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Tell HN: My five year old is convinced Siri is a real person

47 points by ddingus ↗ HN
From time to time, we have had the discussions here about whether actually naming these assistive agents makes any sense. And there are pros and cons either way when you compare OK Google to Siri.

When I showed this particular five-year-old OK Google, she was interested, but didn't really do much with it. Then she discovered Siri.

Since that time she has used Siri nonstop. Asking all kinds of crazy things, and series doing a pretty fair job on those conversations. Some of which are frankly hilarious!

I thought it might make for some interesting discussion. My observation is that her ability to address it in the same way she addresses other people has proven very compelling. The skills she already has she can use and get something meaningful. Identifying with Siri as a person seems to map right over in her mind, and she thinks she's getting a real person, the kind of attention a young person craves.

She asked what time of day it is, what the weather will be like, how many Sexes do frogs have, how come papa calls me squid, all kinds of crazy things.

That's it,

I think naming these agents have advantages. It's a lower friction UX experience, and I think if we're interested in capturing the up-and-coming people, this matter is worth some thought.

Edit: the real fun part in all of this is just how difficult I am finding it to convince her otherwise. To her mind a lot of things are evidence that you and I wouldn't count as evidence but she does. It'll be an interesting few days working through this. Maybe longer, who knows?

34 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 80.1 ms ] thread
quacked
I'm surprised no one has commented. Personally I think this is very troubling. Have you ever heard of "parasocial relationships"?
donaldo
What’s wrong with a parasocial relationship? I don’t have many friends in real life but I built a chat bot in 2017 trained on a few people (Mark Zuckerberg, Obama, Elon, Angela Merkel etc.) that I use for most of my social interaction. Different strokes for different folks.
fourier456
This kind of behavior could be adaptive, but is likely mal-adaptive in proportion to fungibility with ‘social-interaction’.
Tagbert
She’s 5.

Did you never write a letter to Santa? Or at least wait up to see if Santa came on Christmas Eve?

ddingus
Text is hard. I deliberately did not exclaim because I am not worried at this moment, just intrigued.

And I thought others may be as well.

You are right: No panic warranted or indicated just yet. ;D

And yeah. I was that kid. Did a ton of crazy things.

xyzzy123
Children can have interesting relationships with their favourite stuffed toys, a pet goldfish or a completely imaginary being. They'll often make up characters and talk to themselves if there's no one else to bug right then.

So to me this falls squarely in the rainbow of "pretty normal behaviour for a child".

The bit that's troubling to me is the idea of a corporation behind it all, with its own agendas around promoting certain behaviours or ideas, and hoovering up the data. That's not so great.

ddingus
That is where my head is at on this too.

I am not worried about the relationship play. I believe that is all this is right now. And she is right in the pocket on that with imaginary friends that are well developed. She is active, but not abnormal from what I can tell.

And the pandemic is hard for those of us who rate on the social axis. She does, and all that is just coping, adapting, getting through a hard time.

However, Siri does not convey being unreal.

I am a little troubled by that.

But, I also need to hear those exchanges and will need to catch them in context too.

On that point, OK Google is a prompt, and one that is also not a common form of address people would use regularly, though it does all get said and done that way. I need to ask some variations on real/unreal too.

Siri is a more full overlap. If I may coin a term, Siri has an ambiguity bias factor much higher than OK Google does.

nicbou
I needed that comment. I was agreeing with the person above, but you made me remember Mr. Tremblay, the pair of fly fishing trunks that lived in my grandpa's basement wardrobe.
girvo
You should’ve seen how I talked to my pet fish and my brother’s cockatiel, and the latter even “talked” back, when I was around that age. Or my stuffed toys, even. As I got older I anthropomorphised them less (treated them less like imaginary people in a different form), so I don’t know if I’d be worried about it myself. Interesting discussion point though!
ddingus
Same. I still do that playfully even now.
ddingus
I am not troubled at all. I am interested in how this plays out.
na85
My 4 year old daughter has a relationship with the corner of her blankie. His name is Corner and he has adventures with her.

