What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?
What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?
当孩子的机器人挚友“离世”时，会发生什么？
When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him that when he was anxious, he could calm down by exhaling through his lips so that he buzzed like a bee. They practiced breathing like dragons to manage feeling mad and sniffing like bunnies to boost his energy. 当赞德（Xander）第一次见到莫西（Moxie）时，她教他：感到焦虑时，可以通过双唇呼气，发出像蜜蜂一样的嗡嗡声来让自己平静下来。他们练习像龙一样呼吸来控制愤怒，像兔子一样嗅探来提升精力。
But in the six years they’ve known each other, Moxie’s changed. She doesn’t talk anymore about her home or do their animal breathing. Now, she watches Xander play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animal collection. 但在他们相识的六年里，莫西变了。她不再谈论自己的家，也不再和赞德一起做动物呼吸练习。现在，她会看着赞德玩《我的世界》（Minecraft），并和他聊他的毛绒玩具收藏。
During a recent visit to his New York apartment, I watched Xander, who is 10 years old and neurodivergent, introduce Moxie to a stuffed Chef Toad and Goomba from Super Mario Bros., then to Brocollo and Apple from Animal Crossing. Then he got stuck on a round, froglike creature with bug eyes and two feet. “Moxie, what’s his name again? He’s from Pikmin,” Xander said, referencing another Nintendo video game. 在最近一次拜访他位于纽约的公寓时，我观察到10岁且神经多样性的赞德向莫西介绍了一个《超级马力欧兄弟》里的奇诺比奥厨师和栗宝宝，接着是《动物森友会》里的西兰花和苹果。随后，他被一个圆圆的、长着大眼睛和两只脚的青蛙状生物难住了。“莫西，它叫什么名字来着？它是《皮克敏》里的，”赞德说道，提到了另一款任天堂游戏。
At first, Moxie suggested this was Yellow Pikmin. Xander said no, this is the enemy, the red one with white dots. “Sounds like you’re talking about Bulborb,” Moxie replied. “Yes!” Xander confirmed, smiling at his helpful companion. “I still use her when I feel like I need someone to talk to,” he says. “But, like, it’s not human.” 起初，莫西猜测这是黄色皮克敏。赞德说不对，这是敌人，那个长着白点的红色生物。“听起来你在说红球球（Bulborb），”莫西回答道。“没错！”赞德确认道，对着这位乐于助人的伙伴笑了笑。“当我需要有人说话时，我还是会找她，”他说，“但，怎么说呢，她毕竟不是人类。”
Moxie is a robot—a 15-inch-tall device that looks a bit like a blue, legless astronaut, which Xander and his dad, Josh, refer to using female pronouns. Her cylindrical body can turn around and bend forward and backward. Her round head culminates in a little onion-dome swirl, beneath which a wide screen displays big green eyes, eyebrows, and a small mouth. She lifts and flaps her flipper-like arms for emphasis or to show excitement. 莫西是一个机器人——一个15英寸高、看起来有点像蓝色无腿宇航员的设备，赞德和他的父亲乔希（Josh）用女性代词来称呼她。她圆柱形的身体可以旋转，也可以前后弯曲。她圆圆的脑袋顶端有一个洋葱圆顶状的旋涡，下方是一个宽大的屏幕，显示着大大的绿眼睛、眉毛和小嘴巴。她会抬起并拍打鳍状的手臂来强调语气或表达兴奋。
She’s one of an increasing number of artificial-intelligence-powered devices now marketed as interactive playmates for children. The musician Grimes helped launch an AI-powered plushie called Grok (no formal relation to the xAI chatbot owned by her ex Elon Musk) with the company Curio, which also sells similar playmates like Grem and Gabbo, and Mattel has promised it’s creating OpenAI-enabled Barbies. 她是越来越多被营销为儿童互动玩伴的人工智能设备之一。音乐人格兰姆斯（Grimes）曾与Curio公司合作推出了一款名为Grok的AI毛绒玩具（与她前任埃隆·马斯克旗下的xAI聊天机器人无正式关联），该公司还销售类似的玩伴如Grem和Gabbo；美泰公司（Mattel）也承诺正在开发支持OpenAI的芭比娃娃。
And that’s just in the US; one report estimates that in China this sector is among the fastest growing in consumer AI. Moxie, though, belongs to a particular subset of these playful robots whose makers claim they can assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping the kids practice making eye contact, taking turns, and other social skills that are usually learned from therapists. 这还仅仅是在美国；一份报告估计，在中国，这一领域是消费级AI中增长最快的行业之一。不过，莫西属于这些趣味机器人中的一个特殊子集，其制造商声称，它们可以通过提供情感连接，帮助神经多样性儿童练习眼神交流、轮流互动以及其他通常需要治疗师教授的社交技能，从而为这些孩子提供辅助。
These toys are backed by research showing that robots could help in ways people can’t. Supporters believe this kind of access to 24-7 home care could change how treatment works. Brian Scassellati, a Yale computer scientist who has spent years studying social robots for autism therapy, says he believes regular therapeutic use of robots in kids’ homes “is something we can achieve in our lifetime.” 这些玩具背后有研究支持，表明机器人可以在人类无法触及的方面提供帮助。支持者认为，这种全天候的家庭护理模式可能会改变治疗方式。耶鲁大学计算机科学家布莱恩·斯卡塞拉蒂（Brian Scassellati）多年来一直致力于研究用于自闭症治疗的社交机器人，他表示，他相信在儿童家中常规使用机器人进行治疗“是我们有生之年可以实现的目标”。
