Let intelligent robot help with the education for kids

With the technology developing, new worries have been emerging continuously, and one of them is whether we should let robots teach our kids. As the capabilities of smart software and artificial intelligence advance, parents, teachers, teachers’ unions and the children themselves will all have stakes in the outcome.

The pioneer in intelligent educational robot so far is, not surprisingly, Singapore. The city-state has begun experiments with robotic aides at the kindergarten level, mostly as instructor aides and for reading stories and also teaching social interactions. In other countries like China and the UK, researchers are trying to apply robots help autistic children better learn how to interact with their peers.

A big debate today is how we can teach ourselves to work with artificial intelligence, so as to prevent eventual widespread technological unemployment. Exposing children to intelligent robots for education early, and having them grow accustomed to human-machine interaction, is one path toward this important goal. While, in a recent Financial Times interview, Sherry Turkle, a professor of social psychology at MIT, and a leading expert on cyber interactions, criticized robot education that the robot can never be in an authentic relationship.

Sanbot Elf is a highly artificial intelligent robot and one of its application industries is education. No matter preschool education at home for mother language or foreign language learning, autism therapy treatment, the programmable robots for education is equal to all of these. In addition, equipped with advanced hardware, the robot is capable of remote education, school or class check-in/check-out and more in education. Sanbot Elf has been performed class education and activities in the school in Netherlands, the UK and China.

Keep in mind that robot instructors are going to come through toys and the commercial market in any case, whether schools approve or not. Is it so terrible an idea for some of those innovations to be supervised by, and combined with, the efforts of teachers and the educational establishment?

One of the biggest concerns about robotics education in school, by the way, involves humans. Children sometimes trust robots too much. Teachers and administrators could use robots to gather confidential information about children and their families, as the children may think they are talking to a robot only, rather than creating a database for future scrutiny. This could be addressed by comprehensive privacy standards, probably a good idea in any case.

It is an inevitable trend that robots are going to various industries and application scenarios with the technology developing faster and better, and going mature. And robot for education is also inevitable and unavoidable. At the same time, the robot will be assisting human with education, not replacing their jobs. Why not open your heart and let the intelligent robot education your children?