Moxie

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There is a fairly new (1 yo) robot companion for kids named "Moxie". It is marketed as "A Revolutionary Companion for Social-Emotional Learning". I suppose it's a good idea, they claim "Numerous studies (over 12,500 peer-reviewed articles!) also show strong scientific evidence that robots can help children improve social skills." However, I don't see any claim that they are studying the effect of Moxie on childhood development. That combined with the high price sets off my quack alarm. Here are some links:

Ad: embodied moxie
When I examined this closely I found twice as many ASD elements as I had first noticed.

Website: MEET MOXIE
The only "A" words, I could find, are in reviews and sighted studies of using robots with ASD kids.

hmm... I believe that 12,500 peer-reviewed articles might have all of the words "robots", "children", and "social skills" in them, but I am highly skeptical that 12,500 papers all independently tested the same hypothesis, namely, that robots help children gain social skills. What the heck kind of low-impact journal would publish that 12,432nd paper? What did their novelty statement look like? This sounds to me like a misrepresentation of some statistic by the marketing team.

I have nothing negative to say about the actual robot they are talking about though. My mind is open about it. I'd be curious to try out conversations with the AI. Usually those kinds of things are a bit clunky, especially in recognizing voices of people with language difficulties.

Back door communental brainwashing for the next generation, and not only that, but the parents foot the cost.

In the reviews, a father say's "Moxie is constantly telling my child to talk to a trusted adult when he says he's doing "math." My child has speech delays and it's causing some problems." .

Algebra, not even once.

I quote myself here in that I see how easy it is to use such devices.

While I see how it can be used for those who don't talk at an early age, for the general population of young children, I can see major brainwashing potential issues.