It's doing my Central Processing Unit in

A review of recent readings about automation and artificial intelligence’s perceived future impact on daily life and learning in schools. No robots were harmed in the creation of this article.

As a University of Buckingham Ed.D student, perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this article, since according to the vice-chancellor, Sir Anthony Seldon himself, “Inspirational robots will replace teachers within 10 years.”

I grew up obsessed with technology and computers. I watched RoboCop, then bought the computer game. I loved “Short Circuit”, a film about a robot who becomes a man’s best friend. “The Cat from Outer Space” was just one of the best ways I could imagine spending a Sunday morning, had I not been weekly dragged to my father’s Baptist Church. Star Trek, Star Wars, even Red Dwarf when I was slightly older, they enraptured me and I was convinced that I would be at least captain of my own spaceship one day, or even possibly a fully-qualified time-traveller. I assumed that by this stage in my life I’d almost certainly be using the hoverboards from “Back to the Future”, but alas.

However, much in the way that one should be a socialist in one’s 20s and a conservative thereafter, I wonder am I just falling into the cynical trap of early middle age, in saying that I just don’t get the hype about robots? I don’t really consider myself that old-fashioned, in fact I teach coding using JavaScript and HTML, CSS and so on to my own students, and am looking to implement a meaningful programme of Robotics at school. But I just am not buying this ongoing determination to surrender the future of our planet to the control of very advanced circuit boards.

“Robots are already replacing human workers at an alarming rate,” apparently, and we are approaching “the coming of a Second Machine Age…”. Perhaps more concerning, by 2027 there should be a robot capable of winning the World Series of Poker. I searched to find an a few estimates of percentages of jobs at risk from being taken over by automation, in order to calculate an average. However, what I uncovered was a nuclear-arms-race-style of reporting, with articles and studies seemingly attempting to outdo each other in terms of who could predict the largest and most serious impending apocalypse for humanity. Numbers across studies ranged from 30% up to 80% of jobs being non-existent for humans within 50 years, and that this would change everything and render almost all human life pointless. The Institute of Fiscal Studies even claimed that the minimum wage should not be raised because “The ease of automation... actually rises as one climbs the income scale,” and therefore more expensive workers will naturally cause employers to look to invest in automated systems and undertake redundancies.

I can’t help but feel that the worldwide message we are intended to understand is that, in general, we’re all doomed; there will be no more work and all enjoyable activities will be performed better by machines. Ultimately, schools are currently preparing children for a world which doesn’t exist yet, and even then, when schools are changed to become more useful for students of the future, it won’t be me or my colleagues teaching them anyway because robots will replace teachers. They’ll also do it better than us, too:

“What we think of as a teacher’s role is going to evolve,” he explains. “At the moment, we deliver content and assess pupils but, as AI infiltrates classrooms, this will change. AI is developing so rapidly that, in the future, it will be able to detect, for example, the micro-expressions that pass across someone’s face when they are struggling to understand a concept, and will pick up on that and adapt a lesson to take account of it. No teacher can do that with 30 children per class. AI will also manage data for each pupil, ensuring that work is always pitched at exactly the right level for every student. Currently, that level of differentiation is impossible.”

We can expect:

• Virtual Mentors for every learner…
• Assistance with self-assessment and self-direction…
• Analysis of interaction data…
• Provide opportunities for global classrooms…
• Lifelong and lifewide technologies.

Now, too, an AI machine (“Todai Robot”) has managed to pass a University entrance exam, and in fact was within the top 20% of students who took the test. It is a conscious decision to write with a certain level of frustration and a touch of sarcasm here, because, among other things, I have just had to restart my computer for the second time since 8am (it is now 10.26) because it was failing to connect to the WiFi at school properly. The question in the tagline of the TEDtalk about a Todai Robot which at least lightened my mood somewhat was, “How can we help kids excel at the things that humans will always do better than AI?” Even when robots can now create art.

One piece of reading gave me reason to be cheerful. It was entitled “Robots will never replace teachers” and was a report on comments made by a Stephen Breslin at Glasgow Science Centre. He lists the essential qualities humans have that are essential for good teaching, which cannot be replicated by AI: empathy, a personal connection, help with communication skills, social skills, problem-solving strategies, and a knowledge of how to explore the creative process. He also claims that, “teachers will have to change the way they teach to keep pace with a fast-changing world of work, as “the key skills our young people are going to have to have [will be] based around creativity, communication, and innovative and entrepreneurial thinking.”

I couldn’t agree more, but equally these things should have always been high on the agenda of good schools anyway. Maybe this is the real threat from AI to teachers’ careers, that because of the publishing of league tables, teachers have been so focused on delivering exam results (which necessitates making children more robot-like) that their teaching is now easily replicated by robots. Returning to Sir Anthony, his insight that, "It will open up the possibility of an Eton or Wellington-style education for all,” is flawed, simply because those institutions (and other similar, highly-rated and expensive private schools) thrive on the rich culture within the walls of the school, or the music halls, or the sports fields, not the robotic teaching of facts to pass tests. Can the importance or value of table manners, or holding doors open, or helping up a friend who fell over, really be taught by a robot who doesn’t eat, can open its own doors, and doesn’t feel pain or shame when losing balance? I’m sure an understanding of these things can be simulated but there would be the emotional connection to the purpose behind them? A student hurriedly doing up their top button for fear of the robot using a scanning function to recognise incomplete uniform is nothing compared to a student doing it up for not wanting to upset a respected teacher in the corridors. Why should a robot change the style of lesson because some aren’t engaging with it? Why shouldn’t children be taught to engage no matter what their level of interest or energy, as most good schools expect (as will most of their future employers)?

Of course, I have to be critical in my thinking and ultimately ask the question of whether these “human” skills of empathy and personality are actually weaknesses for teachers. Honestly, if we are producing robot-style students who can all uniformly pass the same tests and repeat the same knowledge-based answers to lower-order questions then yes, these skills of emotional intelligence get in the way. But I don’t want to live like that; I want to ask children “Why?” and “How?” and see them struggle and persevere, and learn to think of things that have never been suggested before.

Can a robot replace a teacher? My answer: they can certainly be programmed to look and sound a lot like teachers, but I suspect they will never feel like a teacher. Relationships are at the core of meaningful learning and once that is removed and replaced with a circuit board, it isn’t teaching.