Will Robots Teach Our Kids? The Homeschool Question Nobody’s Asking

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Thought That Stops You Cold

Once robots are in our homes—comforting our children, serving as confidants, becoming trusted companions—parents will face a question that sounds absurd until you think about it for thirty seconds:

Why not let the robot teach them too?

If I had kids and home robots became available, my first thought would be exactly that: I’d homeschool them and let the robot handle the teaching. I spent my life as an entrepreneur. My kids grew up watching that life, absorbing those values through osmosis. A robot could formalize that education, right?

But the moment that thought formed, my wife Deb started asking questions, and a cascade of other questions rushed in—questions that don’t have easy answers and reveal why robot teachers represent something far more complex than automated instruction.

Continue reading… “Will Robots Teach Our Kids? The Homeschool Question Nobody’s Asking”

The Most Valuable People in 2040 will Be… Irreducibly Human

By Futurist Thomas Frey

By 2040, the most valuable people in society are not the engineers who built the machines—but the humans who remember why they were built in the first place. As artificial intelligence conquers cognition, optimization, and automation, the premium shifts from technical intelligence to existential intelligence. The winning skill set is not about doing what AI does faster or cheaper—it’s about mastering what remains irreducibly human.

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Keeping robots friendly: Meet the woman teaching AI about human values

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Anca Dragan has a cool name, an impressive CV and an important job. While many roboticists focus on making AI better, faster and smarter, Dragan is also concerned about robot quality control. In anticipation of robots moving into every area of our lives, she wants to ensure our interactions with robots are positive ones. The computer scientist and robotics engineer is a principal investigator with UC Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible AI. “One particular area of interest is the problem of value alignment,” says Dragan. “How do you ensure that an artificially intelligent agent–be it a robot a few years from now or a much more capable agent in the future–how do you make sure that these agents optimize the right objectives? How do we teach them to optimize what we actually want optimized?”

Continue reading… “Keeping robots friendly: Meet the woman teaching AI about human values”

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