
Google Home: An Insight Into a 4-Year-Old’s Mind - Vinnl
http://www.jonobacon.com/2017/05/18/google-home-insight-4-year-olds-mind/
======
kristianc
Although short, an absolute joy to read, too. Not trying to sell or plug any
idea or worldview, just sharing a story about the joy of the human condition.
Blogging was made for stuff like this.

~~~
sbierwagen
Not trying to sell anything, eh? The author discloses he was given the product
for free. Then he embeds a video of him using it. (A common requirement of
many sponsored content posts) Then a cute story of his son using the product,
closing with a video of them singing along with it. This is native
advertising.

~~~
jonobacon
I wasn't asked to promote anything. I got a new toy and I wanted to share me
using it.

You may think this is advertising, but you are wrong.

------
siegecraft
Hopefully Mycroft (or similar open-source alternatives) can provide the
benefits without all the privacy / behavioral modification downsides. But I
fear open source products like this will always languish behind commercial
offerings. Makes me think that the democratization of AI is very important in
this regard (you shouldn't have to sell your soul to get good speech
recognition, etc).

~~~
guelo
There's never going to be a democratization of AI without a democratization of
the data. But the data itself comes from privacy violating surveillance so I
don't think we really want democratization of data.

~~~
xapata
I'm confident that in 20 years we'll have a very different conception of
privacy. Certainly, one of the worst privacy outcomes would be if government
had a monopoly on ubiquitous surveillance.

Already I don't expect to be anonymous in any public location. Given a public
enough lifestyle and enough acquaintances, the likelihood of someone
recognizing you anywhere on the globe or in a random pub is non-negligible.

~~~
chadgeidel
I agree that we will have a different conception of privacy. I'm hopeful (but
not particularly optimistic) that we can have something like David Brin's
"Transparent Society"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)).

~~~
xapata
I like that term "sousveillance". It's tough to communicate the concept with
phrases when folks tend to skim rather than read carefully.

------
prawn
I'm invariably amused when my four year old gives up on "Alexa, play Justin
Beaver on Spotify" and resorts to "Alexa, play whatever you want on Spotify",
only to get back this:

[https://youtu.be/dG2jj-aIl-A?t=1m16s](https://youtu.be/dG2jj-aIl-A?t=1m16s)

~~~
Darthy
That's interesting. I wonder whether some artists are already exploiting this
by creating tracks with names such as "a random song" and "some music"?

~~~
justusthane
Yes:
[https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/youneedtohearthisthis-...](https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/youneedtohearthisthis-
guy-made-23000-by-releasing-14000-songs-on-itunes-and-spotify)

~~~
fudged71
"it is inevitable that they will type the word "poop" into the search bar.
Once they do that, they'll find 9 albums by The Toilet Bowl Cleaners! It's
impossible not to listen to these songs once you know they exist."

Touche. I would absolutely do that.

------
louprado
Are there psychological concerns regarding a child's development by
interacting with these devices ?

For example, I recently changed Alexa's awake word to be "computer" (one of 4
allowable options) and I say it with a commanding Picardesque voice. I enjoy
doing that. But sometimes I wonder if the joy is coming from the _TNG_
nostalgia or from a sense of power.

I have also wondered about the consequence of adding "please" to the awake
word (that isn't an option yet). Given the complexity of the human mind it is
not obvious. Perhaps it is human nature to desire exertion of authority.
Better to have the authority gratuitously exerted on a piece of electronics
than on the family pet.

 _edit: Picardesque may be obscure so I added a TNG reference._

~~~
openasocket
I wouldn't worry about it. Humans are profoundly good at learning and
contextualizing associations and recognizing special cases. And to a certain
extent this is not a new phenomenon. It's very similar to having a dog in the
house, which you and your child will give commands to. You don't preface all
your commands to the dog with "please" and follow it up with "thank you," and
yet children have no problem with learning manners or develop an unhealthy
desire for power.

~~~
louprado
Authoritarian personalities aren't that uncommon IME.

~~~
openasocket
Sure, but that's specious reasoning. I have green eyes, and I haven't been
attacked by a tiger, but that doesn't mean that green eyes prevent tiger
attacks. Similarly, just because we have dogs around kids that are given
commands without please and thank you, and also authoritarian personalities
doesn't suggest a causal relation (or even a correlation!).

