3/6/9/12 is also about protecting our children from smart speakers and other chatbots
A chatbot is a robot that talks. The term was created from the English word “chat”, meaning to talk, and the suffix “bot”, short for “robot”. The simplest chatbot today is a smart speaker such as Alexa: it obeys voice requests such as turning on the television or giving the weather. One step up is a conversational robot such as Siri, with which you can have rudimentary conversations.
These machines are still very basic, but they will improve very quickly and, by freeing up our hands, they will be of great service to us. The problem is that, to be sure of selling them better, Google and Amazon had the idea of presenting them as a virtuous alternative to screens: “Parents, experts tell you that screens are not for your young children. Buy them a smart speaker instead!”
Yet every criticism that can be made of screens applies in exactly the same way to these machines: they do not encourage exchanges of words or facial expressions, they keep the child still and deprive them of the chance to exercise their motor skills, and they hold their attention at every moment so that they do not learn to concentrate on their own initiative on tasks that interest them. On top of that, these machines constantly capture everything said around them and pass it on to their manufacturer!
It goes without saying that we will need to be vigilant. That is why, having proposed in 2008 the milestones “3/6/9/12, to tame screens and grow up”, I am proposing in 2020 the milestones “3/6/9/12, to protect our children from chatbots”.
- No digital tools before the age of three.
Or only for “video calls”, to talk to parents or distant friends, or else for accompanied use, in short periods, and for the sole pleasure of playing together.
- No smart speakers before the age of six.
Before that age, the child risks treating what their father, mother or speaker says in the same way. Moreover, they are not able to understand the logic of the machine capturing what they say to it.
- No conversational robots before the age of nine.
It would always agree with your child and would hinder their learning of the rules of social play. Indeed, learning from disagreement is the most formative thing at this age. By contrast, simple “toy robots”, such as programmable robots for children, which lack this “conversational” or companion side, are welcome for teaching children to programme.
- No companion robots before the age of 12.
The machine could take the place of a companion for your child. That would be a disaster, because their programme is designed to build a double of its user, so that the user risks quickly going round in circles without even noticing, talking to a machine that sends back what they said earlier, and which they have of course forgotten!
So let’s not wait!
Let’s apply the “3/6/9/12 milestones for chatbots” from today.
Serge Tisseron is a psychiatrist, holds a doctorate in psychology with accreditation to supervise research, is a member of the Académie des technologies, and is an associate researcher at Université de Paris (CRPMS).
