<story><title>Robot Dad</title><url>https://blog.untrod.com/2023/11/robot-dad.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hm-nah</author><text>This is a wild concept to wrestle with. Questions that arise…&lt;p&gt;- What are the ramifications of a child interacting with the voice of their dad, through a computer interface?&lt;p&gt;- What happens if the child interacts MORE with robodad than with actualdad?&lt;p&gt;- How does the child attribute the things they’ve “learned” from their now, robo, dad?&lt;p&gt;- Is this an offshoot of how the TV was the new babysitter in the decades after it came out? “Go ask robodad”.&lt;p&gt;- What happens when the child reconciles what robodad says with what actual dad says? “But robodad says…”.&lt;p&gt;- How will the child remember which “dad” shared which “wonderful piece of advice”? This is treading on shaky ground to me. At a time where many families in the western world (everywhere?) are dealing with digital distractions, social media mental disease, and general lack of cohesion… and now MITM AI between a parent and a child… whooo… idk.&lt;p&gt;- How will actualdad feel in 1year, 2years, 5years of this “tool” “augmenting” his parenting?&lt;p&gt;- How will actualmom feel about the child interacting with this thing? How could this make her feel?&lt;p&gt;Pretty crazy how this poster anthropomorphized AI and placed it directly between one of the most sacred communication paths.&lt;p&gt;How many dads are going take this project as a “todo” and follow suite?&lt;p&gt;I hope others are thinking about these questions and I’m not being a wet blanket.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>numlocked</author><text>(OP here). In practice my stress level about this (for me and my family) is about zero. Eight year olds are quite smart; he knows exactly what is going on here and finds it entertaining. Real dad’s presence isn’t going anywhere. It’s largely a fun gimmick and treated as such. And if it started getting weird, I’d just turn it off.&lt;p&gt;Now, as the tech improves I think this line of thinking is going to be a legitimate concern - I don’t think you are being a wet blanket. But at its current level, it’s pretty transparently a half-baked computer program, and treated as such by my kid.</text></comment>
<story><title>Robot Dad</title><url>https://blog.untrod.com/2023/11/robot-dad.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hm-nah</author><text>This is a wild concept to wrestle with. Questions that arise…&lt;p&gt;- What are the ramifications of a child interacting with the voice of their dad, through a computer interface?&lt;p&gt;- What happens if the child interacts MORE with robodad than with actualdad?&lt;p&gt;- How does the child attribute the things they’ve “learned” from their now, robo, dad?&lt;p&gt;- Is this an offshoot of how the TV was the new babysitter in the decades after it came out? “Go ask robodad”.&lt;p&gt;- What happens when the child reconciles what robodad says with what actual dad says? “But robodad says…”.&lt;p&gt;- How will the child remember which “dad” shared which “wonderful piece of advice”? This is treading on shaky ground to me. At a time where many families in the western world (everywhere?) are dealing with digital distractions, social media mental disease, and general lack of cohesion… and now MITM AI between a parent and a child… whooo… idk.&lt;p&gt;- How will actualdad feel in 1year, 2years, 5years of this “tool” “augmenting” his parenting?&lt;p&gt;- How will actualmom feel about the child interacting with this thing? How could this make her feel?&lt;p&gt;Pretty crazy how this poster anthropomorphized AI and placed it directly between one of the most sacred communication paths.&lt;p&gt;How many dads are going take this project as a “todo” and follow suite?&lt;p&gt;I hope others are thinking about these questions and I’m not being a wet blanket.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_other</author><text>&amp;gt; I hope others are thinking about these questions and I’m not being a wet blanket.&lt;p&gt;I wasn&amp;#x27;t, specifically. But they feel like specialisations or subclasses of the general unease I feel about a lot of our contemporary tech.&lt;p&gt;As an example: I&amp;#x27;ve grown to hate most social tech, mainly because of the tracking. But the mental image I used to get me off it was to imagine Zuck sitting in on all my conversations, silently taking notes. You wouldn&amp;#x27;t tolerate that, even if it wasn&amp;#x27;t Zuck. And yet we do.&lt;p&gt;Many of us are willing to remove the human connection, the effort to learn, the struggle to express from our day to day lives. It&amp;#x27;s the learning and struggle that gives extra value to the encounters we have and the situations we make. To me, using a lot of this technology feels like giving away something of what makes life worth living. (I understand the convenience; I get that &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s just a tool&amp;quot;, I use tools all the time, I&amp;#x27;m willing to engage with this new stuff to learn more about it, but slowly).&lt;p&gt;The worst is that we&amp;#x27;re giving that effort, that learning, that struggle (and its impact on us) to unaccountable entities which can bypass the social contracts we would normally make with one another, and which can scale up profit from that donation, thereby also devaluing our own labours and experiences to enrich a small few. Open source mitigates some of that, but most users would still be giving up their own embodiment of their creative acts.</text></comment>