Ep. 133
03:57
A New York School Board Just Stopped America's First Classroom Humanoid — Over a Student Data Privacy Agreement
About This Episode
The Salamanca City Central School District, on the Seneca Nation reservation in upstate New York, paused its $57,590 contract with Realbotix on July 24 after teachers, parents and the state teachers union objected. The robot, named Sally, would have been the first humanoid teaching assistant deployed in a US school district, paired with an AI model called Optio giving students round-the-clock homework help at home.
Our Take
The first humanoid teaching assistant in an American classroom was stopped nine days after it was announced, not by a regulator or a law but by a fifty-eight-thousand-dollar contract meeting a student data privacy form and a union that asked what exactly the robot would be recording.