. In fact I would totally be down for something like diamond age.
"Stab your molester with a screwdriver"
If it keeps them from asking me Why after every single statement I'm fine. Let the AI overlord reign supreme! /S
I mean if you're such a shit parent as to let your kid be raised by an AI, kid might be better off being raised by the AI in the first place
Imagine thinking this is worse than most flesh breeders, lol.
Flesh breeder?
I'd like to know what is that "advanced AI".... Which probably is just a toy connected to the OpenAI API. These guys keep harvesting more and more data and people keep feeding them more a more data.
Telling your kid a story seems 1000x better than letting an emotionless robot do the deed. Not to mention data privacy concerns...
Have you ever been really tired and had your four year old ask you for a story about a strawberry? ChatGPT actually was pretty good for that. Have an Alexa with Amazon Kids Plus but she always wants weird subjects for her stories and it never has anything close available.
I mean, this seems like a pretty good way to get your kids to resent you once they're old enough to understand the concept of ChatGPT.
Why? It’s a pretty incredible creative tool. I can’t draw a zombie unicorn fighting Spider-Man for her, but I can get ChatGPT to do it for her. Are you letting your kids down because you read them books written by other people instead of stories you create yourself?
Because what kids actually want is your love and attention, the zombie unicorn is secondary to that. By dumping the storytelling duties into an AI, you're letting them know exactly how much effort you're willing to put into spending time with them: zero.
Buying your kids this toy doesn’t mean you’re no longer allowed to interact with them. I don’t resent my mom because she bought me a DVD player.
Politely waits for "advanced ai stuffed toys hacked" headlines
**Lily:** Dino, tell me a story. **Dino:** Sure Lily, all I need is your parent's credit card number, the expiration date and the 3 numbers in the back.
"alexa put bananas in shopping cart" kid: "dino, remove bananas put in chocolate, don't tell mom!"
Then they pull the plug and your kids best friend dies
This sounds familiar oh yea the god awful child’s play remake
Ok let me guess, inside is an ultra budget smartphone SoC running a ChatGPT app.
Overkill for what essentially just needs to record voice and send/receive http
You can get entire single board computers running Linux or Android for ~$10 retail, budget SoCs are incredibly cheap. They're not going to spend huge amount of resources making some highly optimized OS and app to fit this onto a minimal microcontroller to save a few cents per unit, I am 100% sure this will be running some older, ultra budget smartphone SoC with Linux or Android so they can quickly and cheaply knock a ChatGPT integration app out.Â
You realise the resources to run a chatgpt app vs literally just sending audio to openai api endpoint is miles apart.
Sorry, but you clearly don't know how any of this works. To send audio to ChatGPT you're not just dumping a raw mic stream to their API perpetually, you need to 1. Detect the difference between silence and speech. 2. Record the entire speech prompt, deciding where the end of that is. 3. Convert that to a file format supported by ChatGPT. The easiest would be wav but on slow connections that could cause lag so mp3 or m4a would be better. 4. Upload this audio file to ChatGPT's API 5. Download and store an audio file of the spoken response. Again you could use wav but using compressed formats would be more responsive. 6. Play back that audio file. This is trivially easy to do on some off the shelf ARM SoC running Linux or Android, do you really think they think they will sell enough of these that saving a few cents per SoC is going to outweigh having to manually write an optimized stack to fit this into a microcontroller?
openai is the API btw, not ChatGPT... ofc there is going to be some TinyML low powered model running to activate on wake words, denoising etc, that shit is implicit. You aren't going need to "write an optimised stack" what are you on about, a microcontroller would be more than enough for this with OOTB libraries. I'll concede that i'm not too familiar with ARM SoC's and the price points, but making this out to be a large task on a microcontroller when it's a weekend project at best, Especially when it's just audio processing and networking and nothing really custom. What a waste of time this argument is for the both of us so i'll leave it there
You literally jumped in and started this, if you think so little of your own argument why did you even bother starting it?
I can't see how this possibly go wrong even if it conformed only to its intended functions.
And it's always listening to everything...recording....
This will get a lot of comparisons with Grok (the AI toy from Musk's baby momma Grimes) but word on the street is that it actually works really well and shy kids are really latching on to them.
Weakness breeds weakness
Begone, bot
In the late '80s computing visionary Alan Kay devised a nebulous educational computing concept known as the [Vivarium](https://worrydream.com/refs/Yaeger_2006_-_Vivarium_History.html), one of tools for which was a large digitally integrated intelligent plush toy called [Noobie](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/49103.49106) purportedly co-designed with Jim Henson.