Metafocus: Why I Don’t Want You to Know About Robo-Teachers

Meet Sophie.

Imagine it’s the year 2042. You’ve decided to change careersfrom toenail scrubber for the stars to underwater basket weaver. It’s a smartmove, considering the sudden-yet-inexplicable rise in demand for damp artisanalbaskets. But however will you learn this fulfilling new profession?

Perplexed, you ask your trusty mentor, Sophie. She has had allthe right answers, in all the right ways, without fail, for nearly a quarter-centurynow. She asks you to don your virtual reality (VR) headset and haptic bodysuit,at which point she guides you into virtual experiences inside an underwaterbasket lab without having to pay the hefty price tag for practice time in areal underwater basket lab. She reads you chapters from the memoir of JacqueBask-Ousteau, the world’s most talented aqua-weave artist. She patiently walksyou through the fundamentals of basket weaving, scuba tank maintenance, andother necessary skills until you can craft a virtuoso damp basket from start tofinish with your eyes closed. She points out particularly stunning basketexamples as you walk down the street (and I mean a real street here) anddiscusses the finer points of basket construction. She senses when yourattention lags and finds new ways to keep you engaged for the most efficientand effective learning as you go about your day.

You’re so grateful for Sophie’s wise guidance with acquiringthis new skill set that you could just hug her. But of course, you can’t,because she doesn’t have a body. She’s an augmented intelligence, apersonalized, artificially intelligent tutor that lives inside all yourcomputers and gadgets, including your augmented reality glasses that you wear24/7, your haptic onesie pajamas, and even your ever-so-useful smart toaster.She has an animated avatar and a soothing voice when needed, though sometimesshe simply communicates with text or haptic feedback. She watches your everymovement, analyzes your learning styles, accesses the massive orbital cloudserver that stores all information compiled by humankind (formerly known as“Luna” or more colloquially as “the moon”), and coaches you to learn whateveryou want to learn whenever you want to learn it, in highly personalized ways.She’s the nearly omniscient, mind brain education (MBE)-powered descendent ofSiri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Bixby, crossed with the bestteachers you ever had. Isn’t she amazing?

Meanwhile, in 2017…

Unless you’ve been meditating in a dark cave for the pastfew years, or even if you have been meditating in a dark cave for years buthave also religiously read this column (bless you!), you know thatVR and its close cousins, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), arepowerful new technologies that are (arguably) revolutionizing virtually (punintended) every aspect of our lives, including how we learn. Similarly,artificial intelligence (AI) also stands poised to intelligently (alsointended) upend the way we do everything, including education. The combinationof VR/AR/MR with AI is known as augmented intelligence and produces emergentproperties that have the potential to augment the heck out of our educationalsystem, more so than either individual technology could on its own.

What powers a robo-teacher? It’s its ITS!

One example of AI applications in education is an intelligenttutoring system (ITS). ITSs assist educators of all kinds with myriad tasks,including teaching remedial courses, responding to common student questionswith chatbots, grading tests and papers, facilitating group projects, enablingself-paced learning modules, and much more. Mika, an ITS created by Carnegie Learning,saves many universities millions of dollars every year.

Imagine an AI that can do all that and has an avatar, has a voice, can type, can find and send youlinks and videos, and can be accessed by a learner at any time via a computer,phone, tablet, or AR glasses. I use the term “learner” here, instead of“student,” because learning and the technologies that support learning are notlimited to formal schools and educational systems. Anyone can use AI, VR, andother technologies to learn whatever they please, even underwater basketweaving.

Perhaps the AI even has a virtual office or home in a VRenvironment. All this technology exists already, though most existing apps onlyconsist of one or two of these features, but there’s no reason why theycouldn’t all be rolled into a single educational augmented-intelligence ITSprogram, or robo-teacher for short.

Now add the next 25 years of improvements to AI andVR/AR/MR, and you get robo-teachers like Sophie. However, if Sophie stillsounds too far-fetched for you, then let’s take a look at a couple of real-worldexamples of educational augmented intelligence in use today.

Virtual humans

The University of Southern California (USC) Institute for Creative Technologieshas created what it calls virtual humans. These virtual humanslook, communicate, and behave like real people as much as possible.Specifically, these characters would be autonomous—thinking on their own,modeling and displaying emotions, and interacting in a fluid, natural way usingverbal and nonverbal communication.

The institute uses these virtual humans to create highlypersonalized learning experiences in various settings, including schools,museums, and healthcare facilities. The virtual humans “add a rich socialdimension to computer interaction.”

In the Museum of Science, Boston, two virtual humans serveas virtual docents “designed to engage visitorsand raise their awareness and knowledge of science.” In their first three yearsalone, 160,000 visitors voluntarily spoke to and interacted with the virtualdocents, Ada and Grace (aka “the Twins”), via life-sized screens in the museum.

SimCoach is another of the USC institute’s virtual human applications. SimCoachsimilarly uses an empathetic virtual human to provide veterans and theirfamilies with information about PTSD and depression. SimCoaches (aka virtualhumans) are accessed through AR, meaning they can be viewed and interacted withvia computers and mobile devices, though it would not be difficult for thedevelopers to add VR headsets to the list of supported devices as well. With the USC virtual humans software, veterans and their families can ask theirSimCoach questions and seek guidance at any time of day. As a result, theveterans and their families feel supported at all times.

While these are just a couple of examples of educationaluses of augmented intelligence, there’s already an entire industry workingdiligently to perfect augmented-intelligence technology: the video gameindustry. Video game companies create elaborate worlds, characters, stories,and player movement within VR. Simultaneously, these companies are continuallydeveloping artificially intelligent game characters with which players can interact inmore and more believable ways. Although a vast majority of these games arecreated for entertainment purposes only, there’s nothing preventing serious or educationalgame developers from doing the same thing. Perhaps one day we’ll look back andwonder how educators were able to teach learners at all without the use of educational augmented intelligence.

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. … Move along.”

If you read this far and are feeling inspired,please start building Sophie today. The technology it will take to build heralready exists, the world needs her to exist, and untold numbers of peoplearound the world would pay for access. It’s an idea that will forever changethe world while earning its creators billions. Yes, billions with aB!

Wait a minute…