If running out of 60 mins turns the device into a brick, that’s an F-. If it can be restored with a flat purchase, that’s a B. If it first degrades gracefully into a toy with a bunch of pre-loaded audio clips, that’s a big ol’ A+ from me.
Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
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Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better would be something along the lines of "You were only so good this year, and the time is up. If you want to talk more, you need to earn more good points with your mom and dad!" No idea how you'd monetize that, though.
With 'in-app' purchases of course: 100 brownie points now only $10, hurry this offer won't last . Somehow this device fits well with the Don't be a sucker video linked to elsewhere on this here site [1]. Good advice, valid in many contexts. Don't. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573025
Nah - I want something that one can monetize and actually makes the kids be good (somehow).
Perhaps a parent commitment that if the kids earn X many goodie (goody?) points, then the CC is charged, and let the parent control how they earn those X points.
Gamifying good behavior has been shown to be pretty effective with kids. See Kadzin.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#43Am I the only one that thinks this is very unwholesome? Giving a simulacrum of human interaction to children who are presumably waay to young to understand [1] that they're talking to a novelty device. It's possible I'm being a luddite but then again perhaps people really need to stop trying to achieve 100% completion in turning Black Mirror episodes into reality. [1] Which even many adults apparently don't understan…
On one hand, I totally get where you are coming from and feel similarly. On the other hand, we take our kids to the mall and tell them that lowly paid actor is _really_ Santa and he _really_ wants to hear what they want, and he totally isn't just counting down the minutes to his next smoke break. That doesn't strike me as an "authentic" human interaction so I'm ambivalent.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#44Am I the only one that thinks this is very unwholesome? Giving a simulacrum of human interaction to children who are presumably waay to young to understand [1] that they're talking to a novelty device. It's possible I'm being a luddite but then again perhaps people really need to stop trying to achieve 100% completion in turning Black Mirror episodes into reality. [1] Which even many adults apparently don't understan…
Don’t worry, this is just the version for the proles, the higher caste kids will have actual humans playing Santa on the other end of their phones.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#45How do you ensure 'safety' for kids talking to an LLM?
With 60 minutes of talk time included, I kind of get the impression this isn't designed so that you can hand it to your kid and let them spend the day talking to Santa. I'm assuming the idea is that they do this in lieu of writing to Santa, and you would supervise the experience. Also, if your eight year old is trying to jailbreak Santa, you might have bigger issues to worry about.
It says you can purchase additional minutes so there is an edge case for kids to use this too much.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#46I can’t help feeling this technology will end up more widely deployed for a related but less wholesome application.
I might be stupid but what are you referring to?
Use your imagination a little; I'm sure you can come up with several variants that are an even viler and more exploitative/manipulative idea than the product as it stands.
Let your kid call a crude simulacrum of dead relatives, let religious folks call a crude simulacrum of $DEITY, make an "adult" version that crudely simulates a phone-sex hotline (charge extra to recharge the minutes on that one obviously), etc, etc.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#47If running out of 60 mins turns the device into a brick, that’s an F-. If it can be restored with a flat purchase, that’s a B. If it first degrades gracefully into a toy with a bunch of pre-loaded audio clips, that’s a big ol’ A+ from me.
Their website says you can buy more minutes. I wouldn't count on the servers being up for multiple years though.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#48Cool idea, but I feel bad for Santa - yet another job lost due to AI.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#49Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#50This is such a fun use of AI! Congratulations. If you buy the walmart version, can you connect it to your own pion server?
I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing.
I have written implementations target at specific boards. So go and buy one of these and boom stick it in anything you want. I have done this for my kids and have a bunch of different characters. My favorite is my daughter has a toy that pretends to be 'the ocean' it is so funny and existential.
* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-respeaker-li...
* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-esp32-s3-box...
I really loved the Sonatino[0], but can't get it anymore :(
If you start building something shoot me an email and would love to help! I want to unblock/enable this space so bad, I think these kinds of projects are just so delightful :)