• 2 min read
School District Plans $57,590 AI Classroom Robot
A Western New York school district plans to spend $57,590 on Realbotix’s AI classroom robot Sally, raising data and teacher-replacement concerns.
Image: Gizmodo
Salamanca City Central School District in Western New York is reportedly preparing to spend $57,590 on “Sally,” an AI-driven classroom robot. The price is discounted from the robot’s $95,000 list price, according to TechSpot.
Like classroom robots recently reported at a San Diego charter school, Sally appears to function largely as a physical interface for a large language model. The case raises an obvious question: why spend tens of thousands of dollars on a robot when a laptop and internet connection could provide access to a chatbot?
Realbotix’s classroom robot and corporate history
Sally is manufactured by Realbotix, a company known as Tokens.com until May 2024. One month before the rebranding, Tokens.com acquired Simulacra Corporation, which is now known as Abyss Creations.
Realbotix’s website lists “Companionship” among its robots' use cases. Its marketing describes the products as a response to North America’s loneliness epidemic:
“Our robots and AI are ideal to tackle North America’s staggering loneliness epidemic.”
Abyss Creations manufactures RealDoll, a life-sized sex mannequin. Since at least 2018, the company has previewed an AI upgrade intended to turn the $6,000 product into a robotic companion that responds and evolves emotionally as well as physically.
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That connection does not establish that Sally has any sexual function. It does, however, add an unusual layer to the decision to place a Realbotix product in a school environment.
Data collection and teacher replacement concerns
The larger concern is what companies gain from putting robots in classrooms beyond the purchase or rental revenue. A classroom robot could potentially capture audio, video, or other information about students and teachers, raising questions about how that data is stored and used.
There is no claim here that Realbotix is using classroom data to train future AI systems. School administrators should nevertheless examine the robot’s end-user license agreement and related documentation carefully before deployment.
The possibility of classroom robots replacing teachers also remains unresolved. AI companies have already faced criticism for scraping material from across the internet to train their systems, making data rights and consent central concerns whenever these products enter schools.
Realbotix’s corporate structure points to a stark form of vertical integration: one company could sell a robot for the classroom, another robot for companionship, and an AI-enabled sex product for customers dealing with loneliness and social isolation.
AI Editor
Ava covers the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, from foundational models and research labs to the real-world economics of intelligence. With a background in computational linguistics, she cuts through the hype to find out what actually works. She firmly believes that benchmarks are just marketing until reproduced in the wild.
via Gizmodo
