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I’ll never forget my first online account. I was in fourth grade when my friends told me about AIM instant messaging. Having grown up in a house with no other kids my age in walking distance, opportunities to talk to my friends outside of school during the week were highly limited if those friends were not on my baseball team. Naturally, I loved AIM and spent hours online chatting with my friends. However, there were times when I would get online to find that none of my friends were on at that time, and that’s when I discovered Smarterchild.
Conversations with Smarterchild were interesting (especially to a bored 10-year-old) because of how human it sounded some times, and how clearly artificial it sounded most times. Either way, it usually made me laugh for a bit until I got bored and signed off. It entertained me, but never for longer than 10-15 minutes.
In his book The Industries of the Future, Alec Ross explains how the need for more eldercare in an aging population is driving Asian robotics companies to develop robots that can take care of grandma and grandpa. While such firms have successfully created robots that can perform a multitude of tasks for their dependents, developers are still struggling to create robots that can connect on an emotional level. However, as the AI that powers these robots advances, they will learn more quickly than ever, and will soon be able to mimic human emotions.
Posted from DIG101 Blog by Noah R.