EdTechnical
Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the EdTechnical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They’ll be asking questions like - how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this technology, and what’s just speculation? And (importantly!) when we say AI, what are we actually talking about?
EdTechnical
A Teddy Bear That Talks Back?
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In this EdTechnical short, Libby and Owen test a conversational plush toy to understand more about AI-powered toys designed for young children. Recent research from Cambridge shows that preschool-aged children can form rapid emotional connections with social robots like these, even when the responses from the robot are inconsistent.
Children’s experiences with AI toys are shaped by voice and real-time interaction. Could highly responsive, frictionless AI systems in toys influence children’s expectations of human relationships?
Libby and Owen discuss the difference between shared, supervised play and extended solo interaction with the toy, which may be less advisable. As the technology continues to improve, the key challenge becomes how these tools are introduced and used in early childhood environments.
Links:
- BBC Article: AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately, researchers warn
- Cambridge study on AI toys in early childhood
- AI chatbots and the “empathy gap” in children
Join us on social media:
- BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
- Listen to all episodes of Ed-Technical here: https://bold.expert/ed-technical
- Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletter
- Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expert
Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Anabel Altenburg for content production.