AI Barbie
Written by Peter Li-Chang Kuo ( Chinese ) Today, everyone talks about “ Artificial Intelligence ” (AI). What few people realize is that there was once a real opportunity of Mattel — over 30 years ago — for an “ AI Barbie ” to emerge. Fig 1: Barbie Doll in 1984 In the early 1980s, Mattel internally questioned whether Barbie could still be saved. The company attempted to pivot into remote-controlled toys in Hong Kong , but the effort failed. By chance, I was hired as a “ Specialist ” — not to save Barbie, but to confirm the trend of decline. However, on my very first day at “ MLT ” (Mattel Ltd. Taiwan), I redesigned a critical flaw: replacing the original three-piece leg armature — time-consuming, labor-intensive, and highly inhumane to assemble — with a simplified " Two-piece Leg Armature " design. This change eliminated cumbersome manual assembly, reduced defect rates, and I also freely provided a " Sliding-based Processing Machine " originally used for ...