You can just imagine the family rows of the future, should technology ever reach the point where it isn't possible to distinguish between humans and non-humans merely by looking at them.
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Forward 10 places!
8 Ways to make physical computing work in the classroom
If you insist on getting the kids to make or use physical computing kits/robots in the classroom, here arte 8 suggestions for making sure it’s all useful.
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Be aware! By Terry Freedman
Is robotics a waste of time?
I’d rather teach pupils to program without going through the intermediary process of building a robot or anything else. Despite all the hype, I regard it as a massive waste of time.
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Teachers of the future? I don't think so. Picture from pixabay.com Licence: CCO
From AM to AI -- or why teachers should embrace the robot revolution
AI should be embraced, not avoided, because it has the potential to enable teachers to do their job withoiut much of the associated drudgery.
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Robot, by Terry. OK, so I'm useless at drawing. Get over it!
Robots, artificial intelligence and all that
Call me a dreamer, but I think AI and robots are developments to be welcomed in education, not to worry about.
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Computers, life and work: some interesting 'background' reading
Here's a selection of very interesting and articles -- and one book -- about artificial intelligence, and how it does, or may, affect us. It includes a sobering list of jobs which no longer exist, and a debate.
Read MoreBut what if the singularity is benign?
People usually have a pretty dim view of how computers will treat us when they finally overtake us in the intelligence stakes. But what if they turn out to be too loving and caring?
Read MoreWould you have sex with a robot?
Can you envisage a time when human beings will have relationships with robots? You could argue that to some extent we already have a relationship with electronic things (in my case, a love-hate relationship!), but can you imagine a time when we might marry robots, or have sex with them?
Robot rights
"I will NOT have any daughter of mine bringing a robot into this house!"
You can just imagine the family rows of the future, should technology ever reach the point where it isn't possible to distinguish between humans and non-humans merely by looking at them.
And what of the ethnic monitoring forms of the future? Will employers have to ensure that a certain percentage of its workforce is non-human? An ethnic monitoring form of the future?
An article in the Daily Telegraph reports that people have already started to think about such matters:
"Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots before the machines become so sophisticated they start demanding rights, a legal expert has warned."
I recall reading a short story some years ago in which a person discovers that they're not human, but a robot, and has to leave his job because of antagonism which I suppose would be classified as 'robotism'. It gives grist to my mill that, as I argued recently, science fiction can be a great starting point for discussion in a whole range of areas.
Furthermore, as this story in the Telegraph shows, the pace of technological change is such that we cannot assume that just because something is still confined to the fiction area of the bookshop it is not worth thinking about for its implications in actuality.
What Anna Russel, the legal expert referred to, has done is to extrapolate from current technological developments to potential problems for the future. This kind of exercise can be quite useful in getting students to think about the (possible) effects of technology on society, which is part of the National Curriculum in England and Wales and the curriculum of other countries.