Time Management

Owen is 11 years old and is soon to begin Year 7 in secondary school. He lives with his 9-year-old brother and parents, where his father is a sales manager, and his mother is an NHS worker. In his day-to-day life, he uses his phone, iPad, and the family’s Alexas. He mostly uses Siri and Alexa to ask the time and play music, and he approves of the recommendations Samsung Music gives him.

Dreams of Becoming an Athlete

Owen’s dream job is to be a swimmer or a musician. He would like to have an active lifestyle, and dreams of owning a lot of technology in his house. In his ideal society, the most important things are to lower pollution and to reduce homelessness, as we currently don’t live in an equal society and need to change that.

AI Images Shaped by Sci-Fi Films 

AI is something that can communicate with you, such as Alexa and Siri, while a robot is a metal machine that walks around, according to Owen. He prefers comedy instead of Sci-Fi, and so he prefers real people in movies, as they tend to be funnier, although he admits it would be interesting to have both robots and humans in other entertainment media such as games and music. He insists the Olympics and other sporting events should only have human participants though. He likes using Alexa to answer questions. Overall, Owen has a positive opinion of technology because of how helpful it can be. He would like for robots to be recognisable as being other than human, but also for them to be used to protect us.

Home Robot Use and Views on Childcare

It would be useful for Owen to have a machine for cooking and cleaning. He would like a robot that can look after his children while he’s busy at work, but they shouldn’t be used in care homes to make sure elderly people still get social interaction and don’t feel lonely. He has a dog in his household and enjoys spending time with it and looking after it with his family. While he is comfortable with robots looking after children, he would not like them to take care of pets, especially since he can see his dog prefers human attention. He would also not like a robot pet. Teachers should stay human, since they can explain things better, as they can react to what students don’t understand and so can personalise their explanation. There are a lot of distractions at home so Owen would like to have education take place in a school setting. Robots won’t be wrong in marking, so they should be used for subjects such as maths to ensure grades are more accurate.

Expectations for AI in Healthcare

While he acknowledges that using robots in jobs may result in humans being replaced, Owen wouldn’t mind having robots serve him in shops and restaurants. He mostly shops online, but when he goes into stores with his friends, he uses self-checkouts. He also thinks it is easier to order on screens in fast food. As his mother is a nurse, he feels like robots would not be able to handle the workload nurses get, especially when doing talking therapies with people with mental health problems. For doctors, however, he says that robots would be able to diagnose patients and treat them more effectively thank people who can make mistakes, and although he would be more comfortable with human doctors he wouldn’t object to being examined by AI.

Pros and Cons of Self-Driving Cars and Emergency Robots

Using self-driving cars would be easy for people, as it would allow people to travel where they want, but it’s safer to still have humans present to act in an accident. Owen is also comfortable with drone technology and them delivering packages. Having robot judges would be good, as they would provide an objective view to problems and have more information available to them and could also avoid mistakes that humans would make. The current government gives unclear decisions for us to follow, and isn’t effective as seen during the COVID lockdowns, so robots would be better in making sure everyone understand policies. With surveillance, it would be easier for machines to monitor scanners at all times, and we could use it to differentiate between different people to correctly identify perpetrators in the case of a crime. In first response scenarios, Owen would prefer humans to come, as they would make better decisions in a short time where all actions are critical. Globally, Owen thinks it would be better for people to learn to communicate as opposed to using translators, and he enjoys learning languages. He thinks soldiers should consist of humans, as it won’t be as hard to defend against them and win with them. International politics should still consist of leaders of different countries, but robots can be used to assist. Finally, he thinks it would be good to use robots to protect the environment, such as having self-recycling bins and other such technologies.

Insights on School Reform and Labor Market Changes

Owen says it would be fun to learn how to design robots at school. His current ICT lessons consist of little coding, so it would be good for children to learn how to program in the future. He believes that, overall, the education system will change in the future. As robots will know so much it will be easy for homework as it exists now to be done by them rathe than students, and we will need to change the purpose of homework to counter that. While schools can be online, Owen thinks it is better to go to school because he likes seeing friends. He thinks that some jobs will be done by AI in the future, and it would be quicker in a lot of cases. In his opinion, the ideal relationship between humans and robots is for technology to serve us and people to have control over them. Overall, Owen likes new technology and is excited by it. He would like us to live in a society where people are friendlier among each other, and wants us to live in a calmer and less poluted world.