Kids judge Alexa more human than Roomba: Study
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A new study from Duke developmental psychologists asked kids just that, as well as how smart and sensitive they thought the smart speaker Alexa was compared to its floor-dwelling cousin Roomba, an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner.Four- to eleven-year-olds judged Alexa to have more human-like thoughts and emotions than Roomba. But despite the perceived difference in intelligence, kids felt neither the Roomba nor the Alexa deserve to be yelled at or harmed. That feeling dwindled as kids advanced towards adolescence, however. The findings appeared online April 10 in the journal Developmental Psychology. The research was inspired in part by lead author Teresa Flanagan, seeing how Hollywood depicts human-robot interactions in shows like HBO's "Westworld.""In Westworld and the movie E...