This blog site addresses some truly terrifying stories from plagues to economic meltdown to genocide. However, nothing quite prepared me for this: the invention of a robot teacher. This brown-haried, cog-filled Cyborg vixen is a threat to all that American holds dear — and threatening the beloved host of this blog with the prospect of having to earn a living through hard labor.
The Japanese have unleashed a vicious attack on academics everywhere with the release of Saya, a demon-like robot who can teach without pay, delay, complaint, illness, or fatigue. Worse yet, unlike most of us who insist on updating our teaching notes no sooner than every 20 years, this roboprof can be updated with a simple download.
For years, I have been advocating research into robot students who could go school, never graduate, work to pay tuition and look adoringly as we teach. However, it never occurred to me that they would replace the professor. After all, the whole point of education is the employment of professors and their well-being.
The Dr. Strangelove of this story is Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and Saya’s developer, who insists “Robots that look human tend to be a big hit with young children and the elderly. Children even start crying when they are scolded.”
Worse yet, schools can purchase these things for $51,000 — a one-time cost without medical, tenure, or faculty meetings. Just a little oil and occasional downloads. We will be left with our dean overlords and their army of roboprofs. This video from one such law school is chilling.
For the story, click here.
I can imagine a robot history teacher who could not tell lies. The myths of American exceptionalism foisted on students many years ago by allegedly human teachers would never have been uttered by the robot.
And ‘history by Hollywood’ only made things worse.
lol
I win.
I think you’re all forgetting gay-robot-atheist-pot-smoking-tree-hugging-granola-eating-Satan-worshiping-Koran-reading-abortion-giving-folk-singing-gun-stealing-tax-raising-birth-certificate-hiding-communist-anti-Christ-presidents.
You’re welcome, lotta. One lives to be of service. Glad you liked the book.
Dredd, I visited your site and your posting was interesting. A poster here, Mike Spinell I believe (and if it was not I apologize for getting the attribution wrong because I’m in your debt for a good book) recommended the book “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot to me. I’m getting through it and it’s fascinating. It is a window into some of the questions you (mind v brain) raise on your blog entry. If you haven’t read it you might find it interesting.
All I know about AI is: ‘Colossus, The Forbin Project’ = bad; Arnold as Terminator = outstanding, I want one; HAL via 2010 = awwww.
Ah … let the AI debates begin once again:
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/02/evolution-we-can-believe-in.html
BIL: “I for one welcome our new robot overlords no matter their sexual or musical proclivities.”
Since resistance is futile I want one that looks like the original Arnold Terminator model. Oh yea’. 🙂
Buddha You wrote:An even greater threat?
Gay robot atheists
Why the only threat that could be more dire than that are gay robot atheist folk singers. When they get the right to marry the world will be overrun by machine copies of Peter, Paul & Mary nee Marvin.
It’s a slippery slope into damnation.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords no matter their sexual or musical proclivities.
me: silly people. gay robot atheist commie folk singers of color are a why bigger threat.
who cares abut robot teachers anyway. I am certain my 5th grade teacher was a robot. I saw the wires one day when I was late leaving the class for recess.
I survived robot teachers. anyone can.
What are humans?
As my hero, the late, great, “the Good Doctor” Isaac Asimov might say, “They are violating the first law!
On the site VOTED THE #1 LEGAL THEORY AND LAW PROFESSOR BLOG OF THE TOP 100 LEGAL BLOGS BY THE ABA JOURNAL™©, we must always focus on the law, and the Three Law Robotics expressly provide:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
No Arnold jokes yet?
I fully T(eacher)-800 models in California kindergarten classrooms within five years.
This is humor. Humor is distracting. Distraction hinders learning. You will be eliminated.
(This is not a threat. Nothing in this message is intended to incite anyone to do anything.)
An even greater threat?
Gay robot atheists
Why the only threat that could be more dire than that are gay robot atheist folk singers. When they get the right to marry the world will be overrun by machine copies of Peter, Paul & Mary nee Marvin.
It’s a slippery slope into damnation.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords no matter their sexual or musical proclivities.
Fortunately, the fundamentalists can ‘rearrange’ robotic parts to follow the christian way of reproductive compliance. Gay robots need not apply or ‘assemble’.
I suppose gay robot marriage is out.
I would gladly concede if the robots all looked like my exceptionally ‘feminine’ 1960s 10th grade high school English teacher, Ms. X.
However, I bet the robots will all favor my collegiate Ph.D. English Literature male teacher, the exceptionally ‘effeminate’ Mr. ‘Strange’.
Yes mespo,
And those robots had tenure even then! As we all know, robots have wanted to eliminate humans since their enception. This robot looks innocent enough now, but wait until the laser beam comes out of her head to destroy anyone who objects to her lesson plan! The students will come crawling back to people like JT, but by then, he’ll be in the robot camps with his chimp chip implant, drooling over the rocks he just broke up. Indeed, the future is bleak!
That’s nothing new. I had a few robotic professors during my undergrad years in the 1970’s–mostly in the science and math classes. Maybe they all were.
I believe that this is part of that fashionable new trend aimed at the complete elimination of empathy. That probably means that the next generation of robots will be employed as judges.