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This "humanoid robot" has lots of sensors, facial recognition, voice recognition, articulate hands. Design company claims to be able to read and express human emotions. Suggested plans are to use robot for babysitting and storytelling with young children. I wonder whether young children left alone with a robot limited to artificial intelligence would respond positively or would be frightened or upset without the presence of a parent, caregiver, or teacher to mediate their interactions with the robot. I imagine an early childhood classroom would be highly entertained and their attention stimulated by the presence of this humanoid robot. But I can't imagine having this robot replace responsible teaching or caregiver staff with the social interactions presented in this video. Based on Alan Kay's comments that computer artifacts are meta-medium that need to go beyond demonstrations and build artificial intelligence for specific user groups and age-appropriate curriculums, I will review the literature about interactive storytelling with socially assistive robots in early childhood classrooms.

Sturm argues that storytelling provides something larger: a way of organizing information. He says we can look at these characteristics as dots of data on a screen, where the story is the way we connect the dots. And how we connect the dots, changes the kinds of stories we create. Storytelling ethics and the need for trust and truth are discussed. Comments include his Story Listening Experience Model http://ils.unc.edu/~sturm/storytelling/storyexperience.pdf I wonder if this model could be used to create better programming routines for socially interactive storytelling robots? I have no idea how it would be possible to create a script for conveying ethics and the need for trust and truth using artificial intelligence. I think such activities require mediation by authoritative human participants to connect the dots and to establish a teaching presence that can address issues of ethics, trust, and truth for the listening audience upon reflection. I can easily see teachers, parents, caregivers "remix" what a storytelling robot presents to facilitate deeper reflection by young children in early childhood classrooms.

I am not sure how this socially assistive robot designed for cognitively impaired older adults to improve independent living would be received in an early childhood classroom setting. But the level of artificial intelligence programming is impressive and intriguing.