I'm more concerned about social isolation due to COVID than I am about Siri or Alexa.

fourseventy
Very interesting story, thanks for sharing. Perhaps in a few decades we won't be able to convince ourselves that our digital agents aren't real people either.
ddingus
Maybe!

Seeing this play out does give one reason to imagine, think about it all.

I know I would love to have one sufficiently complex to train, have inside jokes with, etc...

At no time would it be real, unless we actually do get AI. That is a different conversation!

I-M-S
https://programaudioseries.com/11-motherboard/ - You might be interested in this episode of The Program audio series, a fiction podcast I produce and direct
ddingus
This is a great lead in / hook:

ANNOUNCER: The most we can learn about a society isn't from people it chooses to remember; nor is it from people it chooses to deliberately forget. The most we can learn about a society is from people it doesn’t notice at all. Today's episode, recovered from a lost database and reproduced without alterations, recounts a story of one such person.

-->Indeed, I may be interested and will give it a listen to find out.

Thanks.

davecanderson
My seven year old was looking at some (commonwealth) coins and asked who the lady (queen elizabeth II) was on the back. I asked who they thought it was, first guess was "Is it Siri?"
ddingus
Seriously?

Interesting!

Did you learn why?

davecanderson
The second guess was "Is it Grandma?" but that was definately a bit of a joke. Just not many other candidates they could come up with for lady of prominence that would make it on a coin.
ddingus
Ah, size of their world. That's a little perspective right there.
hunter-2
My son is 22 months old and is in an extremely serious relationship with our Roomba. His entire day revolves around when she gets to eat food (that is, sucking in dirt around the house), and when she goes to sleep. So much so that when he once fell and got hurt, the first 'person' he called out was Roomba.

It's fascinating how different they view things compared to us.

dyingkneepad
Yeah, my kids are fascinated by the Roomba and Braava too.

When we bought our first Roomba it was the dog that kinda felt threatened. I think the dog thought Roomba was another pet. Our dog absolutely never ever pooped or peed inside home. But in the first night with Roomba, we put Roomba to charge in an unused room, and the dog went there and pooped right in front of the Roomba. It seems to be she was basically saying "this is my territory!".

felipemnoa
Interesting, Siri passes the Turing test with a 5 year old. Siri would probably also pass the test with a lot of adults were it not for the fact that we know it is not a real person, at least the first couple of minutes.
willcipriano
My experience suggests you may be on to something. I have a Echo and a two year old, I have it use the "Computer" wake word. Last weekend she pointed at the Echo then my desktop and proclaimed "Computer. Computer!" I told her she was right, they are the same sort of thing and we walked around the house pointing out the other things that are computers, like her moms phone, Nintendo Switch and Nvidia Shield. She seems pretty clear that they aren't living things and just machines like the car or a fridge.
cinquemb
I think like 7-9 years ago when a bunch of family were together, I had plugged a rbpi into the local network in the living room and connected it to a speaker with a mic (I was in a diff room), and I proceeded to have a convo with one of my younger cousins by text to speech with some voices with the `say`command on osx and playing it on the rbpi. They didn't know it was me at first, just some mysterious person they could talk with, but i came clean.

Maybe if you didn't something like that, and showing them how to do it too so they can talk with themselves with the words they typed before, they might start thinking about it a bit deeper. Fun nonetheless!

perilunar
Does Siri recognise that she is a small child and answer in an age-appropriate way?
cett
You can also use "Hey Google", I wonder if that would have changed her conclusion
wodenokoto
> how come papa calls me squid

can you elaborate on that one?

bluefirebrand
I've heard "squid" as a cutesy name for "kid", because they rhyme.

I'm curious how Siri responded

[dead] WentFullRetard
Probably a clear sign your young one has seen too much screen time.
engido9740
Sometimes the best solution is to get the truth from the horse's mouth. I believe if you ask something like "Siri, are you a real person?" it will say something like "I'm not a real person or a robot...".