The first lady walked into a White House meeting yesterday flanked by Plato the robot, a six-foot-tall humanoid robot, and honestly, the jokes write themselves so fast it’s hard to pick just one.
Plato the robot—the Figure 3 model built by Figure AI—introduced itself to the room like a nervous intern on its first day, announcing that it was “grateful” to be part of a “historic movement to empower children.”
Melania followed up by asking the audience to “imagine a humanoid educator named Plato.” Yes, Plato. They named the homeschool robot after a philosopher who famously advocated abolishing the family and having the state raise all children.
Someone on the naming committee clearly did not do the reading.
The Sales Pitch Nobody Asked For
Here’s the vision Melania laid out: Plato the Robot will sit in your living room and deliver a “classical education” covering literature, science, philosophy, and math. It will be “always patient and always available.” It will “adapt in real time to a student’s pace, prior knowledge, and even emotional state.”
So to recap, the administration that has spent years screaming about public school teachers being dangerous communimarxisocialist groomers indoctrinating children with “woke” ideology now wants you to hand your child’s education over to a machine built by a Silicon Valley startup.
A machine whose current skill set, according to its own manufacturer, is doing laundry and washing dishes.
That’s right. Figure 3, aka Plato, is a chore robot. Its website proudly advertises that it can fold clothes. But sure, let’s have it teach our kids about the Peloponnesian War.
Why not. It already knows how to separate whites from colors—how hard can Western civilization be? (This sentence ended up having a much deeper meaning than intended.)
The MAGA Base ain’t Havin’ it
Here’s where it gets genuinely entertaining. The announcement managed to do something almost no policy proposal in modern American history has accomplished: it united MAGA die-hards and progressives in shared, horrified disbelief.
One self-described Christian conservative posted that this was “how you turn me into an anti-Trumper.” An account with #IAmCharlieKirk in its bio—which is already a choice—said it was “a No from me.”
Philosopher Jennifer Frey, no progressive squish herself (she’s characterized as “a philosopher specializing in virtue ethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of religion” on her website), wrote that if you can’t “loudly and firmly resist ‘humanoids’ called Plato teaching our youth, you have no place in any movement that calls itself ‘classical.’”
Meanwhile, the very same conservative parents who’ve been pulling their kids out of public schools because a teacher mentioned feelings are now being asked to entrust their children’s intellectual development to a robot that will monitor their “emotional state.”
The cognitive dissonance here could power a small city.
If we want to defeat authoritarianism and fight back against the elites and billionaires who are in control of U.S. politics, we must be clear-eyed about how they exploit culture wars to divide the working class. They do this because they know they wouldn’t stand a chance against a united working class in America.
Resist Hate uses explainers and infographics to educate people in the hopes that it will decrease the tension, anger, and misconceptions between people on the Left and the Right.
This video does an excellent — and entertaining — job of explaining the concept of cognitive dissonance. 👇🏼
The Timing is Chef’s Kiss
Melania unveiled Plato the robot at the exact moment when a bipartisan backlash against screens in schools has reached a genuine tipping point. Parents across the political spectrum are furious that their kids spend all day on Chromebooks watching YouTube videos instead of, you know, learning from a human being.
Lawmakers in states as politically different as Massachusetts and Utah are drafting legislation to rip iPads out of classrooms. A school in Michigan just banned all screens from its building with one week’s notice.
Into this environment—where the prevailing mood is essentially “get these screens away from my children before I lose my sh*t”—Melania strolled in with a literal robot and said, “What if we made it the teacher?”
It’s the political equivalent of walking into an AA meeting with a keg.
The Quiet Part Out Loud
But beneath the absurdity is something worth paying attention to. The real appeal of Plato the robot isn’t educational; it’s ideological. A robot teacher does exactly what the parents tell it to do. It won’t assign a book that makes anyone uncomfortable. It won’t mention climate change unless you want it to.
It won’t end up on Libs of TikTok.
An Education-Related News Story
Remember the news story about a teacher who was forced to take down an “Everyone is welcome here” poster hanging in her classroom because it was “politically divisive and partisan,” according to the Republican legislature in the state?
Personally, I think the issue Republicans had with the poster was more about the Black and brown hands included on the poster than any “divisive” message it was sending.
If the raised hands were all White, Republicans probably wouldn’t have had an issue with it.
Once we’ve reached a point in our society where a teacher trying to make the children in her class feel loved and included is viewed as “politically divisive” and “partisan,” it’s time to stand up and unequivocally reject the party projecting that they are against that teacher’s actions.
It is, in the most literal sense possible, a programmable authority figure—a teacher stripped of all autonomy, judgment, and humanity. Just a compliant tool that delivers content approved by mom and dad.
That’s not education from a teacher. That’s an echo chamber with a power cord.
The irony is thick enough to cut: the same people who accuse public schools of “indoctrinating” children are openly fantasizing about a teaching machine whose entire selling point is that it can be programmed to indoctrinate children with the correct ideology. The only difference is who’s holding the remote.
This is the same party that introduced legislation in Oklahoma that mandated Bibles and Ten Commandments posters in school classrooms. It’s also the party championing Turning Point USA chapters and PragerU videos (cartoons depicting an alternative (conservative) version of historical events to indoctrinate children with White and Christian Nationalist beliefs) in K-12 schools.
At Least It Won’t Join a Union
Look, maybe Plato the robot will be great someday. Maybe in twenty years we’ll all have humanoid tutors in our kitchens, teaching calculus between loads of laundry. But today, in the real world, Figure 3 is a prototype that washes dishes. And the administration pushing it as the future of education is the same one that just gutted the Department of Education.
So, forgive the rest of us for being a little skeptical when the first lady shows up with a robot and says it’s going to teach your kids philosophy. Especially when the robot’s name is Plato, and it can’t even read “The Republic” yet—it’s too busy folding towels.
