DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: December 28, 2025

AI Toys For Kids:What Could Go Wrong?:

If you’re shopping for a child in your life, you may soon run into an AI toy – a stuffed animal or toy robot that can have conversations with children thanks to integration with a chatbot.

AI toys have the capacity to be entertaining or educational. They also come with concrete risks and plenty of unknowns, ranging from data collection to open questions about what it means for a child to have an AI friend.

Today’s AI toys connect to the internet and use a chatbot like ChatGPT to have conversations with children. The toys come with built-in microphones that record what you say to them. The chatbot then decides what to say back.

Until now, conversational smart toys have only ever been able to deliver scripted lines that a person wrote specifically with children in mind. Thanks to a chatbot integration, today’s AI toys can generate new responses on the fly on their own. Because chatbots are programmed to have a certain amount of randomness, AI toys won’t typically respond the same way twice, and can sometimes behave differently day to day.

Multiple AI companies are allowing their models to be used in toys, including OpenAI. At least four of the five toys we purchased seem to rely in part on some version of OpenAI’s AI models, and there are more available on Amazon that market themselves as using ChatGPT.

This is a little odd. OpenAI has said both publicly and in a comment to us that OpenAI’s products aren’t for users under the age of 13. Yet it’s allowing its models to be used in toys – products that are, by definition, for kids.

The toys were tested and were found to have, um, problems.  Like–inappropriate content, dangerous information (‘how do I light a match’?), and mature topics. Can you envision a  Trump ChatGTP toy channeling Truth Social to 3-12 year-olds?  I can.

The Man Who Inspired ‘Marty Supreme’.  The Bobby Riggs of table tennis:

“I took on people in the gladiatorial spirit,” the real-life inspiration for his character had told me back in 2012, describing — and I cannot stress this enough — a life of table tennis. “Never backed down from a bet.”

That man, Marty Reisman, a serial champion in the sport and a super-serial hustler-gambler-rambler, died nine months later at 82, insisting upon the grandeur of his story to the end.

For years, he has been my standard answer whenever someone asks me about the most interesting person I’ve interviewed. (Apologies to Mike Tyson, Nancy Pelosi, Guy Fieri, President Trump and their many fellow nominees.)

It helped that Reisman found himself so interesting. He claimed to have made fortunes, and lost fortunes, and met everyone, and defeated everyone.

He flirted prolifically into his 80s, with acquaintances and strangers, and quoted Shakespeare soliloquies to animal-rescue petitioners on Manhattan sidewalks for reasons that escaped his audiences.

He had a habit of measuring the height of the net before matches to ensure precision — with $100 bills.

Why not a $1 bill, I wondered? Its dimensions were the same. This struck him as self-evidently ludicrous.

“Why be chintzy about it?” he responded.

Yep, We’re Doing Dry January Again.  Why not?:

The booze-free month known as Dry January has surged in popularity, from just 4,000 participants when it launched in 2013 to millions of (at least short-term) teetotalers today. If you are considering giving up alcohol this January, you’ll be happy to hear that new research suggests it may bring you health benefits, including better mood and sleep, as well as lower blood sugar and blood pressure.

A review of 16 studies on Dry January recently published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism found that even a short pause in alcohol use is linked to improvements in physical and psychological health.

Dry January participants reported better mood, improved sleep and weight loss, and had healthier blood pressure, blood sugar and liver function. And several of the studies found participants experienced some benefits from simply reducing their drinking, also known as “Damp January,” rather than abstaining entirely.

I’m, uh, hoping the ‘weight loss’ benefit kicks in this time.

Austin Powers’ soundtrack to the Swingin’ Sixties?  I stumbled upon this, and just couldn’t resist.  Bob Fosse dances us out of 2025: