Scientists from the Singapore University of Technology and Design have revealed how young children (3-5 years old) perceive the information they receive from adults and robots controlled by artificial intelligence. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Child Development.
The experiment involved students from various pre-school institutions in Singapore. A teacher and a humanoid social robot from SoftBank Robotics performed for children. Both human and machine gave both correct and incorrect labels for simple objects, describing a ball, a book, and other objects.
The study then asked the young participants whether they were more likely to trust a teacher or an electronic device. The results showed that preschoolers were more likely to choose a person even if they gave incorrect descriptions of the objects.
“Children don’t just trust someone to teach them names, they also trust someone they can trust in the past. We believe that this selectivity in social learning reflects young children’s increasing understanding of what is considered a reliable source of information,” explained study co-author Li Xiaoqian.
The scientific study has implications for pedagogy, where robots and digital educational tools are increasingly integrated into education.
Today’s children may not perceive robots as trustworthy as humans if they have had little interaction with their own kind. But as children become more familiar with smart machines, they may tend to view robots as intelligent and reliable sources of information, the scientists noted.
Previously at Moscow State University named Dates when Russian schoolchildren’s homework will begin to be controlled by neural networks.