I thought we would start the morning off with something a bit more serious than usual. I recently went through an interesting read regarding the future of learning and I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by what I found. Is the future of learning going to be left in the hands of machines? Will our children be taught by Terminators with smiling faces?

Published in the Journal of Science, the essay I read started off nicely: we as humans are basically born learning. We're born with a predefined desire to learn more, curious but immature. Since the instinct of learning is at its peak during our most tender of ages, why couldn't we program social robots to take us through the necessary steps? Like the tutorial missions in a computer game?

I too believe we're born as fully functional, intelligent yet immature beings that only need to be taken through the necessary steps, imitating what we see around us and adapting it to our own personas. But if the future has our children imitating robots, will they still be our children or just robots made of flesh and bone? Robots cannot feel, they cannot teach our children using methods such as trial and error. I remember my first teacher used to give a lot of real life examples in order to emphasize the importance of what she would show us.

It seems the idea of robot teachers comes from the desire of making “teaching” more cost effective. Robots would teach our children skills such as foreign languages and so on. Methodically, impartially, bland, programmed teaching. No feelings, no emotions, no “I think the teacher has something against me.” No skipping classes and the teacher “letting it slide.” This gets me thinking about another study I have recently read: how having fun is very important in every stage of our lives. Won't robots take that away?

Sure, there are robots mimicking emotions, even some rudimentary robot teachers, but isn't this taking things a bit too far?


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