Tom Donaldson, senior vice president and head of Lego Group’s Creative Play Lab, tells me that the journey to make the Smart Brick as simple to use as it is was in fact mightily difficult. \u201cWe didn’t want a power switch on the side, or even a reset button,\u201d he says, \u201cso you won’t even find a little place to put your needle. Just doing that is an incredible challenge\u2014to make sure that it doesn’t crash in a way that causes problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut ultimately, the idea was it has to be as simple to use as the OG, right? And simplicity is hard, and incredibly simple is really incredibly hard,\u201d Donaldson says.<\/p>\n
Of course, putting tech in famously analog children’s toys, especially in the LLM age, has led to worrying situations such as Kumma<\/a> the AI bear that spoke of sex and pills<\/a> when prompted in certain ways. Lego’s system, however, is not internet-connected, and the company claims \u201cenhanced encryption and privacy controls \u2026 meeting the high safety standards of the Lego Group\u201d have been employed to stop hackers attempting to program, say, sexual noises or saucy speech into the Smart Bricks.<\/p>\n History tells us that no system is completely safe, and while smaller-scale toys and low-volume AI cuddly animals might not attract particular attention from the hacking community, something like Smart Play\u2014where firmware updates and diagnostics are handled via a proprietary app\u2014from a global company like Lego may well be an enticing target.<\/p>\n Katriina Heljakka, a researcher in play learning at the University of Turku, Finland, and a member of the International Toy Research Association, agrees that while any Lego tech will likely be as safe as possible, there is still cause for concern. \u201cThere has been a lot of conversation about \u2018internet of toys\u2019 and the risk of hacking into these systems, especially with AI. I can see a similar threat being introduced with hackers spying for opportunities to hack everyday items,\u201d she says. \u201cLego will have done its utmost trying to make this not happen once these toys get in use, but the threat is looming.\u201d<\/p>\n