Context: The Salamanca City Central School District (upstate NY) planned to bring a humanlike AI robot — made by Realbotix, a company known for strikingly lifelike androids — into a classroom as a “teaching assistant.” After teachers called it “really inappropriate” and the state teachers’ union (NYSUT) publicly objected, the district paused the rollout. What I found interesting is that the objections weren’t generic “AI bad.” They were specific: the uncanny realism of a humanoid around kids, no guardrails on what it says to or collects from students, unclear accountability when it errs, and concern that “assistants” become a lever to reduce human staff. It’s also a useful case study in why deployment form factor matters. Schools already use AI software (tutoring, grading) with little fuss. Give the same AI a photorealistic human body and stand it near children, and the reaction flips — the medium changed the politics even though the underlying tech is similar. Sources + fuller writeup: https://thebotpost.com/ai-news/ny-school-pauses-ai-robot-teacher-realbotix-backlash Where do people here land — is a humanoid form factor a genuine safety/appropriateness concern for classrooms, or is the backlash mostly about the uncanny factor rather than the AI itself? submitted by /u/soulbeddu
Originally posted by u/soulbeddu on r/ArtificialInteligence