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Children, Robots and... the Parental Role

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Abstract

The raison d’être of this article is that many a spry-eyed analyst of the works in intelligent computing and robotics fail to see the essential concerning applications development, that of expressing their ultimate goal. Alternatively, they fail to state it suitably for the lesser-informed public eye. The author does not claim to be able to remedy this. Instead, the visionary investigation offered couples learning and computing with other related fields as part of a larger spectre to fully simulate people in their embodied image. For the first time, the social roles attributed to the technical objects produced are questioned, and so with a humorous illustration.

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Notes

  1. I treat these ‘loaded’ questions elsewhere with Kraemer, cf. Schmidt and Kraemer (2006). Cf. also: Schmidt (2004).

  2. K.S. Lashley wrote about this in “Structural variation in the nervous system in relation to behaviour” in Psychological Review, 54, as did N. Tinbergen in The Study of Instinct, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cf. the sub-section entitled "The Evolution of Behaviour" in Milner (1999, pp. 6–7).

  3. Cf. Weng et al. (2001, pp. 599–600).

  4. Cf. Scassellati (2001).

  5. Cf. ibidem p. 159.

  6. After exposing a version of the Asimovian laws of robotics, he states the following: “while speech input is still imperfect, the robot must make this clear [...]”. He them gives the maxims the first of which is: “Don't have flawless, complex speech output at a level far more sophisticated than can be understood. If the robot wants people to realise it has imperfect understanding of language, it should exhibit these imperfections in the way it speaks. (If a foreign speaking person could speak fluent English but only understand pidgin speech, the more it spoke flawlessly, the less other people would understand the need to speak in pidgin)”. Cf. Norman (2001).

  7. Cf. Zlatev (2001), “The epigenesis of meaning in human beings, and possibly in robots”. Minds and Machines, 11, Kluwer.

  8. Cf. Scassellati (2001, p. 19).

  9. Cf. Bourdieu, P., (1982).

  10. Milner (1999), Ibidem, p. 7.

  11. Cf. Schmidt (2006). “A relational stance in the philosophy of artificial intelligence”. In Magnani L. (Ed.), Computing and philosophy.

  12. Cf. Watanabe (2002, pp. 430–435).

  13. Cf. Dautenhahn (1997, pp. 33–43).

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  1. Le Mans University, 52 rue des Docteurs Calmette et Guérin, BP 2045, Laval Cedex 09, 53020, France

    Colin T. A. Schmidt

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Schmidt, C.T.A. Children, Robots and... the Parental Role. Minds & Machines 17, 273–286 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-007-9069-z

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