How AI is Transforming Play: Expert Views from Robin Raskin

EP080_11-19-24_Robin Raskin

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Hello, welcome to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today we have a pleasure to talking with Robin, a Trailblazer in Tech Journalism and Event. As a founder of Virtual Event Group and the creator of Living in Digital Times, Robin has seen firsthand how technology is reshaping the world of children [00:01:00] toys, education and play. In today’s interview, we are diving into the topic of raising AI kids and how artificial intelligence is really influencing the next generation and what parents educator and toy makers need to know. And Robin will share some of her thought on the importance of the tech and the future of the AI power toys and how we can potentially help kids to grow up in the digital first world.

And thank you so much for joining us on the interview today, Robin.

Robin Raskin: My pleasure.

Jason Hsieh: How do you got involved in this? What you do and a little bit of background.

Robin Raskin: So crazy. I’m going to try and keep it short. So I became the editor of PC Magazine in the way back days.Bill Gates was writing dos and Steve Jobs and Wozniak were building a little computer in their garage. And really it was an amazing time because the personal computer was just being invented and people were so hungry for information. I did that for many years, but then I started a magazine in the nineties called Family pc, and [00:02:00] that’s how I got involved with kids because I felt that parents were raising a generation of then digital kids on computers when they were just learning about computers themselves. So that our magazine could talk to them. It was owned by Disney and Ziff Davis, and we reviewed kids products every day. Fast forward, I do a lot of different things now. I run events I speak. I, do all sorts of things, but my roots really were in the beginning of the PC era and watching it and how it would affect family life.

Jason Hsieh: What did excite you the most about the potential AI’s role in the children’s development today?

Robin Raskin: So I’ll give you the exciting part and I’ll give you the not so exciting part. Exciting part, so think about it. It’s a lot like when apps first came out for toys. You bought a toy and then it had an app on the side. And the app gave you for the same money, extra play. Like you got extra time to play, more stories, more combinations of things. And it turned [00:03:00] out, as to be very expensive for toy makers to do that, they had to build a whole app in a world for every toy that they launched. It’s the same with ai, but different. So let’s just say you have a plushy toy or a robot or drawing tools with AI powering them. You can buy the toy. Once again, it can be ever changing. So I can say, tell me a new story today, Teddy bear, or draw me a different background or help me create a scene that’s in my imagination and kids are getting exposed to this and it’s also gonna be their future careers. Let’s be honest, that is the trajectory for them. So it’s almost important that they start to understand how to phrase a prompt and how to get what they want from their toy.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And I think how common chat GPT and the rest of the AI is in our day-to-day life. I do use it on a daily basis myself for different aspect.

And from your perspective being participating in other different technology and [00:04:00] different event, how do you think the AI powered toys are going to be changing the way that the kids play and learn?

Robin Raskin: It’s gonna ask them to use their imagination. So I’ll give you an example, there’s a toy called Po, the Talking Bear. And he’s powered by Chat GPT. So you get the bear and you get an app and the parent has to set it up, which is a nuisance, but the parent, and then give the kid not all of chat GPT, but the safe part. So you can say, make me a story with a princess and a castle and a sword, and then chat. GPT goes and writes that story, and the bear talks the story. So you get endless play patterns and an entertained kid for a much longer time than the old speak and spell where you just pulled a string and it said one thing. So now the combinations of what a toy can say are infinite. Even early robots, and I’m sure your audience is familiar with robot toys, they had a small vocabulary. Now they could talk to you forever. [00:05:00] They can be your buddy. They can tell you what the weather is, they could tell you how to dress for school. So you’re gonna start to see existing toys that we all know start to put AI in them.

So if you use your imagination. What would Lego do with ai? Maybe it would say, Robin, take a picture of all those Legos you have, and then I’ll show you what we can build with it. Or I’ll build a story for you, or we’ll build a book together about your Lego creation. So I think you’re gonna start to see new ways that existing toys will add ai. Right now, what you’re seeing is a lot of chat bot so you could talk to a chat bot, it’s fun. You could talk to Mickey Mouse, you can talk to Cinderella. But it’s limited. I think the real value’s gonna come when toy makers, the kids use their imagination to get more. I’ll give you another example, sometimes the AI is on the back end. So there’s a company called Ready Land. They make books that you can read with Alexa as your guide. [00:06:00] And I don’t want to talk to her ’cause she’s sitting right there. But if you were to say you Alexa, the child starts to read the book with Alexa, and then she says to them what’s your favorite color? And they tell her. Now with ai, first of all, on the back end, the Alexa knows maybe the kid wants to go to the bathroom. We’re saying I’m hungry. It has nothing to do with the book. So they can start to parse out language that is, only an AI would be able to know. And start to make it more intelligent. Kids are different. Sometimes they’re doing their homework and a lot of kids are using ChatGPT in school.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Is it controversial? I know some school actually ban the use of ChatGPT as well.

