My kid asked if our smart speaker was lonely and it broke my brain for a minute

I was setting up a new voice model for a project and my 5 year old heard it talking back to me. He looked at the speaker and asked, 'Does it get sad when you turn it off?' I had to stop and really think about how we talk to these things. Do you think giving AI a friendly voice makes us treat it like a person too much?

2 comments

2 Comments

cooper.max24d ago

What if treating AI like a person is actually a good thing? It makes us more polite and careful, even if we know it's just code. That habit of saying please and thank you to a speaker might spill over into how we talk to real people. Maybe giving it a friendly voice just makes tech less cold and easier to use. Isn't it better to have kids learn kindness toward a machine than to yell at it? The real problem isn't us being too nice, it's forgetting where to draw the line.

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lily_stone7624d ago

Completely agree with this take. I've noticed my own tone stays calmer when I'm polite to my smart speaker, even on frustrating days. That good habit really does carry over to real conversations.