
How millions of kids are being shaped by know-it-all voice assistants - bcaulfield
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-millions-of-kids-are-being-shaped-by-know-it-all-voice-assistants/2017/03/01/c0a644c4-ef1c-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.8bc75cd1a1bc
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Al-Khwarizmi
In Spain, when you talk to people you know, the standard way to ask questions
is bluntly, without "please" and "thank you". Even with people whom you don't
know, it's still the normal usage in many situations, e.g. practically no one
would say "please" when ordering at a restaurant, bar, shop, etc. You
typically only say it when you are asking someone a favor outside their normal
duties (e.g. asking a stranger in the street for directions). If you used
"please" in Spanish with the same frequency as one does in English, most
people would consider you pedantic.

Interactions still work fine, we aren't sociopaths or anything, it's just a
matter of codes and expectations.

~~~
csydas
Well, I think there are a few nuances that make the comparison a little
tenuous.

First, though this may be stating the obvious, standards in culture are an
important part of language; what is normal in one language is definitely not
normal in another. Russian, for example, has words for "this", "that", etc,
but you wouldn't commonly use it unless you were being really specific; a few
of my Russian colleagues when coaching me in my Russian have reminded me not
to be so specific with Russian since it could be perceived as insulting.
Whereas in English there is no such judgement for casually using the
references.

Second, and perhaps I'm misunderstanding the level of importance here, but I
believe Spanish has a formal and informal form for verbs, similar to Russian
Вы and Ты conjugation. How you talk to people indicates a level of formality
baked into the language, so even if the literal translation is "Pass the
butter", there is still some formality inferred. English has no such way of
communicating this with the verbs alone, so we use other words to signal this.

I get what you're saying that not having it isn't a huge issue in other
cultures, but that little part at the end is a pretty big caveat. Even between
British and American english there are fairly big cultural differences, and
it's supposedly the same darn language. Culture plays a huge impact in how
language is interpreted, and if there is a lasting effect from Alexa, Siri,
Cortana, and whatever Google's assistant is, it's worth noting I think.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Yes, of course I'm not saying the whole article is pointless. And if I were a
parent educating my kids in English, I would still tell them to say "please"
and "thank you" as that's what is expected socially, at least at the moment.

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think the kids will become
"raging a------", as a parent in the article says. The worst thing that can
happen is an evolution of the language, such that ways of address that would
label you as a "raging a------" today will be the new normal. There may be
some awkward situations along the way but I'm sure people will adjust just
fine (assuming that evolution really happens).

By the way, you are right about the formal and informal verb forms in Spanish,
but in Spain the formal forms are used less and less in everyday conversation
and are probably headed for extinction in a few decades (unlike Latin America,
where they still seem to be going strong). 100 years ago they were used even
for parents and older members of the family, 50 years ago only for superiors
and strangers, and right now mostly for rather old strangers, with the
threshold age slowly going up as the formal verb forms make many people "feel
old" so they ask to be addressed informally. This gradual process has always
been accompanied by a drip of opinion pieces in newspapers about how we are
losing manners, but life goes on :)

~~~
csydas
Ah, I see, I understand better now.

Thanks for the info on the more local status of the formal/informal; it's
different than it is here in Russia, where at least my colleagues and friends
put emphasis on it, even if the form is the only formal thing about what
they're saying. (My colleagues will get into pretty rude talk with our boss,
for example, but it's always Вы with him even if they're talking about getting
smashed and picking up girls for the weekend).

------
gnicholas
I wrote a piece highlighting some of the etiquette-related issues a few years
ago. My suggestion: an optional "courtesy mode" that can be activated to
expect "please" and "thank you" — and which becomes non-responsive after too
many impolite queries.

Siri: She's No Miss Manners [https://medium.com/@nicklum/siri-shes-no-miss-
manners-600206...](https://medium.com/@nicklum/siri-shes-no-miss-
manners-600206840d9c#.j11g9p6sh)

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mherdeg
I thought that Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" was about the profound
culture-shaping power of "massively online education" \-- like Khan Academy,
Coursera, EdX, etc.

But maybe on further reflection there is just as much influence on a society's
culture from growing up with "virtual assistants" \-- whether it's the
widespread availability of a search engine or a ubiquitous voice-activated
thing.

~~~
viraptor
I think there's a massive difference between them in one aspect: assistants
will only tell you what you ask them, while the diamond age book had a
programmed purpose and partial syllabus of its own. Unfortunately few people
ask complex questions that lead through non trivial topics on their own...

Maybe the new assistant for kids that they write about will have better
results here. But can it really push kids towards specific thoughts and
activities like the Primer?

~~~
Swizec
I'd love to ask Siri or Alexa complex questions! But they can't even handle
the operator "and"

So ya know ...

Yes, it pisses me off that "Alexa play X playlist on shuffle" or "Alexa play
and shuffle" doesn't work.