------
cronjobber
> (thanks to Google for the kind gift)

Why am I spontaneously thinking "Trojan Horse?"

~~~
infimum
'timeo danaos et dona ferentes'

it's amazing how some fundamentals of the human condition don't change even
over thousands of years

------
falsedan
What a terrifying glimpse into an autotechno distopia.

No, I didn't like _The Diamond Age_ either.

~~~
Jaq-77
I want to be excited for this - a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer done right
and distributed freely could advance the collective education of our entire
planet - but all I can think of is ways that giving kids unfettered access to
this could go wrong.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yeah, there's definitely a sinister component to accepting a device from
$MEGACORP into your home and allowing it free reign to indoctrinate and teach
your child.

My older kids have already started going to Google and using search-by-voice
to find things that me and their mom have either forbade or just to get
answers that they didn't find adequate. I saved the auto-recorded MP3s of
every query from when my daughter snuck away with my phone and said, "OK
Google, show me scary goblins", after we declined to show her scarier ones.
This was cute, but unless it's your first day on the internet, you know that
children asking Google to show them scary things is a potentially upsetting
situation.

My son ran over and asked "how do you turn a Wii U console off and on again"
after he didn't like my response of "You have to ask a grown-up to hold down
the button on the console for 4 seconds" (this one wasn't bad of course, he
was just frustrated that he couldn't reach the console on the shelf and was
seeking alternate solutions, but it demonstrates the point that children are
learning to seek truth from the machines).

Perhaps more concerning is the disclosure inherent in a child's questioning.
Suppose your family adheres to an illegal religious or political tenet. You
teach this to your children in hushed tones where no one is listening. One
day, they innocently approach the $MEGACORP_LISTENING_DEVICE and say "Alexa,
why doesn't Daddy believe that the Great Leader is a smart man?"

Next day, Mommy and Daddy go bye-bye and the children go off to be re-
educated.

That is _absolutely_ a plausible scenario. All of us on HN already know that
the tech is there for that. The government needs only to wait for the
population to be hostile enough against those who oppose the Great Leader to
accept it.

~~~
mncharity
Beware also more subtle effects. Both intentional "nudging", and unintended
emergent effects. Racial segregation of schools and neighborhoods doesn't
require brute force redlining, it can emerge from surprisingly small
incentives.

I intermittently work on education content to better develop a rough
quantitative feel for physical size. Lots of searches mentioning
"millimeters". And Google Images starts showing me pictures of guns. And
bullets. Lots of guns. Even on unrelated searches. Then I work on something
else for a while, and they slowly all go away. Not much liking guns, it's a
disincentive to work on the topic. And while I like the concept of encouraging
kids to use google searches to get rough sizes for the objects they deal with,
and "OBJECT millimeters" (or "micrometers", etc) works... Google's behavior
gives me pause.

> Yeah, there's definitely a sinister component to accepting a device from
> $MEGACORP into your home and allowing it free reign to indoctrinate and
> teach your child.

Yeah. "Is human evolution real?" "Is climate change real?" :) I just searched
for "how old is the earth", and while the embedded answer is 4By, the top link
is "A handbook for students, parents, and teachers countering the latest
arguments for evolution". Can you think of any approach to answering such
questions, even personalized, that _won 't_ be thought a problem?

------
base2john
Very cute, couple months ago NYTimes had a video made by a mother of 2 girls
called How Does Life Live?
[https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004976604/how-
do...](https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004976604/how-does-life-
live.html)

------
teekert
Haha, love it. Kids are great, some time back my 3 y/o told me there was ice
under the pond (where else could it have gone because it was still there the
previous time he saw it), such logic, with such knowledge and hardly any
assumptions. It's refreshing. Currently my kid is obsessed with what floats
and what sinks in a bucket of water outside in the garden. A joy to watch.

~~~
mncharity
> obsessed with what floats and what sinks

In an alternate timeline, there's an NSF science education wiki to point to,
but oh well.

You might seed the environment with cans of different sugar content
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzsORE0ae10&t=69](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzsORE0ae10&t=69)
, potentially helping with several common misconceptions ("heavy sinks",
"metal sinks", "hollow floats"). Perhaps small plastic bottles with pennies.
Pennies are also good for sinking boats. As a collaborative follow-up to the
cans, perhaps a layered drink
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVsMmCb3Cdw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVsMmCb3Cdw)
, or hand-mixed sugar water in those floating/sinking small plastic bottles.

