A Bill Gates Wet Dream Come To Life

Oh, yeah, you can see what this kind of story does to Bill Gates' pants:

In a handful of laboratories around the world, computer scientists are developing robots like this one: highly programmed machines that can engage people and teach them simple skills, including household tasks, vocabulary or, as in the case of the boy, playing, elementary imitation and taking turns.

So far, the teaching has been very basic, delivered mostly in experimental settings, and the robots are still works in progress, a hackers’ gallery of moving parts that, like mechanical savants, each do some things well at the expense of others.

Yet the most advanced models are fully autonomous, guided by artificial intelligence software like motion tracking and speech recognition, which can make them just engaging enough to rival humans at some teaching tasks.

Researchers say the pace of innovation is such that these machines should begin to learn as they teach, becoming the sort of infinitely patient, highly informed instructors that would be effective in subjects like foreign language or in repetitive therapies used to treat developmental problems like autism.

Several countries have been testing teaching machines in classrooms. South Korea, known for its enthusiasm for technology, is “hiring” hundreds of robots as teacher aides and classroom playmates and is experimenting with robots that would teach English.

Already, these advances have stirred dystopian visions, along with the sort of ethical debate usually confined to science fiction. “I worry that if kids grow up being taught by robots and viewing technology as the instructor,” said Mitchel Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “they will see it as the master.”

Think about this - replacing the human teacher with a Microsoft robot in every classroom in the land.

No more teachers unions, no more work rules, no more lunch breaks, no more sick days, no need to pay the robots or provide health care or retirement benefits.

HOLY SHIT, MELINDA, I THINK WE GOT SOMETHING!!!!

BTW, this is the kind of "innovation" that also makes politicians like Bloomberg and Obama excited too.

Between the online classes and the teaching robots, we can make school all day long, all year long and never ever have to pay any human for any of it.

Except for the data trackers and Microsoft robot programmers, of course.

And a handful of educrats and curriculum developers.

But otherwise, this will be the most cost-effective "education reform" movement ever!

I have seen the future of public education and it is one scary fucking place.

Like something I saw in Disney's Tomorrowland while tripping on LSD back in college.

Blood, blood everywhere...