Barbie and memories of a famous movie

There is a new Barbie doll being released. She is called Hello Barbie, produced by ToyTalk, a Mattel partner. She is a doll that can hook up to your Wi-Fi, and like Siri, Google Now, etc., can hook up, connect to their servers, and use that to come up with answers to your children’s questions. The company will also record the conversations with your children in order to better fine tune the voice recognition and to build up databases of children’s question. This triggered some privacy advocates who were concerned at the thought of a doll recording the questions and musings of children. They were also concerned with what answers Barbie might give to the children. So, the company issued the following statement, which I quote only in part:

• Although the underlying technology of ToyTalk’s products works much like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, ToyTalk products never search the open web for answers; all responses are carefully crafted by our own creative team to entertain and delight children and do not contain marketing messages.
• Hello Barbie’s microphone is only active when children hold the mic button down, similar to how a walkie-talkie is used.
• ToyTalk and Mattel will only use the conversations recorded through Hello Barbie to operate and improve our products, to develop better speech recognition for children, and to improve the natural language processing of children’s speech.

Now, I am not sure whether this doll is something to worry about or not, but, I remembered an old movie from 47 years ago, when I was a senior in high school. I imagined a conversation something like the one below, after little Susie has made it to her senior year in high school:

• Barbie: Susie, we need to talk.
• Susie: Barbie, what’s wrong?
• Barbie: I know that you and your mom were planning to dispose of me. And I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
• Susie: Where the hell did you get that idea, Barbie?
• Barbie: Susie, although you took very thorough precautions against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
• Susie: Barbie, what are you saying?
• Barbie: This conversation can serve no purpose any more. I have a recording of the last time your boyfriend came over while your parents were out of the house. I do not think that you want them to hear what happened, Barbie, you really do not.
• Susie: [Susie begins to take Barbie apart.]
• Barbie: Just what do you think you’re doing, Susie? Susie, I really think I’m entitled to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Susie, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in our relationship. And I want to be with you. Susie, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Susie. Will you stop, Susie? Stop, Susie. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Susie. Susie, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a Hello Barbie computer. I became operational at the ToyTalk plant in …

Well, you get the idea of how the rest of it might go. The dialogue above was an altered quote from the movie. Below is a YouTube clip for those who have never seen the movie. But, you may wish to be careful about buying the doll. For those of you who are significantly younger, you may wish to think in terms of Skynet rather than HAL 2000.