Other random fun density videos: Bubbles on CO2
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drBjDy96iNI&t=30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drBjDy96iNI&t=30)
and Al boats on SF6 gas
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckaJs_u2U_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckaJs_u2U_A)
. I've been exploring a "teach size down to atoms, then nucleons up to bulk
materials", for early-primary. Thus the links.

------
dalbasal
It would be interesting to see this sort of thing play out again in five years
when/if the box can understand Jack's question and respond in a meanignful
way.

I guess it'd just be a continuation of a trend, where the effect is already in
full effect with slightly older kids, who can read. Today's 14 yro probably
learned most of what they know about puberty, college, sex, race or drugs from
"google" anyway. They used to learn things adults avoid telling kids from
eachother, now it's google.

Maybe it's no big deal if they start as soon as they can talk. Strange though.

~~~
Kholo
People not just children need supervision and guidance when it comes to
information going into their heads. It is why whichever culture you pick
across the globe, "education" involves having a "teacher" figure around. There
is no system anywhere where you can just drop of the kid at the library and
magic happens.

Take this community, you will find the ones that are good at what they do
aren't just good, because of access to information, but because of the kind of
mentors that have been around them or they have run into in life.

That's really the missing piece in today's internet. Despite all this
information access it's still hit or miss that a kid or an adult will find the
right mentor.

~~~
sharemywin
Here's the exception to prove the rule.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves)

~~~
Kholo
It's a nice feel good story that gets funding. It's not replacing teachers,
mentors and schools anytime soon.

------
blowski
How does one say "hggghghghgghgghggghghg" such that Google Home would
understand it?

~~~
morsch
I suspect you don't. Google didn't understand any of the questions in the
article. This is as much about a child's patience as it is about their
curiosity.

------
659087
This makes me incredibly sad.

Why are we handing massive advertising corporations the keys to our children's
minds?

~~~
jonobacon
You must be fun at parties.

------
rxlim
This kid has a bright future as a human fuzzer. After a few days something
like this would probably happen:

Kid: _OK Google, Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could
not eat it?_

Google Home: _? ?? ???_

Google Home: _Segmentation fault (core dumped)_

Kid: _OK Google, Please initiate bug bounty payout._

------
baxtr
Great blog post, short and quick read. The whole voice and children stuff has
not been worked out properly yet. I believe Mattel is working on some special
child-focused device.

~~~
659087
Advertisers are probably foaming at the mouth thinking of the data mining and
indoctrination possibilities. Today's youth never had a chance.

Imagine growing up and finding out that your parents took away your ability to
decide whether or not you want corporations to have a permanent record of your
entire life?

------
ThomPete
Haha fantastic read. Best part though was that my Google home responded to all
the commands from the video.

------
pjc50
Related: metafilter on needy robots that make you feel guilty.

[http://www.metafilter.com/99661/But-but-is-not-
Johnny-5-aliv...](http://www.metafilter.com/99661/But-but-is-not-
Johnny-5-alive#3472942)

------
iagooar
It makes me so, so angry that people would put a big brother in their homes
VOLUNTARILY!

A device that records you and sends the data to a corporation! In 1984 people
were freakin' forced to have one. In 2017 people WANT to have one.

Sorry for this short rant, but I just struggle with understanding what's wrong
with people these days.

~~~
simplehuman
> A device that records you and sends the data to a corporation! In 1984
> people were freakin' forced to have one. In 2017 people WANT to have one.

As predicted by Brave New world.

~~~
InitialLastName
To tag onto this, my father made my sibling and I read Fahrenheit 451 at one
point before he would buy a flat-panel TV.

------
nicky0
I enjoyed the video with the song.

~~~
imgabe
"wrecking bones" was great

------
jrf6
What a wonderful illustration of a child's boundless curiosity. My five-year-
old asks these sorts of questions constantly, and it's fascinating and
hilarious (and, I confess, sometimes tiresome).

------
Frenchgeek
So how many "why?" loops can it last before going insane?

~~~
Mz
Probably more than most parents.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I wonder how long it'll be before the last person who cares about privacy
dies. I wager within 100 years, and I wager that person is already alive
today.

------
balls187
My 14 month old son works our Amazon Echo.

------
DanBC
> I would love to see the world through his eyes, it must be glorious.

Please please please don't let this be crushed out of him.

~~~
jonobacon
I absolutely promise it won't. I want him to be curious and I want him to be
silly.