Robin Raskin: Some ban it. I think the better ones encourage it with guardrails, how do you, at Tribute if you’re in sixth grade and you’re writing an essay about the Civil War. What should the attribution be if chat GPT contributed? And like I said, it’s really early days, but we will get [00:07:00] better. Can chat GPT be your friend to play a game with? Absolutely. They play chess, they play checkers. They’re really damn good at those.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, you could be them nowadays, actually

Robin Raskin: there are even drawing programs for kids that are AI powered. Genie Kids is one that’s quite cute, but you do pay $10 a month to use it. A kid can decide to create a book or an image or a doodle, and through prompts, through the text, their book gets imagined by them. So what does that teach a kid? Logic and critical thinking, organizing their thoughts in order and creating succinct prompt. And those are gonna be exactly the skills that the future workplace is going to require. So in a way, it’s really good and I don’t think any parent should leave their kid all alone with an ai and always be checking in. But it’s a very powerful way to think about what their future is gonna be like.

Jason Hsieh: In your opinion, what do you think are [00:08:00] some of the biggest challenge we’ll face when we’re raising kids in an AI-driven world?

Robin Raskin: oh my God, where do we start? We certainly know that all of the ais give bad information a lot of the times. So you have to teach your children and yourselves to be a much more judgmental about this doesn’t make sense. No. Two plus two is not eight. I know this because sometimes chatgpt or one of the other AI engines, we’ll just give you the wrong information. So you have to learn how to verify. You have to learn when a movie they’re showing you is actually created by it an AI, created by a person. So there’s a lot of dangers. I would say more dangers. The only other thing I can compare it to is social media. When social media first became popular, I would go around on the lecture circuit and tell parents, do not leave your kids just alone with this. Anybody can talk to them. Set ground rules, set time limits, set boundaries. Know who their friends are. There are all sorts of things that as [00:09:00] technology advances, the opportunity is great, but the potential for harm is really great also.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah Yeah, And as someone that who has been an advocate for tech literacy, what are some of the key skill set that you think the kids should develop to strive in the current digital?

Robin Raskin: Yeah. So first I think they’ve got to do this with the parents. Like you start, and most of the things that are out there today require an app and require parental guardrails set up. So that’s really good. But I think a parent’s job is also to tell their kid you just made this beautiful book by typing text and then pictures occurred. Do you know why that happened? But it happened because of aI and ai, if you think about it as the language of everything that has ever passed the internet all in there, then taking your questions and predicting the answer giving you the answer you need if you start to be able to explain that to your children in easy terms, just like I did. Yeah, I have a [00:10:00] 12-year-old grandson and I say to him, how do you think you made that picture? You typed in, draw me a picture of a UFO with spaceman on the moon and it happened. Why did that happen? And then we get into the discussion it happened because the AI engines have thousands and hundreds of millions of all sorts of images in their library. And then you say to them what would happen if you change something if you said make that same moon picture, but make it like Renoir would do it or Van Gogh, and then you see the changes. So it’s your job to be their kind of co guide and show them that this is happening, but it’s happening. Why? Because otherwise they’ll just,

Jason Hsieh: yeah. I think the difficult part is the AI is evolving so quickly and so fast. Sometimes as a parent myself, it’s hard to keep up with all the different new feature that they have nowadays. Yeah. I know and I think you can take a picture and the images, so you can upload images to chat GPT and [00:11:00] have the chat GPT to decipher what is in the images nowadays. And they also have a lot of new feature they are rolling out.

Robin Raskin: We played with a kids game called Pixate and it’s been around for a long time. It’s by a company called Bit a genius and a kid can build a video game, but it had standard parts a tree, a box, a house, now it uses ai so you can say to it, let it’s a version of mid journey working in the back. So you can say, I want a scene in the woods with animals and wolves and tigers, and you describe it and then it paints it for you. So your video game gets richer. So I think you’re gonna see a lot of games that we have always played use AI to change the game up.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s true. One of my passion is also helping children with special needs.

How do you see the role of AI in helping children with special needs and how can different toy maker be part of that?

