Franz Lenard Torres 
Like two giants in a small clearing, one way or another, education and technology are bound to interact and graze one another. From visual aids to supplemental learning, technology has forever changed the course of traditional education to its core. It primarily helps the people who navigate lessons to be more digestible for learners, who cater every child’s needs — educators. But what if technology replaces the people that it is supposed to help?
‘IRIS,’ India’s first artificial intelligence teaching robot that aspires to provide new educational breakthroughs by providing students with a personalized learning experience. The robot was created in partnership with Makerlabs Edutech Private Limited and was first deployed at the KTCT Higher Secondary School in Thiruvanathpuram.
IRIS includes a built-in voice assistant and is powered by an Intel processor which follows instructions in a precise order to complete tasks. It accomplishes this by retrieving instructions from memory, decoding them, executing them, and then storing the results in memory. It employs an Android app interface to provide personalized learning experiences and communicate with users such as teachers and students alike. It is made portable through wheels for easier usage and is supposed to understand and talk in a variety of languages and solve complicated problems across multiple areas of study.
Forged by human intelligence and wit, IRIS aims to reinvent the current educational landscape. The Saree-garbed humanoid reflects human dedication in pushing the frontiers of what is possible, instilling confidence in future innovative developments. In such a case, IRIS renders a glance to the time ahead in the sphere of education.
IRIS offers a substantial opportunity for educational establishments to embrace modernity, however it would only be appropriate in later educational settings as the level of interaction would be simpler, in contrast to elementary and primary education applications which require the “warmth” of a human teacher.
Recent research suggests that acts of kindness in our classrooms have meaningful ripple effects in our larger communities—in other words, kindness is contagious. This aspect of education could be taught by AI however it would only be in a shallow sense and not based through interaction exemplified by human educators. In this perspective, it is then considerably applicable in the context of university and tertiary education as interpersonal socialization skills would be sufficiently developed and would be fully established.
Enforcement of technology at this caliber encompasses the finance sectors of any country willing to employ this kind of technology into their education system. From material costs, pilot testing, mass production to distribution, wealth and a surplus of economic variables are to be a part of the equation to result in smooth user experience.
The Philippines is still eons away to have robots grace the four walls of a Filipino classroom. With 159,000 lacking classrooms as of August of 2023, a major catch up is in order to converge the massive gap of lackluster equipment that schools and students deserve.
Implementation of AI and Robot Teachers inside our classrooms would need to touch on the financial terrain of Filipino educational institutions. This is in view of the fact of the exorbitant technology implanted to cater for multiple features and technological attributes to be considered a viable candidate as a competitor against human personnel.
Additionally, there is the possibility that in the future, problems will be faced by the robot and the people using it. Consequently, financial resources are to be utilized to mitigate the issues at hand, furthering the monetary implications it connotates. And not counting the deficient funds to accommodate the missing equipment — to consider this factor first before the former aspect is a massive oversight on budget allocation and a mistake on the institution’s part.
However, if money was no object and lacking amenities be damned, would the country benefit from employing such technology in our academe?
Yes. The Philippines as a country formed by contrasting geographical conditions such as mountainous and elevated land masses and as a nation of grouped islands closely scattered in a body of water, lays the groundwork for a vast number of remote areas that require teaching staff. To utilize this AI and Robot Teachers would significantly lessen the load of teachers in these areas giving them more time to efficiently plan lessons and reduce the amount of manpower to maintain isolated schools.
Moreover, according to The Second Congressional Commission on Education Commissioner Senator Joel Villanueva, there are 43,014 unfilled positions in the Department of Education. From 2022 to 2023, out of 46,000 unfilled positions, only 3,415 positions have been filled. In this perspective, an apparent need for educators could be filled by using AI Robot Teachers as solutions to the scarcity of labor force in the stratum.
If we peek into the future using the gadgets that are steadily being developed, we must come to terms with the feasible outcomes that could propagate in the traditional world we live in. Though there might be benefits that stroke human convenience, factors are to be pondered on before we can truly accept a major change in the giant that directly involves the youth and the raw proficiency provided by professionals.
There is still a lot to ruminate on to build a good foundation for efficacious administration of technology in our lives — and education is nothing new to view as a variable in this matter. From simple affairs to systemic revisions, a list will continue to form once a huge alteration comes to modify current circumstances we face. In this light, we should focus less on what is to come, but rather on improving what we already have to intersect the boundaries that separate us from what lies ahead.
