Like so many shiny-eyed new teachers, Ed began his career amid high hopes. He was going to be a gamechanger, his bosses thought; a breath of fresh air, capable of engaging even kids at risk of dropping out. Ed had been trained not only to tailor lessons to each child’s individual needs, but patiently to field all those time-consuming parental questions about everything from teenage mental health to what their little darlings were getting for lunch.
Unfortunately, the one thing Ed had in common with many promising new teachers is that he burned out fast. Launched in March, by June he was being unceremoniously relieved of his duties after the tech company paid to develop him for the Los Angeles school district reportedly got into financial difficulties. For Ed wasn’t a teacher but a $6m AI-powered chatbot designed to act as a personalised learning assistant for children, and his brief career offers a timely lesson in how not to transform public services using artificial intelligence.
