Mr. Artemis

The room was large enough to accommodate thirty-four students, though only twenty-one had enrolled in the class. Mister Artemis stood at the front of the room. He made sure that his connection to the classroom console was secure, then he booted the projector and recalled the proper file. A digital copy of the syllabus appeared on the wall behind him. There was still more than ten minutes before the first class of the semester was to begin. Normally, a teacher would use this time to review what he was going to say, but Mister Artemis did not have to do this. He already knew what was expected of him. In fact, he recalled the speech with perfect clarity.

Mister Artemis was dapper, dressed in a black pin striped suit. His shirt was a light pink and the tie that accentuated it was a darker pink and blue paisley pattern. It was perfectly knotted and hung so that the point was exactly even with the button of his pants. The pin stripe pants were perfectly pressed and creased. His black shoes were so shiny they reflected the beams that came from the illuminating lights above. This was the standard outfit for teachers now. Only the shirt color changed depending on the discipline taught. For example, green was for mathematics, blue was for history, and red was for language arts. The pink shirt that Mister Artemis wore revealed that he taught psychology. This is the same suit that Mister Artemis would wear for the entire semester. Only after the semester concluded would he get a new set of clothes to keep him looking crisp and clean.

Artemis, which stood for Anthropoid Realistic Teaching and Educational Machine-Interactive Series, was a line of robotic teachers. While the first robotic teachers were merely crude boxes perched on top of a desk--not very robotic--the idea caught on quickly. Not having to pay human beings to be inside the classroom was a huge cost savings for cash strapped schools. Once programmed with the appropriate course content, the teaching machines could be used almost indefinitely in the classroom. Updating the units with new information was as easy as the quick addition of new software into the database. The creators of these artificial teachers felt as if they were about to launch a revolution in education. The administrators who ran the schools wholeheartedly joined in this revolution of teaching, investing their resources in the establishment of this new technology. Theories of education--mostly fads and failed experiments--came and went. But this was more than just a passing theory. This was a movement. This was a revolution.

There were some early problems. Not having a human in the classroom left students to themselves. While some were studious and respectful of the black and gray box sitting on the desk, most students failed to show any level of auto-didactic discipline. Without an adult presence to guide them, most students showed little interest in learning. Students were more interested in shooting rubber bands at one another, teasing, taunting, or worse. The few students who did show an interest in learning became frustrated. Often, they could not hear the box on the desk over the roar of unruly students in the class.

Students often asked questions of the box on the desk which it was not programmed to answer. Although at first completely accidental, the discovery that the box on the desk struggled with certain questions led to an interesting game for students. They competed to see who could ask the most difficult or bizarre question. While the game began innocently enough, with students timing the pause before the box on the desk responded, it quickly morphed into an attempt to waste as much class time as possible. Before the robotic teacher could even begin a lesson, students overwhelmed the box with questions. The questions were sometimes borrowed, always absurd, and often caused the class to erupt in laughter. With each escalation, the laughter would grow, leaving students crouched over their desks in hysterics.

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” one student would ask. Snickers as someone starts a stopwatch.

“What is the sound of feet clapping?” asks another. The laughter rises. The computer hums.

The questions begin to devolve into riddles. “What are the only two things you cannot eat for breakfast?” a student asks the box on the desk. The box whirs and hums.

So the game went. The object of the game became to waste as much class time as possible. The game spread quickly, and everywhere boxes on desks hummed and crackled to the endless amusement of students everywhere.

Human aides were added to the classrooms. These poorly paid employees were not teachers. Rather, they came as glorified babysitters, paid by the schools merely to keep order in the classrooms. Even poorly paid, teacher aides were expensive, and administrators looked for ways to phase them out of the classrooms as quickly as possible. One industry response was to make the robotic teachers more lifelike. This seemed obvious in retrospect, but at the time the technology was still in its infancy. The first step was to simply make the robotic box on the desk into a model human head. Almost puppet-like, the head would swivel in an attempt to give the illusion of looking around the room. The eyes were affixed with cameras to record what the students did. In the view of the revolutionary administrators, this eliminated the need for classroom aides since the activities in all the classrooms could now be monitored from a central location by a single person. Human aides were eliminated from classrooms and replaced by a single monitor in a central location.

