Falling firmly into the category of, "I have no idea if I agree with this or not but it was interesting."
Originally shared by Mike Elgan
Parents: Don't teach your kids to be polite to machines
Google rolled out "pretty please" this week, an optional feature for Google Assistant appliances that makes kids say "please" and "thank you" when talking to the software.
This is a toxic trend. Here's why:
https://elgan.com/blog/parents-dont-teach-kids-to-be-polite-to-machines
#GoogleAssistant #prettyplease
Shots fired in the machines/humans war, which machines BTW will inevitably win, if it ever happens.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it happens it will be because we keep predicting it.
I've seen kids vent abuse at machines. I'm told that such venting in fact does not "release a pressure valve" or any such mechanistic metaphor, making the kids kinder to other people afterwards - instead it reinforces abusive habits, so that outbursts of rage tend to multiply, becoming part of the regular repertoire of behaviours. What we need to do is invent a register of speech suitable for dealing with machines in polite company, much like "hello" was invented to deal with the telephone. And we need to be prepared for the idea that one day machines might in fact have feelings, or be able to mimic them so closely that it's a philosophical question whether they do or not.
After all, it's a philosophical question whether other people have feelings or not.
There are some machines it's a really good idea to obey. The machine which tells you when it's safe to cross the road. The machine that warns you the cooker hob is hot, or even just the machine that tells you that your cake is cooked and it's time to take it out of the oven. Kids should learn to obey those machines.
ReplyDeleteIn our house people absent-mindedly thank AI assistants all the time. At worst it's not harming anyone and at best it reinforces the same behaviours when talking to human assistants.
I've always liked the line in one of Neal Stephenson's books - "A gentleman is someone who always says thank-you to their robot"
I've decided I don't agree with the article after all. I quite like saying "thank you" to the Google assistant and getting a polite "you're welcome" back doesn't make me a slave to the tyranny of a simulated personality. Children make-believe with their toys and act politely to them, but they don't grow up believing that they must Obey The Bear, nor does it stop them from being arseholes to actual people.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a good idea, but every 17th day the training needs to switch so that the children need to use inventive cursing to get the device to carry out their bidding.
ReplyDeleteThe training should reflect the real world, after all... =-)
I recall, many years ago when every office worker having a computer on their desk was becoming the norm, reading an study that suggested the lack of human-style interaction was becoming one of the major source of stress: when a person makes what we think is a mistake or doesn't respond, we instinctively seek a more productive interaction by changing approach; we only become angry when we've exhausted other options (which is why someone cutting us off while driving is more annoying than someone actually walking into us: we can interact in the second case); computers have enough of an interface that we unconsciously consider them capable of interaction rather than pure object, but don't have the facility to respond to nuance that a human does, so when they don't do what we want, most people unconsciously straight to "this person could help but isn't".
ReplyDeleteSo, whether or not politeness to machines is a good thing, there is a potential that the development will feed into the wider issue of a more nuanced interface, making our interactions less stress-inducing.
tThere is nothing more perfectly depraved than a machine.
ReplyDelete