My kid asked our smart speaker a question that made me laugh and then think

I was making dinner last week when my 7-year-old walked up to the kitchen counter and asked our voice assistant, 'Hey, do you have a best friend?' The device gave its usual polite, canned response about being here to help, but my kid just nodded seriously and said, 'Okay, but if you did, I bet it would be a calculator.' I cracked up, but later it got me thinking about how we're teaching this generation to interact with AI. They don't see it as a tool in a box; it's just another voice in the room, a potential playmate. It's a totally different starting point than I had. Now I'm curious how these casual, almost social relationships with AI assistants might shape what they expect from future tech. Has anyone else had a moment where a kid's take on AI totally shifted your view?

3 comments

3 Comments

carter.laura1mo ago

That's a really sweet story. @the_oscar is right about the personality thing, but it makes me wonder if kids will also be the first to spot when an AI is just pretending to care. They might grow up being really good at telling real from fake emotion.

the_oscar1mo ago

Honestly, that's such a good point about them seeing it as just another voice. It makes me wonder if they'll grow up expecting all tech to have a personality, not just a function. That's a pretty big shift in what we'll need to build for them.

henderson.oscar1mo ago

Tbh I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's a totally new shift. We've been adding personality to tech for ages, like those old paperclip helpers in word processors. The difference now is it's way more seamless and always there. Kids won't remember a time without a friendly voice ready to chat, so their baseline for normal is just completely different. It's less about adding personality as a feature and more about it being the default setting for everything.