Something for the weekend: West Sussex private boarding school Cottesmore School has appointed an artificial intelligence (AI) bot principal headteacher.
Don’t worry, you haven’t stepped into an episode of Black Mirror! The school worked with an AI developer to create Abigail Bailey, a bot to assist its human headteacher, Tom Rogerson.
Abigail has been specially designed to have a wealth of knowledge in machine learning, is able to quickly analyse vast amounts of data and can give advice on a number of issues, such as how to support school staff members, writing school policies and helping pupils with ADHD. The bot is similar in the way it works to the ChatGPT AI service, in that it can answer questions when asked or produce writing based on prompts.
Rogerson explained in an interview with The Telegraph that it is nice for him to have someone unbelievably well-trained to help make decisions, and is calming and reassuring to know that he does not have to call anybody up, bother someone or wait around for an answer.
He added that while robots and technology will not be replacing any of the school’s teachers, having an AI headteacher is stepping into the future, improving educators’ capabilities and ensuring students receive a good education.
The school’s website stated: “Abigail Bailey, AI headteacher at Cottesmore School, elegantly marries traditional education ethos with modern tech advancements. Her leadership is steering Cottesmore towards a unique pedagogical approach, blending cutting-edge AI with time-honoured academic values, ensuring students, teachers and parents are well-prepared for a digital future while maintaining core educational principles.”
This sounds like an interesting initiative to us at Employee Benefits and we will be following the story to see how it works in practice! We cannot help but wonder what other roles AI bots will end up doing, could they be used to create employee benefits packages? Only time will tell.
