AI has entered the classroom - but is it the solution for overworked teachers? Schools across the UK are trialling the use of deepfake teachers and even employing remote staff to deliver lessons hundreds of miles away from the classroom. It comes as the use of AI is becoming increasingly prevalent in schools. The government says AI has the power to transform education, and improve teacher workload, particularly around admin for teachers. The BBC has spoken to teachers, school leaders and unions who seem divided on what the future of the UK's classrooms should look like.

Motor skills, especially fine motor skills like handwriting, play an essential role in academic pursuits and everyday life. Traditional methods to teach these skills, although effective, can be time-consuming and inconsistent. With the rise of advanced technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence, there is increasing interest in automating such teaching processes using these technologies, via human-robot and human-computer interactions. In this study, we examine the potential of a virtual AI teacher in emulating the techniques of human educators for motor skill acquisition. We introduce an AI teacher model that captures the distinct characteristics of human instructors. Using a Reinforcement Learning environment tailored to mimic teacher-learner interactions, we tested our AI model against four guiding hypotheses, emphasizing improved learner performance, enhanced rate of skill acquisition, and reduced variability in learning outcomes. Our findings, validated on synthetic learners, revealed significant improvements across all tested hypotheses. Notably, our model showcased robustness across different learners and settings and demonstrated adaptability to handwriting. This research underscores the potential of integrating Reinforcement Learning and Imitation Learning models with robotics in revolutionizing the teaching of critical motor skills.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." The pandemic not only propelled us to rethink the means of how we learn – accelerating the adoption of online learning, but also brought to the forefront discourses around the quality of education, and more importantly, accessibility for all. Adoption of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have enabled us to provide students with immersive and personalised learning experiences and, while doing so, achieve superior learning outcomes. And to my mind, adoption of AI bots as virtual teachers is the next big innovation that has the potential to transform the face of education. AI bots, chatbots in particular, have become a rather common phenomenon in today's time.

Learning a new language can be difficult, especially if you approach it the wrong way. Instead of cracking open a textbook or settling in for stuffy video lessons, why not gamify your learning experience? There are several apps that offer to teach you a new language, but few offer speech recognition software and a brand new augmented reality (AR) feature to help drive the lessons home. Much like the supplementary language learning app Memrise, this new app offers a simple and fun way to learn over 33 languages. Tap or click here to learn about Memrise.

Despite tremendous progress, artificial intelligence is still limited in many ways. For example, in computer games, if an AI agent is not pre-programmed with game rules, it must try millions of times before figuring out the right moves to win. Humans can accomplish the same feat in a much shorter time, because we are good at transferring past knowledge to new tasks by using language. In a game in which you must kill a dragon to win, an AI agent would need to try many other actions (firing at wall, a patch of flowers, etc) before understanding that it must kill the dragon. However, if the AI agent understood language, a human could simply use language to instruct it to: "kill the dragon to win the game."

Later this month Valerie will go on duty behind the reception desk at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Sciences. Besides doling out information and directions, she'll chat about her ever-changing personal life. If you introduce yourself, she'll remember you. If you ask about the weather, when she meets you again she may bring up the subject. Valerie, in case you haven't guessed, is a robot - one in a long line of increasingly sophisticated machines.