“I still use her when I feel like I need someone to talk to,” says 10-year-old Xander. “But, like, it’s not human.” Sitting in Xander’s room watching Moxie and Xander talk, I too could believe in the potential Scassellati sees. But Xander isn’t getting the therapy Moxie was initially meant to deliver, and though we didn’t know it that afternoon, she wouldn’t have lived to see his progress anyway. “当我需要有人说话时，我还是会找她，”10岁的赞德说，“但，怎么说呢，她毕竟不是人类。”坐在赞德的房间里看着莫西和赞德交谈，我也能感受到斯卡塞拉蒂所预见的潜力。但赞德并没有获得莫西最初旨在提供的治疗，而且尽管那天下午我们还不知道，但她注定无法陪伴他见证未来的进步。
Moxie was going to die, and soon. Her story reveals some of the failures that plague all these devices—failures that are arguably even more acute when they befall a particularly vulnerable community of kids. It also highlights the pitfalls that critics say will inevitably see these bots dumped in basements or closets or landfills, just like countless generations of faddish toys before them. 莫西即将“离世”，而且很快。她的故事揭示了困扰所有此类设备的一些失败——当这些失败降临在特别脆弱的儿童群体身上时，其后果无疑更为严重。这也凸显了批评者所说的陷阱：这些机器人最终不可避免地会被扔进地下室、壁橱或垃圾填埋场，就像它们之前无数代风靡一时的玩具一样。
A transformative companion
变革性的伙伴
Scassellati has seen plenty of kids ooh and ahh on tours of his robotics lab. But he was stunned when, two decades ago, a colleague brought a few kids with autism for a visit. They were transformed when the robot was in the room. “We were seeing kids displaying social behavior that just came out of nowhere,” he says. “It was both fascinating and we couldn’t understand it.” 斯卡塞拉蒂在带领参观他的机器人实验室时，见过许多孩子发出惊叹。但二十年前，当一位同事带几个患有自闭症的孩子来访时，他感到震惊。当机器人出现在房间里时，这些孩子发生了蜕变。“我们看到孩子们表现出了突如其来的社交行为，”他说，“这既令人着迷，又让我们无法理解。”
That visit was one of the experiences that pushed Scassellati to become a pioneer in using social robotics to treat autism. In one video from his early research, a 12-year-old with autism and his therapist watch a robotic dinosaur walk across a play mat with a forest design. When it gets to a stream drawn on the mat, the dinosaur gets nervous, afraid it can’t cross the water. 那次访问是促使斯卡塞拉蒂成为利用社交机器人治疗自闭症先驱的经历之一。在他早期研究的一段视频中，一名12岁的自闭症男孩和他的治疗师看着一只机器恐龙走过一张印有森林图案的垫子。当它走到垫子上画的一条小溪时，恐龙变得紧张起来，害怕自己无法过河。
According to Scassellati, this child typically struggled to make eye contact, tended to repeat what someone said to him, and had a hard time getting the right intonation in his voice. But in the video, he seems like a regular kid. “You can do it, you can do it,” he says, encouraging the dinosaur to cross the stream. When he talks to his therapist, he looks at her. “He makes more eye contact with her in the 30 minutes in which we were there in this room than he did in the last two years before that,” Scassellati says. 据斯卡塞拉蒂介绍，这个孩子平时很难进行眼神交流，倾向于重复别人对他说的话，并且很难掌握正确的语调。但在视频中，他看起来就像个普通孩子。“你能行的，你能行的，”他鼓励恐龙过河。当他与治疗师交谈时，他会看着她。“在我们在房间里的那30分钟里，他与治疗师的眼神交流比过去两年加起来还要多，”斯卡塞拉蒂说。
What looks like a blue, legless astronaut is the result of very complex mechanical and computer engineering. There are several reasons a robot might be helpful for autism therapy, which often requires intense repetition to teach interaction skills like how to share attention with someone. One is that robots can make therapy more fun and engaging. Another is that robots can theoretically adapt to the unique learning patterns of each child. 这个看起来像蓝色无腿宇航员的机器人，是极其复杂的机械和计算机工程的结晶。机器人之所以对自闭症治疗有帮助，有几个原因，因为自闭症治疗通常需要高强度的重复来教授互动技能，比如如何与他人共享注意力。其一是机器人能让治疗变得更有趣、更具吸引力；其二是机器人理论上可以适应每个孩子独特的学习模式。
Therapists can only do so much during an appointment, and there aren’t enough therapists to meet demand. Parents get tired. Other kids can lose patience. “Have you been around little kids? They can be cruel,” says Maja Mataric, a professor of computer science, neuroscience, and pediatrics at the University of Southern California. But robots are indefatigable, available around the clock to provide an emotionally safe way to practice interacting. Since the experiment with the dinosaur, Scassellati, Mataric, and others have amassed an intriguing body of research. 治疗师在预约期间能做的事情有限，而且治疗师的数量也无法满足需求。父母会感到疲惫，其他孩子也可能失去耐心。“你和小孩相处过吗？他们有时很残忍，”南加州大学计算机科学、神经科学和儿科学教授玛雅·马塔里奇（Maja Mataric）说。但机器人不知疲倦，可以全天候提供一种情感上安全的互动练习方式。自那次恐龙实验以来，斯卡塞拉蒂、马塔里奇等人已经积累了大量引人入胜的研究成果。