Kids Are Becoming Emotionally Attached to Robots | Robots & Machines - Futurism/The Byte

Today’s toddlers and preschoolers are growing up surrounded by friendly-looking, sometimes humanlike robotic devices and educational tools — a phenomenon that scientists warn could be confusing by Dan Robitzski, Writer at Futurism.

Photo: imjanuary/Victor Tangermann

While young children tend to understand that the robotic helpers all around them aren’t truly alive, The Wall Street Journal reports that toddlers tend to think that the robots’ artificial intelligence is capable of far more than it is — and may even form emotional ties with the bots — a phenomenon that has some researchers concerned...

Breazeal told the WSJ that parents should also be careful not to ascribe genders to robots, no matter how humanlike they look, to remind impressionable children that their toys are merely machines — and to communicate that, regardless of how impressive the AI seems, a mountain of human effort went into developing it.
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Source: Futurism/The Byte