Kids judge Alexa more human than Roomba: Study
A new study from Duke developmental psychologists asked kids just that, as well as how smart and sensitive they thought the smart speaker Alexa was compared to its floor-dwelling cousin Roomba, an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner.
Four- to eleven-year-olds judged Alexa to have more human-like thoughts and emotions than Roomba. But despite the perceived difference in intelligence, kids felt neither the Roomba nor the Alexa deserve to be yelled at or harmed. That feeling dwindled as kids advanced towards adolescence, however.
The findings appeared online April 10 in the journal Developmental Psychology.
The research was inspired in part by lead author Teresa Flanagan, seeing how Hollywood depicts human-robot interactions in shows like HBO's "Westworld."
"In Westworld and the movie Ex Machina, we see how adults might interact with robots in these very cruel and horrible ways," said Flanagan, a visiting scholar in the department of psychology & neuroscience at Duke. "But how would kids interact with them?"
To find out, Flanagan recruited 127 children aged four to eleven who were visiting a science museum with their families. The kids watched a 20-second clip of each technology, and then were asked a few questions about each device.
Working under the guidance of Tamar Kushnir, PhD., her graduate advisor and a Duke Institute for Brain Sciences faculty member, Flanagan analyzed the survey data and found some mostly reassuring results.
Overall, kids decided that both the Alexa and Roomba probably aren't ticklish and wouldn't feel pain if they got pinched, suggesting they can't feel physical sensations like people do. However, they gave Alexa, but not the Roomba, high marks for mental and emotional capabilities, like being able to
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