Are Robots Coming for Teachers' Jobs?

There has been a lot of excited talk recently about the threat to jobs posed by automation, robots, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI): machines that can think like humans. We're told that ever more complex tasks can now be automated and perhaps done better as a result, and we should all be preparing for a world in which we're competing for work with computers. Is teaching one of the jobs put at risk by the emergence of AI? Or does AI have potential to enhance life in the classroom? A recent event organised by BESA, the industry body for education suppliers, provided plenty of food for thought about these questions. He argued that AI can help us move away from the "factory model of education" towards a more open-ended system focused on creativity and problem solving – and he said we're seeing early signs of what technology can bring us in innovations such as "no lecture hall" universities and courses offering "nanodegrees".