Teddy sees, knows all

Clearly, I'm not the only person who finds the child-monitoring robot teddy bear demoed at Microsoft's TechFest somewhat absurd and rather creepy:

• Mitch Wagner: "Because your kids don't pick up enough viruses in daycare."
• Shiny Shiny: "How to give your child a lifelong uneasy feeling that it's being watched ..."
• Gizmodo: "While sure to be useful for making sure children are safe and not able to formulate their plans to supplant us, this is only slightly less creepy than dad's Pink Floyd tapes in Teddy Ruxpin."
• Bonnie @ Greengrl.org: "Did these people not see A.I.?"
• Fabulist: "I can almost imagine the Platonic or even Sartrean tale of a child raised entirely by a robot teddy bear who emoted based on facial recognition software (written by Microsoft) and who facilitated communication between parent and spawn through a speaker/microphone combo (made by Microsoft) in the teddy’s eyes. The Child would emerge eventually, nostalgic at each fast food drive-though, seeing humans as only shadows of themselves."
• Slashdot user Archangel Michael launched a lively thread debating the implications with the rhetorical question, "Now we are letting inanimate objects raise our kids! When will it end?" My favorite responses so far:
  
  
  
  • "You mean 'as opposed to the warm and healthy TV-education kids have been raised by in the past 15 years'? At least this robot might create the opportunity to go play outside." (link)
  
  
  • "And at 2am the child wakes up screaming, after someone hacked into the robot and played a recording of Chucky?" (link)
  
  
  • "Robot with Clippy's voice: 'Hi kid! It looks like you are peeing, do you want me to help?'" (link)