A rural upstate New York school district will be one of the first in the nation to bring a humanoid robot into the classroom.
The Salamanca City Central School District, located on Seneca Nation territory, will be introducing $57,000 AI-powered “Sally” in high school classes in September as a teaching assistant, it announced last week.
“Sally” will have brown hair, latex skin and will be able to move its arms and hands — but won’t be able to cruise around the classroom since her legs don’t move.
“It’s exciting but also a bit nerve wracking,” superintendent Dr. Mark Beehler told The Post of the first of its kind pilot program, a partnership with Las Vegas-based company Realbotix Corporation.
“Not everyone is open to much change in education…There was a point in time where people argued ‘Why do teachers need email accounts?’ or ‘Do we really need to have the internet in school?’ This is the next iteration of that. And the reality is, AI is already in schools,” he said.
For now, Sally is scheduled to be in 11th and 12th graders at Salamanca High School where she will take a byte out of coding, robotic, and artificial intelligence classes.
To make Sally more approachable, she’ll feature a western New York accent — similar to Buffalo native Gov. Kathy Hochul — at the behest of the school district.
“We don’t really hear the accent. We think it sounds neutral,” Beehler joked.
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Desensitizing children, indoctrinating them. Of course this robot will be programmed with teachers union values, so don’t think this will be any improvement.