Machines as best friends

i-Cybie, robotic dog

I was watching an advertisement about some toys for babies at the age when they are just starting to crawl around and walk. The toys, one was a horse the child could ride and the other was a set of smaller toys combined into one set, respond to things that the children do. When certain buttons are hit, a message of encouragement is played. When certain other things are selected, they get a few words of explanation - like when a wheel is flipped over to a picture of a smiling Sun, the happy voice says, "It's a sunny day!" When the child rides the horse faster, clopping sounds like a horse trotting will play. It all sounds fun. I wonder what would happen if we took this to the extreme and older children started to be taught by machines. Would it get to the point where children (and later, as they grow up, adults) would prefer the company of machines because they react more reasonably? You don't have to worry about a machine having a bad day. And, probably, the machine wouldn't say anything bad about what you were doing. It would just always encourage you. Machines could be the perfect companion if they were complex enough.

I already see this happening in my own life. I turned on the Spelling Check for this blog entry and it gently told me which words were probably misspelled and what possible correct spelling might be. It didn't tell me I was stupid. No one had to know that I misspelled "advertisement" the first time (using a 'z' instead the 's'). Is this part of our problem with human relationships? Married folks bristle when their spouse disagrees with them. Workers react poorly when given a bad review by their boss.Friends fall out with friends when they don't agree about something. Have we all gotten a little too sensitive? Are we ready to replace our dogs with cyber dogs because we don't have to take them for walks and they don't need to be house broken? The picture above is from Wikipedia and the article about this particular machine friend is from this article at Wikipedia.

I'm an electronics engineer and I should be happy about all this. I will admit that I'm impressed with what the toy makers have been able to do to produce these things and keep the price reasonable. And their little toys are not going to turn these children into adults who cannot cope with the vagaries of human relationships. But it still worries me. I know people who prefer to text their friends instead of visiting them and having a discussion with. The friends might disagree with them. Better to go home and have a nice discussion with an android friend who will tell you that you're the smartest person they know. I hope and pray this isn't the way we are headed.