How are children forming intimate relationships with an artificial intelligence?

Project and article by Weixinyue Peng and Luqian Wang

We are in a time when living with “smart” things isn’t a new anymore. While adults rely on their phone 24/7, children are spending more time with these AI powered social-bots. This draws a lot of concerns of how kids perceive these technologies, impact of developing relationships with them and most importantly, if children were to form any emotional relationship with social-bots (AI toy robots), how can this relationship be balanced?

To unpack this question, we started looking into the current formation of Children-AI relationships through 2 rounds scanning. Initially, we asked parents about the tone children are using when they speak to voice assistants and observe a case where their child speaks to an AI. From the feedback, we found children repeating keywords from speeches by Siri, and girls showing a tendency to alter or raise their voice when they speak, whereas boys tend to speak in their normal tone. These findings hint at a learning pattern of children in the interaction with AI assistants and a deliberate manner of speech. Then, we collected, analyzed and categorized videos from Youtube and RED featuring children using Siri, Alexa and Xiaodu. These videos show children tend to believe that these technologies are actually living, e.g. trying to get access to an iPad through telling a lie to SIRI, or asking “Did you miss me when I was in kindergarten?”

Through our scan we can also see a subtle increase in frequency of use. The future of the children-AI relationship remains yet unsure — for duration and power hierarchies formation. We believe such a relationship depends heavily on the technological ability and experience these assistants have, and thus predicted 3 models of simulations that will be guiding our further research: blending, disposal and reciprocal growth.