[Cyborg] ToyTalk + Barbie

[Eric Boyd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/magazine/barbie-wants-to-get-to-know-your-child.html

Great, long article about a new Barbie which reminds me strongly of The 
Diamond Age (Neil Stephenson).  Article even mentions that book by 
name.  Apparently ToyTalk Barbie has 8,000 lines of Racted dialog and an 
AI engine to make conversation.  It remembers previous conversations and 
key facts and uses them to make new conversations in the future.  I've 
love to talk to one in person...

"What exactly girls will make of Hello Barbie isn’t clear. Research 
shows that children don’t fully believe that artificial-intelligence 
toys are alive in a biological sense. But they also don’t treat them 
simply as devices. Instead they are increasingly comfortable with a 
third ontological category — beings that are less than human but more 
than machines. Turkle, whose upcoming book is titled ‘‘Reclaiming 
Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age,’’ says that we have 
arrived a​t a​ ​‘‘robotic moment’’ — a milestone that is as much about 
cultural acceptance as it is technological achievement. ‘‘It's not that 
we have really invented machines that love us or care about us in any 
way, shape or form,’’ Turkle says, ‘‘but that we are ready to believe 
that they do. We are ready to play their game.’’"

http://www.barbiemedia.com/videos/detail/790.html
http://toytalk.com/

Eric