​Did we just hit our ‘Twilight Zone’ era?

By Sabrina Hornung

In the last week of March, we heard about an AI education droid visiting the White House as the first lady made a pitch to replace teachers with androids. In an interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, JD Vance talked about his obsession with UFO files and his belief that aliens are “outer space demons.” We added the term “bimbofication” to our vocabularies and the White House launched onlyfarms.gov, a website built to tout the administration’s ag agenda, which is not to be confused with only fans.com. Why they think it’s appropriate for the party of family values to parody a website for adult generated content is beyond me, but this takes those bootstraps to a whole new level.

Yet again, why does this all seem on brand?

This isn’t “The Twilight Zone.” This isn’t “The Onion.” Apparently, this is just another week in 2026, and by golly we’re really jumping the shark to distract from the Epstein Files this time around.

We’re not going to unpack all of this weirdness today. But let’s talk more about this robot.

On March 25, Melania Trump introduced an android named “Figure 03” in the east room of the White House during the “Fostering the Future Together” summit. The droid greeted the guests with, "I am grateful to be part of this historic movement to empower children with technology and education," in 11 languages according to Reuters. The robot was also the first American made android guest in the White House. (Which makes one wonder how many other non-domestically made bots have walked through those doors.)

It said that Melania speaks six languages and after watching a video of the two, it’s hard not to notice that the two had a spookily similar gait…polyglot or polybot? No wonder the press made sure to specify that Figure 03 was the first American made android guest at the White House.

Jokes aside, the intent of this introduction was a pitch to replace teachers with AI robots. What could possibly go wrong? Has no one seen “West World,” “Maximum Overdrive,” or at the very least “WALL-E?” Do we need to have a community read of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World?”

There’s a growing concern among parents regarding the amount of screen time spent in the classroom. But what happens when your teacher’s a robot? Is this just another effort by our administration to pander to big tech or is our administration being incredibly out of touch with its constituents?

Figure 03 sells for $24,760, according to Figure AI, but what I want to know is, why can’t we just pay our teachers a living wage and give them some respect and a decent classroom budget and leave the robots for the extremely dangerous or undesirable jobs that can’t be filled? AI is a tool that can be used to improve our lives and enhance our humanity, not something that sucks the humanity out of us. Leave the self expression to the humans and let the robots scrub the sinks and toilets. (Unless that’s something that really brings you joy — then you do you. We’re not here to judge.)

We can’t be all gloom and doom here, there has to be some kind of silver lining. Perhaps this means that we’re one step closer to having a housecleaning bot like Rosie from the Jetsons.. That is, if you happen to have that extra $25,000 laying around.

You were a good little droid Rosie…You served your purpose well.

Though what happens when things go wrong? Can Figure 03 be hacked? What kind of staff and maintenance are required and how accessible is that technology if you’re in the wilds of rural North Dakota on a Tuesday? Will our country schools be left out in the weeds? Also how tough are these bots, because what if these kids go “Lord of the Flies” on Figure 03? Also, does that mean schools will still have human coaches? And if so, what would that say about our schools’ socialization priorities?

Remember when folks were told that immigrants were taking their jobs by this same administration? Do you think those true believers will ever realize that AI was the boogeyman all along? And those rolling blackouts due to green energy that this same party warned us about during the era of “The Green New Deal?” Just wait until you hear about how much water and energy these AI data centers require from our already stressed power grids. But that’s just more gloom and doom for another day. Maybe next month we’ll discuss the flowers in the park.

Reach Editor Sabrina Hornung at sabrina@hpr1.com.