Robot Plato - a gift for our times?

On 26^th March 2026, Melania Trump, the First Lady, walked down some red carpet in the White House, accompanied by ‘Figure 3’, a humanoid robot built in the USA. Mrs Trump (right) was hosting a roundtable event at the inaugural Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit (FFTGCS for short). The world and their robots were watching.

Unlike lovable, gold-plated Star Wars character C-3PO, Figure 3 seemed (to me, at least) rather more sinister, with its smooth blank stare and eyeless black mask. This, according to Mrs Trump, will be the face of AI in education: “Imagine a humanoid educator named Plato,” she smiled. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous. Literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics, and history - humanity’s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home. Plato will provide a personalized experience adaptive to the needs of each student.”

Figure 3 and Melania Trump on the red carpet, at the White House REUTERS/Kylie Cooper TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY 26 March 2026.

There's a lot to unpick there. First, naming a content delivery system “Plato” misses the essence of what Plato actually stood for. Education is not transmission but formation. Education uses dialogue, personal judgment and the gradual development of understanding. Something that real humans do, not algorithms. Outsourcing this to a mobile LLM seems fundamentally flawed. Second, that association of “Classical Studies” with the allusion to home-schooling. Here, Mrs Trump is highlighting the potentially lucrative business model of selling a product to the large base of Americans who, disgruntled with the public school system in the USA and unable to afford private, have withdrawn their children and educate them on their own or in small groups, using ‘Classical School’ methods (that is, broadly-speaking, traditional subjects, traditionally taught, with a strong Christian ethos. Latin is often involved). A walking, talking text book which guides you to the 'right' answers is the stuff of their dreams.

At £26,000, Plato is cheaper than a teacher, never goes off sick, and, once the academics are done, there will be, according to its promoters, plenty of time left over in the day for family fun, taking part in creative and sporting activities, and learning to take your place in your society: debates, confidence-building - maybe even socialization. For the seemingly brief period of the day spent on academics that its promoters anticipate, Mrs Trump enthused, “Plato is always patient and always available…Our children will develop deep critical thinking and independent reasoning abilities…The AI-powered Plato will boost analytics skills and problem solving and adapt in real time to a student’s pace, prior knowledge, and even emotional state.” It's nice to know that Figure 3 really cares about you.

Dr Patrick Dicks, an AI and Automation expert, interviewed later on TV, poured oil onto troubled waters. “Some teachers are going to get repurposed,” he averred, slightly grinning. AI robots were cheaper, he considered, and machine-learning would “prevent teachers making inappropriate comments in the classroom” (a source of anxiety among parents of a right-wing persuasion, I suppose, who perceived public schools to be hotbeds of radicalism and wokeness). Much safer to have your children instructed in the curriculum of your choice with all the bits taken out that you don’t approve of. This would make students “prepared for the future.” Dr Dicks went on to suggest that AI robots could make excellent patrols and road-crossing guards, even law enforcement…

Predictably, Mrs Trump’s apparent swipe at teachers and simplistic view of education quickly drew significant criticism. AI can adapt lessons to a learner’s pace and provide instant feedback, but it is very unclear the extent to which it can truly replicate the mentoring, guidance and relational skills of a human teacher – whether it is called Plato or not.

Of course, there are other kinds of anxiety. What if Plato went rogue, like the dancing humanoid robot in a hot pot restaurant in Cupertino, California? The out-of-control robot must’ve left a very strange taste in the mouth for those customers who had to dodge its flailing arms and contorted body. The manufacturers of this robot said that their design did have a ‘kill switch’, but the owners do not seem to have known where it was. It took three people to pin the robot down.

Talos, the ancient Greek bronze man from Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, also had a kind of kill switch: the vein in his ankle, covered with a thin layer of silver. Some sort of invincible robotic patrol for the island of Crete, the metallic Talos was conquered by Medea, who caused him to graze his ankle at just the right spot, allowing the ichor which ran through his body to drain out, thereby killing him. Funnily enough, Talos is also the name of an insurance provider for Argo-AI, a commercial insurance group…

If I was a home-schooled child, rote-memorizing my Latin verb endings, I’d want to know where Plato’s kill switch was located.

For a humorous take on the consequences of AI and robots in the classroom, see Alexandra Petri’s piece in The Atlantic.