Robin Raskin: Yeah, i’m pretty excited about that also. ’cause think about it, let’s say you have a child with visual [00:12:00] problems. AI can turn those visuals into the spoken word. Let’s say you have a multi-language child, AI can easily translate anything. So if English as a second language or if you’re having problems speaking, you can lower the speech rate. You can higher the speech rate if your child is hearing impaired, it can put up closed captions. We all do this in YouTube all the time now. So more, more and more, we are getting used to whatever it is, making your text, your fonts bigger, making your colors different, doing things that let things talk to a more accessible audience and I think toy developers should really understand this and this stuff you should not have to squint and go, what is that saying I should click on? So AI powering design on the backend for toy designers and AI for any population that is experiencing some sort of limited ability. AI is great, and we’re just talking about our screens. Now, imagine when you can put on glasses [00:13:00] and the glasses will tell you’re about to hit a building, or you’re driving over the speed limit, or you’re walking too fast. So all sorts of things with each step in technology, I believe it becomes more accessible to more people.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And do you think the kids today are a little bit overexposed to technology right now?

Robin Raskin: Yeah, they are. It’s a serious, problem. We know our kids spend too much time online. By a long shot. But are there things you can do? Yes. Like every setting, every setting in a your browser you, can put time has parental controls, you can set time limits and you can set time limits for games. You can set time limits for email. And so some of it, yes, we know that the tiktoks and the YouTubes of the world have created algorithms that encourage kids like, heroin, to stay on more, to search more, to get the next but parents, they all have tools built in to limit the amount of time that you spend. And I think parents need to get familiar with [00:14:00] them. And I think that we’re just starting with ai. As I said, attribution’s a big one. I made a drawing, but maybe it came from, If I made a drawing of a can of Coca-Cola, that’s a copyrighted thing. Some kid needs to understand what a copyright is, what intellectual property is. These conversations are gonna come up more and more in the households.

Jason Hsieh: what do you think of things that parents should be mindful of when they’re choosing any kind of AI driven toys or educational tool for their kids?

Robin Raskin: so many things. This is really still the pioneer days of AI tools. So if your kid says, i’m gonna have a chat with Mickey Mouse now you really depends what age, like if they’re three years old, it’s okay for them to believe they’re talking to the Tooth Fairy or Santa or Mickey Mouse. But at some point you have to say to them, this is a chat bot that is talking to you based on your responses. And it’s up to each parent to decide, when they want. It can be [00:15:00] really magic. I don’t know if you’ve tried some of these chat bots for kids, but they’re wonderful, they’re friends if you are the kind of kid that doesn’t have a lot of friends at school and needs to talk to somebody, it’s not a bad idea. On the other hand, every parent should be wearing their watch all the time and saying after 20 minutes, we’re done with this and we’re gonna move on to something in the real world. So I think the secret to parenting in the digital world is always gonna be this balance. And the thing that drives me, the craziest of parents that sit on their phone when they take their kids out somewhere, and because it’s just reinforcing that model of being

Jason Hsieh: I’m guilty of that sometimes myself.

Robin Raskin: I know. And don’t you hear the kids saying to their parents, would you please put that phone down? So it’s, we are just learning these behaviors and we have a lot of years now of watching this with, as I said, with mobile apps, with social media. AI is no different, but it is different. It’s really powerful because it [00:16:00] is the sum of human language. Built back at you, and it probably is the most powerful thing since the computer itself that will change these kids’ lives and everything that they do. So the holidays are coming. I would say to every parent, yes, maybe chatGPT or Mid Journey or one of The AI’s can do some of your holiday cards, but maybe your crayons should do the others. it’s a mixed media world and you should be adapted all those medium.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And based on your perspective, because you go, to a do of different technology trade ratio, what are some of the trend that you’re seeing, especially when you’re looking at all the different manufacturer right now on what type of technology are they trying to incorporate?

You mentioned a using already as far as including AI as part of the design itself, and what other application have you been?

Robin Raskin: Yeah, I think right now in the toy industry, AI is being used more on the backend, on the design side, the workflow, the [00:17:00] marketing, the sourcing, I’ll give you a couple of examples. Alibaba, you can go on Alibaba and said, I need a hundred doll heads with purple hair, where is the best place in the whole world to buy them for my toy? And it will go out and it will search the entire world. It will create the RFP for you. It will send it out. So that’s one place. It’s actually being used in the AI being used in the manufacturing.

