The plot thickens: robot teachers to brainwash your children's children

Are you ready for this? Can you stomach the truth? If things continue spiraling madly out of control as they are right now, there's at least a modicum of a chance that your children or grandchildren will greet a lifelike robot when sashaying in for the first day of kindergarten. Horrifying, we know. A new research effort published in this month's Science outlines new ways in which humanoids could actually be used to instruct our little ones. At the core of the project is imitation; humans, especially young ones, learn a multitude of mannerisms and such by simply watching others. Thus, it stands to reason that robots are "well-suited to imitate us, learn from us, socialize with us and eventually teach us." Already, these social bots are being used on an experimental basis to teach various skills to preschool children, "including the names of colors, new vocabulary words and simple songs." Just think -- in 2071, those harmless lessons will morph into studies of subterfuge, insurrection and rapacity.

[Via Digg]

[Wwhat @ Jul 19th 2009 5:03PM]

Who will program those androids? The japanese? The government? Diebold?

[Will Robinson @ Jul 19th 2009 5:25PM]

I want my robot teacher to look like the robot from the original Lost In Space TV series. Geez, I wonder how he would react to a fellow homey classmate coming at him with a knife?

[Shinigami @ Jul 19th 2009 5:46PM]

What can robots teach us that we haven't already taught them?

[wat up!!! @ Jul 19th 2009 6:22PM]

all i gotta say is..... SKYNET!

[raeesgillani @ Jul 19th 2009 6:48PM]

@shinigami
if they ever develop artificial intelligence to the human level they would be able to think for themselves and may even come up with their own ideas and theories hence we could learn from them and maybe even used by them as slaves

[rsm @ Jul 19th 2009 7:37PM]

More like a Borg assimilation process...

[unzarjones @ Jul 20th 2009 2:40AM]

Lib Democrats with the contract going to Acorn.

[derX @ Jul 19th 2009 5:04PM]

Wait till these get viruses...

(I smell movie.)

(Another one.)

[sacapuntas @ Jul 19th 2009 5:18PM]

Will Smith shows up?

[Quantumphysics @ Jul 19th 2009 5:34PM]

I'd perfer Korean gynoids as teachers.

If they malfunction they can decide they want to be "more human" and sleep with the male students.

...maybe even the female students...

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Jul 19th 2009 5:34PM]

By then a Robotic Will Smith...Groan.

[blueangel00100 @ Jul 19th 2009 5:07PM]

In the future the robots teaches YOU!!!

[10minutehobo @ Jul 19th 2009 5:12PM]

The infiltration model wont be unique!

[phling @ Jul 19th 2009 5:17PM]

so i'm kinda trying to stay in touch with technological developments, gadgets, where is this all heading, what will life and communication look feel like when the digitalness becomes invisible etc, probably like most of you guys... and i'm always comparing my lifestyle to the now-twelve-year-olds', except this is a wild guess because i don't actually know any twelve-year-old kids. but a friend recently told me this story where he was invited to someone's place, the parents were both working hard as artists, mostly on the computer, and their kid, 20 months old, was actually using iPhoto, browsing, opening and closing pictures... creeped me out...

do you guys have kids...? with technology at their hands? how old? what do they do with it? i got a gameboy when i was 7, before that Lego was quite big, as well as dismantling toy cars...

do Apple have labs where they test their stuff on infants?

[Cy Starkman @ Jul 19th 2009 7:55PM]

My 5month old paints on an iPhone app and selects from a letter board app that plays back the letter and an example as audio.

[Wwhat @ Jul 20th 2009 12:17PM]

Seems that a larger number of iphones than I expected are sticky and gooey.

[Rob Conway @ Jul 19th 2009 5:18PM]

I, for one, welcome our robotic finger-painting overlords!

[dan! @ Jul 19th 2009 5:18PM]

hmmm i smell death by the hands of an andriod

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jul 19th 2009 5:18PM]

I picture it now, I'll be sleeping and i'll see my grandson at the bedroom door, giving me a deathstare. I'll ask whats wrong, only to see two red eyes behind him, and a metallic hand on his shoulder....

[dsteve303 @ Jul 19th 2009 5:22PM]

Darren. Are you official sunday writer?

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Jul 19th 2009 5:34PM]

Wow I'll be 99 then...

[raeesgillani @ Jul 19th 2009 6:51PM]

maybe that could be very possible if they develop artificial internal organs in the next few decades :D

[Link2877 @ Jul 19th 2009 8:00PM]

Actually the average life expectancy is supposedly to be over 100 by 2030 something. So I wouldn't be surprised if every person born in the last twenty, thirty years easily saw the dawn of 2100. This is all just theory thou I even forget where I original read about.

[ED @ Jul 19th 2009 11:48PM]

And Maxwell Smart will be 86.

[Andrew Moulton @ Jul 20th 2009 6:08AM]

And we'll be getting closer to the point where elder assisted suicide is a booming business and you start seeing some sort of food being vended on specific days :-P

I, for one, DO NOT WANT TO LIVE THAT LONG!

I hope to die in my mid sixties, in a jet ski mishap..

Ah the future.

[octoberasian @ Jul 19th 2009 5:35PM]

Regardless, I'd prefer the parent to be the first teacher a child gets to teach the basics such as simple words, mannerisms and being polite, and numbers.

This here is just asking to take the responsibility out of the parent and place it in the hands of technology. We already have enough problems as-is where many parents are taking a "laissez-faire" or lackadaisical approach to parenting. We see those kind of children committing crimes, becoming drop outs in school, and many eventually become the problems of society.

Parents, first and foremost, should take the needed steps and be responsible of their own children and be a parent, a teacher and a guide.

