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

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?

Perfect timing given the xkcd from yesterday:

https://xkcd.com/2438/

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.

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.

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.