(The Center Square) – First Lady Melania Trump introduced the “first American made humanoid” and advocated using artificial intelligence to teach children at a “Future Together” Summit this week. The response has not been positive among many educators and Christian leaders.
As she entered the summit, walking alongside her was Figure 03, an AI robot humanoid, who was the first to speak.
Honored to be invited to the White House by the First Lady Melania Trump pic.twitter.com/E8J74hOciq— Figure (@Figure_robot) March 25, 2026
Figure 03 was developed by Figure AI, Inc., a robotics company, which received venture capital funding in part from Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, OpenAI and others.
Figure 03’s introduction came one year after Melania Trump filmed her self-described documentary, Melania, last January. In it, she expressed concerns about increased technology screen time and social media usage among children with France’s First Lady Brigette Macron. Macron said France has a social media ban for children under age 15.
One year later, Trump, joined by Macron and the spouses of 45 international leaders, hosted a summit to advance children’s additional screen usage by promoting AI. Officials also presented national strategies to integrate technology into education systems.
In her keynote address, Trump highlighted three goals to transform public education: using AI “to personalize learning,” using “humanoid educators as at-home tools for students,” and advocating for “the role of technology and education as a driver for America’s economy.” Humanoids are non-human machines powered by AI.
She said each of the participants have “a vital role to play in shaping the TechEd opportunities for the next generation.” Her initiative’s “collaborative platform will serve as a capability multiplier for members … derived directly from our coalition’s foundational elements: AI, education, and global leadership.”
In response, Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd, told The Center Square, “This is what happens when people who don’t genuinely understand education try to ‘revolutionize’ education. Using AI can personalize learning in the sense that it can adapt to a child’s performance – but you know who else can adapt to a child’s performance? Teachers! And we can adapt to far more as well – we can differentiate between knowledge and a guess, we can read facial expressions, we can sense confusion and track unintentional errors.”
Human beings are also “biologically geared to learn from other human beings,” he said. “Our cognition and the larger learning process is more than just having access to information: it is physical, it is sensual, and it is social. This empathetic aspects of education can never be mimicked by anything lacking human biology.”
Author of the Digital Delusion, Horvath leads LME Global, and recently testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. After evaluating more than 100 years of data, he said Generation Z is the first generation to have less cognitive capabilities than their parents. This was after the federal government spent $30 billion during the COVID-lockdown era on virtual learning technology, which proved disastrous, The Center Square reported.
Data shows cognitive development in children has reversed, primarily due to technology, Horvath said. “Increased classroom screen exposure is generally associated with weaker learning outcomes, not stronger ones. In narrow circumstances … digital tools can support surface-level skill acquisition, but in most core academic contexts screens slow learning, reduce depth of understanding, and weaken retention. This is not primarily a question of teacher quality, student motivation, or access to devices. It reflects a structural mismatch between how human cognition develops and how digital platforms are engineered to capture attention, fragment focus, and accelerate task switching.”
Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath: “Even in schools, it doesn’t matter what the size of the screen is…and it doesn’t matter who bought it…All of these things are also going to hurt learning, which in turn are going to hurt our kids’ cognitive development.” pic.twitter.com/6zLuJW5isa— CSPAN (@cspan) January 15, 2026
Lance Cashion, CEO of Fort Worth based Forge Room Foundation and pastor of King’s Cross Fellowship, took issue with the White House advancing transhumanism. “A well-funded, AI-enthused cohort are operating from a worldview grounded in materialism, pragmatism, and transhumanism, driven by economic incentives of the moment and grand dreams for the future. Just because we can do something does not mean we should,” he told The Center Square.
Melania Trump stating, “The future of AI is ‘personified’ — it will be formed in the shape of humans,” Cashion says, distorts “the understanding of the fundamental natures of God, humanity, truth, and reality. This distortion will shape values and behaviors, which will lead to consequences.” Citing Gen. 1:27 in the Bible, he said, “Human beings are the only creatures ‘made in the image of God.’ Anthropomorphizing machines is not only dangerous to society but raises ethical questions.”
He also argues transhumanists are attempting to be God and distort truth. He asked AI ChatGPT to rewrite the beginning of the Tower of Babel narrative in Gen. 11:1-4 “from a transhumanist sci-fi perspective.” The text describes rebellion against God. The AI response he received was: “‘Come, let us forge new organs, and optimize them thoroughly.’ And they had synthetic tissue for bone, and programmable DNA for binding agents. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a perfected form – a tower of silicon flesh that reaches into digital immortality itself. Let us transcend the boundaries between mind and matter, lest we remain scattered across the limitations of our mortal frames. ‘We shall become our own civilization,’ they declared, ‘a living tower that bridges the gap between what we were and what we can become.’”
“Modernity, with its technological wonders, is attempting to build a techno Tower of Babel,” which will have the same outcome of failure, Cashion said.
Dr. Alida Liberman, associate professor of Philosophy at Southern Methodist University, told The Center Square, “Teaching children with AI robots deprives them of the opportunity to form valuable pedagogical relationships with their teachers. Teaching is not only about conveying information or helping students build skills: it’s also about responding to students as people by encouraging their curiosity, sharing your passion for a subject, and correcting their errors with care. AI chatbots cannot do this, as they do not have genuine curiosity, passion, or care.”
She also said using “AI educators raises a number of serious concerns, including, accuracy, reliability, and safety, privacy and data security concerns, and using AI in ways that prevent the development of foundational skills,” like reading comprehension or or writing abilities.
