Pepper the Robot stole the headlines in October when she was called on to give evidence to the Commons Education Select Committee on the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) would have on education and the future employment market.

To be fair, Pepper, whose responses were, well, somewhat robotic, wasn’t just there to make her own contribution to the debate, but also because she has replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger as the public face of the army of robots that is going to take over the world.

Elevating Pepper to our list of education’s most influential people is surely our best way to guarantee that our new robot overlords allow us to keep producing the world’s best education journalism without our jobs being automated.

Even if this near-inevitable hegemony fails to materialise, what has become clear as 2018 has drifted on is that the debate about the impact of AI on schools is about as likely to be resolved in a timely manner as Brexit is.

This has been the year in which concerns about AI moved from being easily dismissed as sci-fi fantasy to being placed squarely centre of the education debate.

Serious voices with serious academic credentials, such as UCL professor Rose Luckin, have been near-onmipresent and their thinking - together with Pepper and its pals - is now taken seriously by educationalists and politicians alike.

Just don’t mention Skynet.

Tes’ people of the year 2018
 

• