Humanoid Robots in Charter Classrooms Raise Hard Questions About San Diego's Most Vulnerable Students
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The Altus Schools charter network, which serves credit-recovery students including low-income youth, students experiencing homelessness, and students with disabilities, has deployed two ChatGPT-powered Ameca humanoid robots — each six feet two inches tall, built by the UK firm Engineered Arts — at its San Diego resource centers at a total cost of $500,000.
The robots operate under four named personas: Sage the Teacher, Remi the Wellness Coach, Ari the College and Career Planner, and Lexi the Translator. Altus officials have said the robots will not replace teachers and have noted that the machines do not record or retain data, with memory erased after each session, and that students are never left alone with them.
Voice of San Diego education reporter Jakob McWhinney, in a detailed examination of the pilot published this week, drew a pointed distinction: while Altus officials say the robots won't replace teachers, McWhinney wrote directly that 'these sorts of systems do supplant teachers.' UCL professor Wayne Holmes, described as one of the leading academic critics of AI in education, stated there is 'no independent evidence at scale that such tools are effective or safe' in classrooms.
The $500,000 price tag represents real resources unavailable for human instructional aides, counselors, or curriculum in a network serving students who have already experienced disruption in their learning. Whether the robots deliver comparable or better outcomes for this specific population remains an open question — and critics argue that the openness of that question is itself the problem when the students involved have the least margin for failed experiments.
On a more settled note in San Diego's research landscape, UC San Diego's Moores Cancer Center received a five-year, $25 million Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute, announced in mid-June. The grant covers approximately 25% of the center's operating costs, expands clinical trial capacity, and reaffirms its standing as the region's only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.