And Siri can't do "What's the stock of X and Y" to the point that she actively
ignores "and" and interprets it as eithe "in" or "end"

Because "tesla in amazon" or "tesla end amazon" makes soooo much more sense
than "tesla and amazon"

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carsongross
tldr: Jeff Bezo's newspaper framing Alexa as a beloved must have item,
although challenges remain.

~~~
paulsutter
This comment nails it precisely, I'm perplexed by the downvotes. Snark isn't
bad if it's perfectly descriptive.

~~~
kosei
The snark implies a malicious intent on the part of the author and the
newspaper that is unproven and undeserved based on any of the reporting I've
seen from WaPo at this point.

~~~
paulsutter
No, his comment is accurate even if the author buys into it hook, line, and
sinker.

But I mean, seriously, do you?

------
bryanrasmussen
My kid is being shaped by Siri in that she asks a question, Siri gets the
wrong answer, she asks Siri why Siri is so stupid, 10 minutes of arguing back
and forth ensue.

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richard___
This piece is such an obvious shill

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yestoallthat
> In talking that way about a device plugged into a wall, Yarmosh’s son was
> anthropomorphizing it — which means to “ascribe human features to
> something,” Alexa happily explains. Humans do this a lot, Calvert said.

Do humans do this a lot, or do some humans not snap out of it? I've been
minding myself ever since my early 20s. Starting with articles like this:
[http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/symbols.html](http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/symbols.html)
which I can't thank the author enough for.

But there's much more on this written during the 20th century, so to me the
question is, why do people stubbornly ignore that? This expert here does it
to, by just going "humans do this, _shrug_ ". No, it's one of the failure
modes of the human mind. Humans also go on killing sprees, after all, or hack
their children up and throw them in the garbage bin. You can't usefully talk
about humans by first fusing all of them into one huge blob.

> The problem, Druin said, is that this emotional connection sets up
> expectations for children that devices can’t or weren’t designed to meet,
> causing confusion, frustration and even changes in the way kids talk or
> interact with adults.

I like how this implies that the problem isn't worshiping the things we made
as a higher power or some sort of mystery, but could be solved by those
devices matching our expectations more. If "humans anthropomorphize things",
we obviously have to make more objects that have human features. Never mind
the flip side of humans getting an increasingly object like quality. Just
limit their access, and otherwise sit and wait, it'll be fine. I mean, what's
the alternative? Just say _no_ to products corporations insist on pushing?

> Or take the weather, particularly in winter. Instead of asking Mom or Dad
> the temperature that day, children just go to the device, treating the
> answer as gospel.

Perfectly obedient machines, on top of that achieving compliance levels highly
paid humans can't consistently on their best days -- what's not to love? It's
unclear though whether corporations and the military are paying any attention
any of this, at all ^_^. They'd have to give us in writing that they do for us
to have any further thoughts about this, certainly too critical ones.

> Upside: No more fights over what the temperature will really be and what’s
> appropriate to wear. Downside: Kids will go to their parents less, with both
> sides losing out on timeworn interactions.

The what not? The downside is "losing out on timeworn interactions"? That's
like saying the downside of the sun exploding is having to use more
electricity on street lights.

Here's what you miss out on, for starters that is, or I would be doing the
same: empathy, which I wouldn't be surprised is very much linked with of
growing your own person. Both abuse and extreme pampering are harmful. I don't
know if it's been proven, I just know that the literature I read on that
matches what I saw and experienced myself. The machines of the future will do
what we tell them to, and take our abuse with a smile -- except all those
instances where _we_ have to do exactly what they tell us, and do without
question. Then there is taking what the machine says for gospel -- certainly
doubly so if it tells you anything you like to hear. Why think when you can
"know", right?

From the Third Reich to Milgram's, this is such a huge can of worms, I can
only stand in awe with how non-chalantly this bit is treated here. Missing out
on timeworn interactions. I'm still reeling a bit.

Just one random thing because I don't have time on the one hand, but am also
not just being contrariarian, or lying when I said I spent a LOT of time
reading and thinking about this shit since the 90s.. you know, since I saw a
bunch of corpses being shoved into a mass grave by a caterpillar while
changing channels as a kid and started to wonder wtf kind of world I'm in, and
how magically people in the past were obviously wrong, but currently,
everything is just a-okay.

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959354314542368](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959354314542368)

> The perception of a convergence between the views of Arendt, Stanley
> Milgram, and certain Holocaust historians inspired the situationist argument
> that ordinary people become mass murderers because they find themselves in
> circumstances that subvert their ability to make or act upon individual
> moral judgments.

We already have this problem as as, no technology required. It's already swept
under the rug all the damn time. But using technology to amplify it so much on
multiple levels, while not addressing the human problem, by constantly working
around it and trying to have dysfunctional human beings be functional cogs in
a system that grows for its own sake, leads predictably more war, more
terrorism, more drugs, more happy slapping videos, more babies in microwaves,
more everything, and more people who just can't seem to find the connection
between a leak in a boat and that boat sinking.

> “Alexa,” they’ll say, “you’re such a butt.”

And some of them even might grow up calling other kids "fun-sized terrorists"
as they have a great time blasting them with drones on command.

