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When Your Child's Best Friend Is An AI
What would you do if you discover that your young child's best friend is an AI - an artificial intelligence created by some unknown corporate (or other) entity?
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, posed that question in a recent interview.
(Eric Schmidt and your child's AI best friend)
But what happens when your child's best friend is nonhuman - those of you who have kids, you have a 12-year-old 13-year-old how do you feel about that it's coming and coming very quicklyUm that sounds great Um
Clearly you do not have a 13-year-old
I have a 12-y old...
You have a 12-year-old... You're out with their friends and in with the new friend...
Science fiction author Clifford Simak thought about this problem in his 1963 Hugo award-winning novel Way Station. He describes it using an alien technology that conjures up "shadow people" as companions for the lonely operator of the alien transport station:
He had thought of them as shadow people, but that had been just a name he'd thought up for himself, for his own convenience, a handy label that he had tagged them with so that he would have some way of identifying them when he thought of them.But the label had been wrong, for they were not shadowy or ghostlike. To the eyes they were solid and substantial, as real as any people. It was only when you tried to touch them that they were not real-for when you tried to touch them, there was nothing there.
A figment of his mind, he'd thought at first, but now he was not sure. At first they'd come only when he'd called them up, using the knowledge and the techniques that he had acquired in his study of the work done by the thaumaturgists of Alphard XXII. But in recent years he had not called them up. There had been no occasion to. They had anticipated him and come before he could call them up. They sensed his need of them before he knew the need himself. And they were there, waiting for him, to spend an hour or evening.
(Shadow People from 'Way Station' by Clifford Simak)Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...
Simak's character, an Earth man who survived the Civil War and lives an almost eternal life as the master of the galactic transit station on Earth, is lonely enough to make use of the technology, but ultimately realizes the emptiness of the artificial "shadow people".
See also the wide variety of cute robotic pets now under development; they are similar to the device described by Anne McCaffrey in her 1990 novel The Rowan; she calls it Purza the Pukha.
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- Huggable Robotic Bear Companion From MIT
- Huggable Robotic Bear Video
- Paro Robot Seal Helps Grandma
- Auti Interactive Toy For Autistic Children
- MEDi Robot Calms The Nervous Patient
- Qoobo Headless Robotic Therapy Cat Was Anne McCaffrey's Idea
- Cute Teddy Bear Robot Favorite Of Hospitalized Children
- Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/13/2025)
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