Kristina Murkett
When it comes to technology in schools, we seem to be less in Uncanny Valley than some sort of nightmare cave. A school in Salamanca, New York is a humanoid robot as an AI teaching assistant, which supposedly uses ‘natural conversation, facial expressions and real-time interaction to create engaging, hands-on learning experiences.’
Why must a child’s future now be assumed to be digital by default? How can parents enforce healthy boundaries when the very institutions educating our children are normalising constant device use?
‘Sally’ was purchased by the school district for $60,000 from a company called Realbotix, who two years ago acquired Simulacra, a Las Vegas-based company known for making realistic sex dolls. The Black Mirror episodes write themselves nowadays.
Aside from the obvious ethical and safeguarding issues of putting teenagers in front of a lifeless machine, who really thought that this was the best possible use of limited school funds? (I would hazard a guess that the teachers at this school still have to buy their own tissues and pencils.)
