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]
posted July 19th 2009 4:57PM
40 years ago there was a song....."Ev'rything you think do and say is in the pill you took today."
I can remember the controversy when there were "machines" in school libraries that had to be used for particular students (back then we called them "special") that couldn't keep up with the curriclum. Little Johhny/Jane sat at an enclosed desk for an hour a day and listened to whatever lesson was on the audio tape. The earliest ones were reel to reel. The schools could handle more students daily when casettes were created. Most parents thought it was a great idea, and the teachers were freed up to work with the rest of the class.
These teacherbots are not going to be the sole instructors. Not any more than those old reel to reel tapes were. Children will immeadiately tune out some bot that is annoying. Just like they tune out an annoying human teacher. The bots will simply make teaching easier, and more challenging for the teachers themselves. And any school that thinks they will have exclusive bot teachers will need to deal with numerous teachers unions.
The issue of parents not dealing with their children is another topic entirely.