Role of teachers NOW:

While growing up, teachers play a vital role in a child’s cognitive and emotional development. It is often seen that children come back home from school and talk a lot about their teachers in the early stages of school, they also want to interact with their teachers after coming back from school.

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Why do we deprive themselves of human connection with the ever-growing fast paced life?

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Bridging the role of teachers with the help of AI in learning in 2050: 

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With AI developing exponentially in the education sector to make learning more personalized and adaptive, it has rooted the fear that AI might diminish the role of a teacher and increase threat to privacy and agency of the children in near future. Hence, it becomes obvious to imagine a world in 2050 where children are growing up in an environment deficient of human connections, but naturally connected through screens. Having said this, I would like to ask for a question to envision our alternate future, what if we will be able to program empathy and care with AI for not diminishing the fact that AI cannot be without a human in the loop of giving assistance?

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Micro-speculation:

What if a student can have his/her favourite teacher’s artificially intelligent and empathetic twin (a physical toy-like generic avatar) and have frequent conversations with the companion: her teacher’s twin which carries the sense of empathy and compassion of the teacher (more than data which is owned by her). In this way, we hope to have a personalized mode of education inculcating the importance of having a teacher in a student’s life.

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The companion toy is an artificial companion between teachers and children that enhances the role of teachers in students’ lives. The companion is programmed as an artificially built personal tutor/ guide with empathy, care, and compassion of the teacher the kid chooses to interact with for a period of certain months.