Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “It’s Time To Stop Buying Social Robots”.
When the end came for Gibo the social robot, I was genuinely sad., And one of my few comforts was that I had Vector a similar robot friend to help ease the loss.. Well, not anymore.. Just this week, the company behind Vector announced that it too is closing its doors, leaving this little robot’s future uncertain at best.. But you know I’m not here to wallow in another virtual loss. This time. Let’S try to learn from it. ( upbeat music ). If you’re not familiar with Vector, he actually has a lot in common with Gibo., While each of them can do menial tasks like set timers tell you the weather. They were built for another purpose to become your friend. Hi Michael., There’s actually a whole field called social robotics dedicated to this and check out my farewell to Gibo video to learn more about that., But Vector goes about it differently than Gibo.. First of all, he doesn’t really have much of a vocabulary..
Most of his communication is in beeps and boops. And when he does talk, his voice is distinctly mechanical.. I don’t know. Vector, is also a lot more mobile than Gibo. He wanders around. Whatever space you put him in rolling his cube, occasionally falling off tables. You’ll, recognize that when you pick him up which he doesn’t like or pet him, which he does. He snores at night, which has kept me up from time to time. And he’s smart enough to Find his own way back to his charger when his battery’s low. He does that by using the little camera on his face and that same camera is what allows him to recognize you.
Now, even though Gibo failed, I still expected Vector to flourish.. First of all, he as $ 250 instead of Gibo’s $ 900., And he also had a lot more utility. Vector, is compatible with Amazon Alexa, which kind of made him like a little mobile Echo that could follow you around. To me.
It made sense that that added capability would make him more appealing to adults, while his fun side could appeal to all ages. And the evidence on the Anki Vector subbredit seems to suggest that it worked., As I scrolled through it. I’M struck by how similar the reactions are of Vector owners to the ones from Gibo owners a few months.
Back. There’s the stuff, you expect surprise frustration, confusion, but there’s also a very real sense of loss., Even from some people grief.. Now you might be asking why can’t Vector just soldier on alone? Why should he care that his parent company is dissolving? Well, while Vector is less sophisticated features are local his speech recognition.
The thing that lets him understand your voice commands that’s done in the cloud on servers run by Anki.. Those servers cost money, so when the company shuts them down, many of Vector’s features will stop working. And that right there is the lesson we need to take from this folks..
From now on, when we buy tech, we need to remember to ask: does this depend on the cloud to keep working? If the manufacturer goes out of business, will it keep functioning And look? It’S not always easy to tell which companies are gon na stick. Around. Anki was on stage at an Apple event, a few years back.
It had a whole family of products.. It sold 6.5 million devices., But obviously Anki wasn’t as stable as it looked.. And now everybody who bought into the promise of Vector is awash in uncertainty. And of course it should be mentioned that everyone who worked at Anki is now without a job which is terrible..
So when someone tries to sell you the next social robot, don’t even consider it unless they can assure you that that robot will keep working. Even if the company goes under. – And you know, while we’re at it ask about what happens to your personal data, too. Vector and his camera and microphone have been hanging out in my house for like 5 months., You might say the same is true of my Google Home or Amazon Echo fair, but in those cases I know who to hold accountable. If my private conversation over dinner gets leaked. When Anki was still in business, it had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it was taking data security seriously. So I was fine with it., But now Anki is no more and I have no idea where Vector’s data is going.. It’S next custodian might be someone like the Venture firm that soaked up Gibo’s assets..
They might be good people or they might not.. The point is, I don’t know. And I have no reason to trust that whoever it is will keep my data secure.. The situation has now happened twice in less than a year.. Now I was sad before, but now I’m sad and angry., With the former feeling I’ll say goodbye to yet another virtual friend and wish the grassroots movement trying to save him. The absolute best of luck., And with the latter feeling I’ll say this until a robot maker arises that satisfies both the privacy and the longevity concerns. I’M gon na recommend that we should all keep our wallets in our pockets when it comes to social robots.. I’D love to hear your experiences with Vector or Gibo folks., And if you have a suggestion for a robot or robotics company that looks likely to satisfy those demands, drop it in the comments below..
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