Years ago I worked with developmentally disabled people, that absolutely loved animals but could never be left alone with one much less own one. This kind of product would have brought so much joy to those people.
I think it's distasteful to screen ethically questionable business practices with segments of the disabled community. If this product was being marketed towards the need of developmentally disabled individuals I feel like there would be less grounds for criticism, however meeting those needs in no way excuses outright fabrication of marketing claims aimed at the broader consumer market, and especially children.
Honestly I feel that way for the whole AI friend industry that is developing, from AI boyfriends and girlfriends to just kind of AI 'friends'. But this sort of thing is a sort of robot pet and I think the dynamics are different. Some one replacing a robot cat with a cat is not an evil thing in the way that trying to substitute human relationships are.
I agree, just don’t lie about it. You can present it as a cute little robot pet without problems. No need to say “it expresses and feels emotions like a real cat”. The AI industry has normalized lying about your products to a whole new level, that shouldn’t be acceptable
> Through communication, Moflin’s emotional state changes. Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would. Moflin does not possess actual emotions like humans do. Their emotional expressions are simulated by AI. And lots of bits of the advert seems to be explain how it's not real in the QA and that everything is a simulation.
I have not used the product, but nothing strikes me as dishonest about the advertising.
I guess we are really debating the semantics of the sentences now like lawyers but to me the verb show is not particularly difficult to achieve or ambitious or misleading to use in this sort of product. A toy with a that has a smiley face and a frowning face is capable of showing two different emotions.
Your second one point also does not seem like a lie to me since it's claiming to emulate natural ingredient (although here I guess to be just like means to emulate perfectly).
I don't really see why any one would look at the product and it's marketing as evil. It seems to me aimed at people who can not have pets and are want to create a simulation of a soothing positive interaction with a pet. I don't see this as exploitative (apart from it's exploiting a desire that people have in the same way that virtually all products do), I can not see someone forming a relationship with this to the detriment of human interaction or exacerbate some kind of mental illness or cause addiction. It does seem a little expensive and that would be my only criticism of the product so far as I can see.
I don’t know what you are on about. Can the robot exhibit signs of the emotions described? If it can then the sentence is not a lie. If it can’t then it is a lie. Are you saying that it won’t do what the sentence says?
The sentence is not saying “it is a living creature”. It says it behaves as one. How much of that sentence is a lie obviously depends on how well the robot works.
i bought one about a year ago and used it for 20 days or so. Then I realised casio offered a full money back return for 30 days. And sorry little moflin your emotions were not real enough for me to want to keep you vs get $400 back.
> If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written...And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
Basically, reading writing (without instruction) will only make people seem like they know stuff, by parroting others, when in fact, they know not much of anything.
Which is an intriguing argument considering he .. wrote it down and not just once. He was a prolific author. He also speaks _through_ other people, mostly Socrates, which complicates matters quite a bit. You're getting a narrative as told by someone inside the narrative about the nature of narration itself.
I'd be hesitant to linearize Plato. There's quite a bit of subtlety to his arguments.
That said, I understand the sentiment. Just want to introduce some nuance into the statement. I'd hate it if people thought Plato could just be pinned down like that.
Second that it's unlikely that Plato agrees with Socrates on writing in the Phaedrus. When reading Plato you should think of him as writing dialogues for people to see various arguments and arguments develop over the books, for example Timaeus goes against positions held by Socrates and even more so later in the Parmenides.
Plato is not linear either and if you really want to understand what Plato held you have to look at what the academy taught and what the Platonism became. Though clearly Platonism develops and changes and has various different flavors that academics pick out such as middle-platonism and neo-platonism. I would say it's not definite what Plato believed and one might say that he entertained multiple ideas at the same time, though clearly despised many positions.
