These ideas reflect the intersection of two thought streams: 1) the desire for an operating system that keeps my computer updated, automatically handles all new software (and removal of old), transparently moves to new hardware, handles web access seamlessly, and so forth, and 2) reading Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. The first comes out of my experience of wrangling with my various Macs ever since my first on, in 1984 – see this account of my computing history, Personal Observations on Entering an Age of Computing Machines and my posts on Facebook or Freedom. Getting things to work is tricky and often time-consuming. The operating system should function as an assistant responsive to my verbal commands. On the second, the book is about a young girl who is gifted an interactive book at an early and which acts as her tutor. Run those two streams of thoughts together and you come up with the idea of a Personal Robot Companion that stays with you for life.
Note: This seed was planted here: First thoughts on the implications of GPT-3 [here be dragons, we're swimming and flying with them].
I’ve scribbled some quick notes:
At a suitable age a young child will be presented with their PRC (Personal Robot Companion). At the moment I’m thinking this should happen around the time of their third birthday. By this time the child has plenty of experience getting around physically and is getting better with speaking. They will have seen other kids with their PRCs and no doubt have interacted with them. They’ll know that, when the time comes, they’ll be getting one too.
(Though, come to think of it, perhaps the robot incarnation is suitable for a child up to adolescence, but then much of the functionality is subsumed in a (mere) personal computer and its various satellites.)
Why not give them a choice of PRCs? At this point I have no idea what 1st-level PRCs will be like, but there will be differences, differences in appearance, and probably differences in behavioral style. Let the child play with some, get a feel for them. Perhaps pick one out.
Then, on their third birthday, they are presented with their PRC in a special ceremony. They’ll get to name their PRC. That name will be encoded in the PRC as will the child’s name, too.
What will child and PRC do? I don’t know. It depends. The PRC will be a tutor, but also a companion and helper. The child will take care of the PRC, just like it takes care of its own ordinary toys. The PRC will have a memory so that it remembers what it has done with the child, and, for that matter, what it has done otherwise. Children will have games that they play with one another and their PRCs. The PRC will be the child’s gateway to the internet and such. What’s a 3-year-old do on the internet? Will it be the PRC that protects the child on the internet as well? And so forth and so on.
The child is learning and growing. The PRC is learning too. Some of that really IS learning, with and from the child. But some of that is likely to be downloads from some repository of such things. But the PRC is not going to grow, physically. We haven’t figured that out yet. But maybe in a future with nanotech and hybrid biotech... Will the child be accompanied by the PRC all the time? That doesn’t make sense.
When and why will the child interact with their PRC? When children are interacting with one another, how will the PRCs function. Will they interact with one another as well? For that matter, will PRCs have interactions among themselves independently of their interactions with their children? Just what kind of thing are these PRCs? How are they integrated into society?
At some point the child will have become too large for its PRC companion. The PRC body will have to be replaced. The child has another choice to make, and another ceremony. In the ceremony the child will transfer the ‘soul’ or ‘ghost’ (to borrow a term from Ghost in the Shell) from the old PRC to the new one, a level-2. The new PRC will become animated. And the old, what happens to it? Is it buried, cremated, stored away, put on display? Who knows? Maybe it’s up to the child and family.
Life goes on with PRC2. The child and the PRC growing together and shaping one another. As the child nears adolescence it will be time for a level-3 PRC. Another choice, another ceremony. How much leeway will the child have in the design of their PRC3?
We probably need at least one more PRC, for early adulthood. Or we dispense with the robot at this point and embody the appropriate functionality in a computer? Once the young adult has bonded with their PRC4 size won’t be an issue. But perhaps physical style will be. Maybe in such a world, adults in middle age go on a quest for a year or three and one aspect of the quest is crafting their next PRC. No, that won’t have to design one from top to bottom, no one would have the skills for that, but there will be choices to be made.
And so forth. So much to think about.
Kinds of issues to consider more fully:
- Technical feasibility and requirements
- Social interaction & affective robotics
- Attachment and ritual
- PRC life cycle
- Legal responsibility
- Where do these PRCs come from and who owns what?
More later.
The early PRCs could be thought of as a"big sister", "big brother" or a twin of the child. Or even a "Mr. French"- type character (you & I are both old enough to remember "Mr. French" (played by the late Sebastian Cabot).
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