{"id":306779,"date":"2026-07-27T17:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306779\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T17:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:27:10","slug":"new-york-school-district-halts-plan-to-use-humanoid-robot-amid-backlash-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306779\/","title":{"rendered":"New York school district halts plan to use humanoid robot amid backlash | New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New York<\/a> school district has walked back plans to introduce<\/a> a humanoid robot at its high school after the proposal sparked backlash from educators and community members.<\/p>\n

The Salamanca City Central school district announced on 24 July in a social media post that its pilot project with Toronto-based tech company Realbotix had been put on hold \u201cwhile we work through enhanced student data privacy agreements with the New York<\/a> State Education Department and continue engaging with our community and stakeholders\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnsuring that appropriate privacy protections are in place and incorporating input from our community are important parts of the process. We appreciate your patience and will share additional updates as they become available,\u201d added<\/a> the school district, which is located on the Seneca Nation reservation in upstate New York and serves a large Native American population.<\/p>\n

The reversal came after widespread criticism of the program, which would have brought a humanoid robot named Sally to Salamanca high school. According to<\/a> a Realbotix press release issued in June, the approximately $58,000 robot with silicone skin and brown hair was intended to use \u201cnatural conversation, facial expressions and real-time interaction to create engaging, hands-on learning experiences\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe robot aims to encourage student participation and provide early exposure to emerging technologies,\u201d the company also said.<\/p>\n

A little more than two years before Friday\u2019s announcement, Realbotix acquired Simulacra, a Las Vegas-based company that manufactures sex dolls.<\/p>\n

The New York State United Teachers union had condemned the plans calling for high schoolers to be taught by a humanoid robot.<\/p>\n

\u201cA robot built by a company associated with sex dolls has no business in our classrooms,\u201d Melinda Person, the union president, said<\/a> in a 23 July statement.<\/p>\n

Person added: \u201cOur students don\u2019t need robots. They need real relationships with caring adults. Educators notice when students are struggling, celebrate when they succeed and help them discover who they can become. No robot can do that, no matter how lifelike its skin or specific its regional accent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lacey Pihlblad, the president of the Salamanca Teachers\u2019 Association and a teacher at the high school, also criticized the proposal, saying<\/a>: \u201cThe Salamanca teachers\u2019 union as a whole is concerned about the background of the company of Realbotix. We\u2019re very concerned about the security of the software that they\u2019re implementing, and whether or not the data will be stored, how it will be gathered, [and] the recording capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other educators also questioned why the pilot program was being launched at a school serving a large Native American population.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Guardian recently, Sierra May Abrams, a substitute teacher at Salamanca high school, said: \u201cOut of all the schools in New York state, let alone in the US, they chose to experiment on Native American children yet again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abrams alluded to the history of brutality at Native American boarding schools in the US and said: \u201cOur culture is struggling to stay alive due to the<\/a> impact<\/a> of<\/a> [that<\/a>] and what they did to our elders. We live on the only reservation located in a city so it\u2019s just absolutely insane that we\u2019re the ones \u2018testing it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the Salamanca district\u2019s decision to pause the program, Realbotix\u2019s CEO, Andrew Kiguel, told<\/a> New York Focus: \u201cWe fully respect any decision the school makes and encourage thorough due diligence by all parties involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the program to be demonstrably safe, fully district-approved, and strongly supported by teachers \u2026 We stand firmly behind [the program] as a supportive tool designed to assist teachers and students, not replace them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New York school district has walked back plans to introduce a humanoid robot at its high school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-306779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}