If you were a charter school with a cool half a million to drop, what would you spend it on? Budgeting for multiple new teachers? Perhaps expanding your curriculum or purchasing new teaching materials? Funding some sort of overseas trip to broaden your students\u2019 horizons? Capital expenditure on your campus? Scholarships for underprivileged kids?<\/p>\n
If you answered any of the above, that\u2019s why you\u2019re not running a charter school. The correct answer is \u201cbuying two humanoid robots to lurk in your classrooms and function as fancy mouthpieces for ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or, at least, that\u2019s what San Diego charter school chain Altus Schools has decided. According to local news site Voice of San Diego<\/a>, the school has spent $500,000 on two Ameca robots, a model described<\/a> by its manufacturer, British-based company Engineered Arts,\u00a0 as \u201cthe world\u2019s most advanced social humanoid robot.\u201d The Ameca\u2014which looks like a cross between Natalie Portman in Ex Machina and the sadly underutilized shape-changing android Kamelion<\/a> from Fifth Doctor-era Doctor Who\u2014apparently features \u201c61 actuated degrees of freedom, allowing for natural and lifelike movements\u201d and \u201ca sophisticated communication system [that] enables multilingual conversations with advanced voice synthesis and personalization options for engaging human-robot interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n The story is even wilder than it looks at first glance, too, because Voice of San Diego also acquired an email<\/a> from the school\u2019s principal Cathryn Rambo, in which she professes to be \u201cthrilled to be the first school in the world researching the use of physical AI as a teaching partner,\u201d going on to explain that \u201cthis initiative is part of a research study examining how AI can enhance student engagement and learning outcomes,\u201d and that \u201cwe plan to have Ameca onsite until Fall 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n So, wait: what is this $500,000 actually getting the school? Engineered Arts\u2019 site doesn\u2019t provide a price for the Ameca, instead inviting potential buyers to request a quote, but this review<\/a> puts the price at between $100,000 and $500,000, depending on configuration. If Altus is spending $500,000 on two robots, they\u2019re costing $250,000 each, which sounds like it should be enough for a purchase\u2014in which case, why are they only onsite for a few months? And whatever the cost, why is Altus paying six figures to provide data for a study? What is\u00a0this study? Who\u2019s conducting it?<\/p>\n Financial and ethical considerations aside, you might also find yourself wondering what the robots actually do. The answer appears to be that they function as a mouthpiece for a restricted version of ChatGPT. This, of course, raises the question of whether LLMs should be anywhere near a classroom, especially given that some experts are calling for<\/a> an immediate ban on chatbot use by children.<\/p>\n