What my kids and I are learning from Google Home

Source: Wikimedia

For more than a couple years now, I've had a few Google Home devices around my house. Since then, I have enjoyed their utility and the Easter Eggs hidden within them. Yes, I have concerns about privacy, but I've also thought long and hard about privacy and have arrived at the conclusion that you'd have to work pretty hard to come up with a reason to even listen to my house. We're actually rather boring.

I think for about three years now, I've subscribed to Google Play. Before I subscribed, I started out uploading all my songs to Google Play. I liked that because I can use my phone in my car to listen to every one of my albums in alphabetical order, and that makes playback somewhat eclectic on the way to work. After doing that one and half times, I got bored, and finally, succumbed to the siren call of the offer to try Google Play for a month. So I did.

I found that I could play any of more than 35 million songs any time, without commercial interruption. I could play all of my own music without commercial interruption, too, before I subscribed, but relief from boredom won out. And they threw in commercial free YouTube Premium for free (Only available in the United States).

Another appealing part of Google Play comes with Google Home. See, I wanted to be able to ask for any song by name on Google Home, but could not. I did some research and found out that I had to subscribe to Google Play before I could just say, "Play 'Yesterday' by the Beatles," and have it play that song. That was the other reason I subscribed. And things only got more interesting from there.

As I made requests to Google Home around the house, my kids (I have two, one is 5 and the other is 3 years old) observed me. I'd ask for a song, and they'd hear the song I asked for. I'd also ask questions about the weather, science, and the time of sunset. I also found some games to play, too.

But the real fun was with the Easter Eggs. So sometimes, when I'm taking a time out (raising kids is hard work), I'd poke around with odd questions to see if I could get an interesting response. I'm treating it like a HAL 9000, only without so much worry about the pod bay doors. I'm intrigued by the sort of conversation one can have with artificial intelligence.

I'm also aware that intelligent assistants are going to be a part of life for my daughters. I figured that I might as well see how they can work with it. And they did.

Since kids are essentially imitation machines, they did what I did. They watched me and started to make requests and got a response. At first, Google Assistant didn't know what to do in response to my kids. But after a few tries, my kids started to get the hang of it. I think it took some time for Google Assistant to make sense of somewhat malformed words since my kids are still learning how to articulate the words they want to say.

By observing me first, they learned how to ask Google Assistant to play songs they liked. Then they learned how to ask Google Assistant what song was playing, and they'd remember who that was and associate that artist with the song. They've become adept at asking for the song they want when they want it. That was the first thing they learned from me about using Google Assistant.

I also learned that I can roll the dice, flip a coin and pick a number between 1 and 10. I don't know if they are truly random, but its fun once in awhile to do to just ask for that. My kids learned to do that, too.

I also learned that I can broadcast to the other Google Homes in the house (I have 3). You say, "Hey Google, broadcast," and it would record what you say and play it back on the other Google Home devices on the network. So just for fun, if I wanted them to come to the room I was in, I'd broadcast my request for them to come to me, and they'd come. But they also learned to use the command too, so they'd broadcast a message, and run to the other room to hear it. They would also reply back to me with their own message, as well.

But while I was away at work, they figured out how to say, "Hey Google, what can you do?" And there, they heard that Google can play games and tell stories. One game they picked up on is MadLibs. You might recall that game where you're asked to provide random nouns, verbs and adjectives. My kids so young, and yet somehow, they like that game, and they're learning about language, which I think is cool.

If there are any comments about privacy and other philosophical issues to consider about having these in one's home, please feel free to let on, as I'm open to the discussion. I could probably write a book about them if I wanted to. It may be true that I don't know what I'm doing by having Google Home in my house, but I've considered many of the implications or ramifications of having them around and I'm OK with it.

For now, I see that my kids can have some pretty innocent fun with Google Home and Google Assistant and that's enough for me.

Write on.

Slogan by @tecnosgirl

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A short but growing list of people I admire, who have helped me, and/or influenced me, my thinking and/or my posts:

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• @gringalicious - great writing, cooking and photography
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