For verisimilitude, the mouth of the head on the desk was made to move and the eyes made to blink. But the mouth did not move at all in accordance with the sounds coming from the box inside the head, which gave the impression of a badly dubbed foreign movie. One or both blinking eyes would sometimes get stuck, giving the impression of a winking, squinting, or sleeping head on a desk that continued to speak.
Younger students were generally frightened of the disembodied heads. They screamed and wept and curled into fetal positions on the floor until class was over; while older students found new ways to disrupt the devices. One new game was for students to change seats every day to confuse the monitor. Then students began moving seats while class was in session. In some classes, entire classroom layouts were rearranged. Another game was to have each student wear a mask in class, making it even more difficult to identify who they were. One student in a high school even had the audacity to unceremoniously knock the head off the desk every morning until the head was finally bolted to the desk by a human who made their appearance in the classroom only at night after all the students had gone. These games caused almost infinite amusement for the students and no end of trouble for the adult who monitored the central camera system and the administrators who were trying to create a revolution in teaching.

To address these issues, even more human-like robots were constructed and put in the classroom. The Beta-line teaching robots, called Artificial Educational Instructors--or AEIs for short--were spindly metal towers that ambled around the classroom, balanced by a gyroscopic guidance system. Their movements were jerky, and the sensors that helped the robotic teachers to understand its environment malfunctioned frequently. The robots were always bumping into desks, walls, and even students. This led to the emergence of a new game in which students attempted to force the robotic teacher to bump into objects, or to walk in circles to avoid running into objects. Later, some students started a game, which quickly caught on, where students tripped the robot. When the gyroscopic system failed and the robot fell, it was unable to right itself. Students found it funny to watch the poor robot flail on the tile floor. Considerable effort was put into finding new and creative ways to cause the robot to fall. A number of Rube Goldberg type contraptions were designed--and some even built--involving elaborate systems of weight and trip wires. These cruel pranks, while at first quite uncommon, quickly gained in popularity. At the same time, attempts to crash the system with bizarre questions remained a perpetual favorite.

Mister Artemis was the newest model in the Gamma-line of increasingly human looking robotic teachers. Many of the early glitches had been worked out. Instead of a clunky naked robot, the Artemis series was taller, straighter. When dressed, it looked like a human being--all except the head and hands. Abandoning the puppet head, the designers settled on an oval metal head, slightly protruding forward. While the face lacked significant features, it was a friendly non-face. Younger children were not afraid of it. Yet, the metal head, with gentle soft lights, seemed to elicit a degree of respect. The hands were five fingered, made to resemble the human hand. The metal digits moved in ways designed to mimic
the gestures of a real person. The robot could point and touch the tip of each finger to the thumb. The human clothes it was dressed in were neatly pressed, and the faint smell of cologne automatically expelled at exact intervals added to the realism. In addition to physical appearance, attempts were made to improve the mental apparatus of the robots as well. Layers of complex algorithms, interactive protocols, even a “small talk” program, were installed. It kicked in when the first student arrived that morning.

“Good morning,” said Mister Artemis. “Welcome to psychology.” The voice was not quite human. The creators of the language program could not quite perfect intonation and inflection. The voice, though calm and clear, retained a somewhat artificial, metallic quality. Cologne sprayed, wafting into the air of the classroom. The student shuffled to the back of the classroom, pulled her hat down over her eyes, and said nothing. More students began filtering in.

“Good morning. Welcome to psychology,” Mister Artemis repeated. One student nodded. Another mumbled “good morning” back. Most silently found seats in the back of the room. Slowly the room began to fill up. Mr. Artemis had an internal chronometer, and it sounded a warning in his head that class was to begin in two minutes.

“Class will begin in two minutes,” said Mr. Artemis.

One minute and thirty seconds later, three large boys filtered into the classroom. All three were dressed in long pants, long sleeve shirts with baggy hooded sweatshirts over them. Although the hoodies were all different colors, it was easy to surmise that the boys knew each other and had planned to dress similarly for the first day of class. Unlike most of the other students, the boys sat in the front of the class. Mister Artemis positioned himself in front of the class, between the three hooded figures and the overhead screen. “Good morning class,” Mr. Artemis began.

“Welcome to psychology. Please direct your attention to the--”

“Psychology?” one of the boys in the front of the class said. “This is not supposed to be psychology. This is...this is history.” The other two boys snickered.