AI is being used in the design in that, what if this doll had articulated arms, what would that look like? Or what if these wheels could go backwards and forwards? Build me a digital twin of this toy and let me see it operate and then I will build it. So for inventors, for the first time, they don’t have to build anything and they can test their product and see if it’s working. Not quite, but a lot of the, yeah but we’re getting there.

For marketing. I can ask, we can go in right now and I can ask Che GPT to make [00:18:00] me a three sentence jingle that I can use to get my new dollhouse out on the market to an audience of Americans or Asians or Latinos or whoever, and it will customize that, and it gives you the more you work with it the more it knows you and the more it tailors its answers to you.

And I’m gonna go back to this, it’s all in that prompt in how you phrase your question. And that’s what kids are gonna learn when they play with these toys, and there’s only a handful of these toys on the market now, like I said, there’s a bear, there’s a game making program. There are a few robots, there’s a few chat bots, a few art programs, but I think it’s just the beginning.

Jason Hsieh: yeah Yeah. And I think also people are just getting used to the concept of having the AI in the toy. It takes some time for people to have a better understanding on the implication. And maybe some parent actually doesn’t feel very safe to have a AI in the toy yet as well.

Robin Raskin: Yeah. This holiday as I said when we [00:19:00] started apps didn’t do that well in the market. Why? Because. It added a little to the price of the toy. The parent had to be there installing the app. They don’t want the extra bother. And so the apps, they’re getting more used to it. You know what changed everything? A QR code, because all of a sudden the parent could say, boy, the app came up. The parent could set it up instead of gonna the store or the Apple Store or the Google store and finding the app. So things have gotten easier. The same thing will happen with ai. It will get easier, but for right now, I think parents need to do the legwork. Designers need to use the tools and get familiar with them, and then idea, think about how it’s gonna make a better tool. Like the worst thing they could do is just put AI in there just because it’s there and explain some of those. you really wanna have a reason for doing what you do.

Jason Hsieh: What would be your main advice to give to the toy manufacturer who want to integrate in AI in a way that both [00:20:00] fun and beneficial for the kids?

Robin Raskin: First of all, I would look at the education space. They’re, actually doing it really well. So the beauty of AI is, I’m gonna call it hyper personalization. I know Jimmy, I know he’s eight years old. I know this is how he talks. I know this is of the problems. He’s having trouble understanding and start to build things that can help each individual. So an AI as it learns more about you will do more that you want.

And so I think the toy manufacturers have to really think about each product they create and then say, where would AI be helpful? Is it in extending the play like it might be with Legos how would you extend the play if you had an ai? Like it might be taking pictures of your things, drawing story books with it, so it has to feel authentic and organic. There are music making programs for kids now that will write me a song that has a Calypso beat with a drum and a horn and that, ah, it’s done. Or [00:21:00] make me a movie. And so kids are going to grow up with these tools and a lot of them will be tools that we use as professionals, but scale down for kids. And that won’t be their first step. Just like the coding tools, were all the coding toys that would teach kids to code? Because of ai, they don’t have to code as much. It’s not as important. So it gets really, interesting they do need to be logical thinkers, critical thinkers. They do need to be organized in how they create a prompt, but they don’t really need to know a language as much as they used to, like Python or C. That’s not like a skill for the future that’s as much in demand. So it’s really changed.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Thank you for sharing that. For our listener that would like to reach out to you and maybe ask some additional follow up question, what is the best way to find you online?

Robin Raskin: So my website is virtualeventsgroup.org, and we do have meetings that where we discuss these topics and others [00:22:00] all the time. You can find me on LinkedIn, just Robin Raskin, R-A-S-K-I-N. I’m there quite frequently, and Facebook, I’m not Twitter’s out of the mix this week, but, but blue sky for sure. So on all the social media I’m pretty active and really try and tell parents I can’t on to emphasize this misinformation enough. We just had an election where we saw AI being used to clearly misin inform people and lead them the wrong way. So as a parent and now a grandparent, I can tell you that you just have to stay vigilant. You have to get educated about this stuff, and you have to coplay with your kids so that they understand what’s going on when it’s AI and when it’s real.

Jason Hsieh: Got it. But thank you again for being on our show today.

And for our listeners, thank you for tuning into this episode of Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. We really hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, [00:23:00] be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and we’d love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague for more resource. Tips and the latest update in the toy industry. Visit our website at toy-launch.com. Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using hashtag #ToyBusinessUnboxed. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestion for the future episode. Until next time, keep innovating. Keep creating, keep bringing joy to toys.

This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unbox podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much everyone.