Kids prefer to learn from a competent robot rather than an incompetent human

BOSTON – A new study finds kids would prefer to learn from a competent robot rather than an incompetent human.

Canadian researchers wanted to see whether young children could consider a robot a better teacher than a human. 

They had 3 to 5-year-olds children over Zoom watch a video of a young woman and a small robot sitting side by side with a variety of simple objects between them. 

The robot would label the objects correctly while the human would get them wrong, for example calling a car a book or a cup a dog. 

Then when the robot and the human labeled unfamiliar objects with nonsense terms, the 5-year-olds were more likely to believe the robot over the human, showing that by age five, children will choose to learn from a more competent teacher even if that teacher is a mechanical robot rather than a person.

Mallika Marshall, MD

Mallika Marshall, MD is an Emmy-award-winning journalist and physician who has served as the HealthWatch Reporter for CBS Boston/WBZ-TV for over 20 years. A practicing physician Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr. Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at Massachusetts General Hospital at the MGH Chelsea Urgent Care and the MGH Revere Health Center, where she is currently working on the frontlines caring for patients with COVID-19. She is also a host and contributing editor for Harvard Health Publications (HHP), the publishing division of Harvard Medical School.

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