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A Rural New York School Will Put a Humanoid Robot in a US Classroom This Fall · Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

• 0:00
  [Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, where the future shows up to homeroom. Fox News reported this week that a rural New York school district is putting a humanoid robot in a K-12 classroom this fall.
• 0:13
  [Guest] The district is Salamanca, up in Cattaraugus County on Seneca Nation land. The robot's named Sally, built by a company called Realbotix, a fifty-seven-thousand-dollar machine that arrives this September.
• 0:24
  [Host] A robot named Sally in a public school. Is she teaching the kids, or is this just a headline for the local paper?
• 0:33
  [Guest] The district's careful here. Sally supports teachers, she doesn't replace them, and she starts inside the high school AI and robotics classes, not the kindergarten reading circle.
• 0:43
  [Host] So the robot is the subject of the lesson, not the substitute teacher.
• 0:48
  [Guest] Right. The kids work through a curriculum built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, aimed at high-demand tech jobs. Sally is the lab equipment they learn on.
• 0:58
  [Host] I'll be honest, my first instinct is to keep the machine out and hire another human teacher.
• 1:05
  [Guest] Fair, but the superintendent, Mark Beehler, has a real reason. He said banning AI is the lazy answer, because students just route around the ban, so the school's job is teaching them to use it well.
• 1:18
  [Host] I can't argue with that. Every district that blocked ChatGPT watched kids use it on their phones in the parking lot.
• 1:26
  [Guest] So Salamanca isn't claiming a robot teaches better. It's betting these kids graduate into a world full of humanoids, and shouldn't meet their first one at a job interview.
• 1:37
  [Host] Here's my worry though. Beehler said if the pilot works, they'll expand to other grades. How long before "assist the teacher" quietly turns into "we need fewer teachers"?
• 1:48
  [Guest] That's the honest tension, and nobody automates a whole job on day one. You bring the machine in as a helper, watch for years what it can actually do, and the budget fight comes much later.
• 2:02
  [Host] And every lesson she runs is really them recording what a classroom robot can and can't handle.
• 2:08
  [Guest] That data is the real asset, and Sally isn't a one-off. TrendForce expects over fifty thousand humanoids to ship worldwide this year, up sevenfold, moving off factory floors into schools and homes.
• 2:20
  [Host] There's a bigger claim underneath this, and the vendor's making it, not the school. What's Realbotix selling?
• 2:27
  [Guest] Their CEO, Andrew Kiguel, told GovTech the classroom was largely designed over a hundred years ago, for a world that's gone, and Sally drags it forward.
• 2:37
  [Host] That's the man selling the robot telling schools they're obsolete. Why should I buy the diagnosis from him?
• 2:44
  [Guest] Because the history backs him, even if the sales pitch is self-serving. Rows of desks and bells were built to turn farm kids into punctual, obedient factory workers. Compliance was the whole point.
• 2:56
  [Host] Which is the one thing a machine already does better than any kid.
• 3:01
  [Guest] That's the trap. We spent generations training children to follow instructions precisely, and now software does it for free. So when Sally can run the drill, the drill stops being the job.
• 3:13
  [Host] So what's the kid actually there for?
• 3:16
  [Guest] The things Sally can't do: settling a fight between two teenagers, judgment, figuring out what you want to build.
• 3:23
  [Host] So the real curriculum isn't beating the robot. It's learning what's left that's ours.
• 3:29
  [Guest] And that's the question Salamanca just handed a few hundred kids a year early.
• 3:34
  [Host] It's what Patrick Deglon calls, in his book Unscarcity, the shift from schooling for employment to schooling for citizenship, learning to build your world instead of just sell your labor.
• 3:45
  [Guest] For more on the future of education and where humanoid robots head next, go to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.