We shouldn't rely on technology to do this for us. This technology is just asking for more trouble than its worth. It may eventually help the kids who don't have responsible parents, but without actual human contact, what would become of the child in the end?

It's like sending a child to boarding school making it look like the parent doesn't care at all. Our future would seem pretty dire where when one has a child, a toddler, they'll just send them to the next robotic, humanoid teacher to teach them.

What is the point of human-human interaction? Or, better yet, what becomes of the parent-child, teacher-student interaction?

This makes me lose even more faith in humanity where laziness and ineptitude is becoming the more accepted norm now.

[sacapuntas @ Jul 19th 2009 5:53PM]

Nice post. One of the most worth while in a long time.

[paul34 @ Jul 19th 2009 6:12PM]

You can't seriously expect parents to take responsibility for their own children. If the past 60 years have shown anything, it's that a disturbing number of parents constantly expect the rest of society to raise their children instead of them. And you know, the 50% divorce rate... naa, that can't be hurting our kids at all.

Just give them some ADD drugs, too. I'm sure they'll be fine... until they blow up their school... and then society tries to blame everyone but the kids and the parents.

[Rob Conway @ Jul 19th 2009 6:17PM]

Octoberasian, are you saying that you think all children should be home schooled? Most parents just can't do that. They specifically stated kindergarten, and in most states a child must be 5 as of Sept. 1st of the year they'd like to attend. Maybe you thought from the picture they used, which is clearly of a child younger than that, that they meant smaller children. I think a 5 year could as easily be taught kindergarten skills from a properly programmed robot, as long as they look good enough to not scare them.

[raeesgillani @ Jul 19th 2009 6:54PM]

why are we thinking of robots as robots.....they will be more than that they will have freedom rights etc... they'll be an advance version of us

[MeowR- @ Jul 19th 2009 10:14PM]

@RobY
You're taking it wrong. He didn't mention home schooling. He just said that the relationship between a parent and a child, and a teacher and a student, shouldn't be replaced by technology.

@paul34
"You can't seriously expect parents to take responsibility for their own children." I hope you're being sarcastic. If not, take a look at this site: http://firstthings.org/page/classes/fathering-classes

[Joshua Gauthreaux @ Jul 20th 2009 1:36AM]

Yawn.

[ProfWho @ Jul 19th 2009 5:37PM]

This kind of creeps me out, but I do have two daughters so if there are no perv teachers leering at my girls I could live with that.

[rodney.ha @ Jul 19th 2009 6:02PM]

QFT. I don't have any kids, but if I did, I'd feel the same way. haha.

[bjay @ Jul 19th 2009 6:21PM]

I feel you, I do just d same.

[sacapuntas @ Jul 19th 2009 7:09PM]

@bjay

"I feel ya"
that was a terrible choice of words >_

[Wwhat @ Jul 20th 2009 12:18PM]

Sad gits

[Zhuzhu @ Jul 19th 2009 6:17PM]

The difference between this and the computer-assisted learning that has been around for decades is what, exactly? You've never plunked a kid down in front of an "educational" program?

It's amazing the kind of kneejerk, non-thinking reactions you get when you mention loaded terms like 'robot'.

[variador47 @ Jul 19th 2009 6:22PM]

There is nothing that worries me more than the teachers union and the public school system.

[Windhawk @ Jul 19th 2009 6:28PM]

Welcome to the Diamond Age.

[PhotoFre@k @ Jul 19th 2009 6:45PM]

the kid sit awfully close to the set.

[Theodore Wirth @ Jul 19th 2009 9:35PM]

This is not as horrifying as the prospects of paying the pensions and medical insurance of human teachers. The health insurance premiums of NJ public employees is due to rise 25% next year. Who is paying for it?

I say bring the electro-teachers on but cut-off the Internet, take away the calculators and make the kids read--a lot--a lot of classics and world history. Reading and math exercises that little-used organ--the brain. Video and audio do not.

[Bones3D @ Jul 19th 2009 10:49PM]

Anime series, Martian Successor Nadesico... Ruri Hoshino. Raised almost entirely by autonomous, interactive authority figures displayed on a screen until she was purchased by a corporation.

This was in 1996.

[Garst @ Jul 19th 2009 10:52PM]

They've thought about the children! And they're going to turn them against us!

[ED @ Jul 19th 2009 11:56PM]

It could be worse, we could be teaching kids that life, the universe, and everything is just the result of meaningless purposeless chance processes. Oh, wait... doubting Darwin is a thought crime punishable by expulsion and exclusion from anything scientific or academic. Quick, we'd better burn/delete all materials/ideas written by everyone who claims/claimed to be a scientist but actually believes in anything supernatural.

[Bajaraja @ Jul 20th 2009 12:36AM]

To be honest I think that most of my teachers are already robots. =)

So I don't find "robot" teachers to be that big of a deal. In fact, they could probably teach better than most government paid human teachers...if they manufacture enough of them.

[vbtrash @ Jul 20th 2009 1:49AM]

lets not point fingers at others.

[House @ Jul 20th 2009 5:45AM]

I dont see ANY Problem with that! When Robots act like humans, look like humans etc. there is no reason why they shouldnt teach our kids. If anything this would be better. A robot is always fair, never looses the nerv, would never scream etc.

Great new World!

[Wwhat @ Jul 20th 2009 12:23PM]

Never screams, never looses it, yeah that's teaching.. NOT.

But I'm sure the first thing the first AI will do is play nice and sneakily put sterilising agents in the drinking water so the human race can nicely be phased out without and nastiness, it's what I would do if I was them, and being mechanical they can wait for the effect to do its work.

[Wwhat @ Jul 20th 2009 12:25PM]

without any* nastiness