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Teddy AI

For when teddy time is best...
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Jim has decided that it is high time for teddy to learn to read.

Jim has in mind a small child tucked up in bed with teddy on their lap and a favourite book to read. Jim imagines hearing the child squeal 'teddy read!', and the teddy responding with '...well, you will have to turn the pages for me...'.

Jim reckons there is just about enough gubbins available at the moment to allow your average teddy the means to read any childrens book placed infront of it.

...

madness, Sep 03 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Ruxpin [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 03 2010]

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       <MFD> - WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR - Teddy as seen in the movie "AI".
Cedar Park, Sep 03 2010
  

       [Cedar Park] By no means. This could be done perfectly well with current technology. The reason I don't bun it is that it's icky.   

       Print a bar-code (or similar) on each page of the book; put an optical scanner in the plush toy, along with microprocessor, speech synthesizer, and electronic library of children's books. The scanner need only read the bar code; the device then spits out the text for that page, through the voice synthesizer. If speech synthesizer doesn't sound good enough, then, instead of storing the text, store an audio recording of a human reading the text. There's a marketing opportunity: parents would buy the bar-coded editions of the children's books (costs extra, comes with electronic version, keyed to bar codes, for downloading into teddy). No artificial intelligence.   

       If you want a science-fictional antecedent, rather than _AI_ I'd nominate the story (can't recall title) in which all citizens were psychologically conditioned to be incapable of breaking the law. A variety of methods were used for the conditioning, of which the most important were the computerized teddy bears they all had as children. A group of dissident psychologists, incapable themselves of rebelling, sabotaged the teddy of one of their children, in order to raise a child who would one day be capable of assassinating the Glorious Leader. When the child reached adulthood, and was told of his destiny, he bitterly resented what had been done to him.
mouseposture, Sep 03 2010
  

       Well it doesn't read just 'any' old book but...[link]   

       What [Cedar Park] said - only much more emphatically.
Something like:
"You mean, almost precicely, totally, utterly, without doubt entirely - exactly the same as that AI Teddy in the film AI?"
  

       But an embedded OCR system insinuated within Teddy's fluff? Actually, that's not a bad idea.
zen_tom, Sep 03 2010
  

       This is baked: Teddy Rumpkins.
MikeD, Sep 03 2010
  

       Ahem. Ruxpin [coughlinkcough]   

       Searched the net trying to find it but cant, however i know this invention already exists to some extent (even has an mp3 player built in too), working in the way suggested by mouseposture where the book is identified to the teddy by barcode or something similar. The only reason i know it exists is because i remember hating it, parents or guardians should read to their children and not pass off this responsibility to an electrical appliance. if you cant spare 10 mintues to read to your child at night perhaps you should have considered a condom? <end rant>
ComatoseSheep, Sep 04 2010
  

       [Mouseposture], it may not be what you have in mind but 'Ticket To Anywhere' by Damon Knight does mention some kind of conditioning which prevents crime in passing. I'm not familiar with his writing but if that's part of a world of his, presumably it's mentioned elsewhere.
nineteenthly, Sep 04 2010
  

       //if you cant spare 10 mintues to read to your child at night perhaps you should have considered a condom//   

       Hindsight doesn't cut it once you have the toddler wanting to hear a story at bedtime.   

       Also... what portion of those reluctant parents - the ones too stupid to have used a condom - would also have trouble reading at all, let alone reading aloud to a toddler with suitable voice changes to add characterisation to dialogue?   

       I think such a teddy would be bought by lots of parents who would see it as (dole/ welfare/ benefit) money well spent if it means they can go down the pub or sit in front of the telly ignoring the brats.
Tulaine, Sep 04 2010
  

       // the ones too stupid to have used a condom //   

       I don't think that's how it works. I think lots of us have a subconscious desire to have a child and some people think consciously, "oh, it won't matter this one time", or "it won't happen to me", but are in reality being egged on by their unconscious to reproduce. Having said that, both our children were meticulously planned.
nineteenthly, Sep 04 2010
  

       And then you can take OCR Teddy to the supermarket and scan all the bar codes! Whee!!!   

       Seriously, I don't understand why something like that isn't yet a common household toy. There's certainly been lots of attempts at making toys that talk to each other or a computer.   

       [The Teddy in "AI" was a full-fledged autonomous sidekick - an idea for which "AI" is far from the first source; this is a realistic toy buildable with current technology. I don't think this is a WTCTTIS.. in that sense.]
jutta, Sep 04 2010
  

       [+]
FlyingToaster, Sep 04 2010
  


 

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