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AI can one day replace teachers. China has used algorithms to create tutoring lessons and monitor student progress to detect when students aren’t paying attention. Using facial recognition technology, some high schools in China have used cameras to scan students’ faces for facial expression, as well as recording actions of students like reading, listening, raising hands, or leaning on a desk. The technology has been used to impose consequences, enforce expectations, make less mistakes, and impose any type of rule that would make the most effective teachers.
As a first-year special education high school teacher, I take that implication very abrasively, and almost offensively. It’s not only like the livelihood of teachers would be under threat, like automation replacing manufacturing jobs, but AI in the classroom completely neglects the role of human relationships, and the role we teachers have with our students that technology simply can’t replicate.
Was AI there when our students had problems at home? Was AI there when our students overcame their fears of reading out loud in class? Was AI there when the lightbulb went off in their heads and the content finally clicked…