Mister Artemis was undeterred. “Please direct your attention to the front, where you will see a projection of the syllabus. Today, we--”
“Huh?” said one of the boys. “There is nothing projected up there.”

Mister Artemis turned. His visual processor and his diagnostic protocol both told him that the syllabus was projected on the front wall. “You are mistaken,” said Mister Artemis.

“You are mistaken,” the boy retorted. “Check your diagnostic.”

Mister Artemis continued. “Today, we will be reviewing the syllabus.”

“What syllabus?” One of the hooded students asked.

“There is nothing there,” protested another student. Some of the students in the back of the class began to catch on.
“I can't see anything,” one of them yelled.

Mister Artemis paused. He turned around again. His visual processors registered the image, but just to be sure, he terminated his connection with the projection and rebooted it. The image appeared again on the front wall. Mister Artemis was certain that everything was working as it should.
“The syllabus is now projected onto the wall.”

“What wall?” shouted one of the students. The entire room erupted in laughter. Only Mister Artemis was silent, his algorithms seeking answers to the surrealistic comments. How to respond? How to proceed? Begin again.

“Good morning class,” Mr. Artemis began. “Welcome to psychology. Please--”

“It is not morning,” someone shouted.

“Yeah, it is almost lunch time,” said another.

“I am hungry,” one of the students in the back of the classroom yelled.

“I'm thirsty,” said one of the boys in the front. He reached into his book bag and pulled out a bottle. Deliberately and with great fanfare, he pulled the plastic cap. He took a drink by squirting the water into his mouth from several inches away. Then, without warning, he squirted a large blast of water at Mr. Artemis. A whoop of laughter went up from the class as the water found its mark on the pin stripe trousers. The whoop turned into a ruckus when the students realized that the water splashed on the crotch of the trousers, giving the effect that the robotic teacher had peed himself in front of the whole class.

There was no immediate danger to Mister Artemis. Neither his pin stripe suit nor his metal frame body could be damaged by water. There was no embarrassment for Mister Artemis, either, because such an emotion was not part of his programming. Still, Mister Artemis's classroom diagnostic program suggested that something was not quite right. The student’s behavior was unruly. What to do? How to respond? Begin again.
“Good morning class,” Mr. Artemis began. “Welcome to psychology. Please direct your attention to the front of the room. Projected on the wall is the syllabus for this class.”'

“We don't want you,” a student yelled. Mister Artemis rotated his cranial unit and scanned the classroom, trying to determine which student had spoken. He was too late. The robotic teacher continued trying to teach.

“This class will take place Monday through Thursday from nine to nine forty-five in the morning. The class will meet in this room unless otherwise specified. The textbook for this class is--”

“Get out!” a student yelled. A wad of paper flew through the air and hit Mister Artemis in the tie. Another student threw a pen, which ricocheted off Mister Artemis's metal head with a dull clink.

“We already know psychology,” someone said.

“Go away and leave us alone,” another student shouted. Mister Artemis stood in front of the class, his processor spinning. What to do? How to respond? Continue.

When Mister Artemis suddenly began teaching again, the students were surprised. Such tactics had generally worked in the past. Mister Artemis, the newest in the line of teaching robots, was adjusting to the distractions and creating a new algorithmic response sequence. The three students in the front of the class, leaders in the mischief, thought for a moment. What to do? How to respond?

Suddenly, one of them pounced. The boy was on him in seconds, knocking the robot down and grabbing at his flailing metal limbs. Other students from the class soon joined the scrum. Not programmed to fight or defend itself, Mister Artemis simply allowed himself to be held down. One of his perfectly polished black shoes fell off and his suit became a wrinkled heap. His pink and blue paisley tie whipped over his head and covered one of his visual scanners. His head was twisted and yanked. Something popped. The soft lights on his facial unit flickered. What to do? How to respond?Begin again. Begin again.

“Good m-m-morning c-c-class,” the robot stuttered. “G-g-good....” A scent of cologne wafted into the air and hung heavy amid the crowd of clamoring students. Mister Artemis fell silent. The projection of the syllabus vanished from the wall. Among the crowd of students someone pulled out a lighter. Soaked in flammable cologne, the black pin stripe suit and pink shirt with paisley tie ignited easily.

The students cheered. In classrooms across the country, similar attacks were occurring. The real educational revolution had begun.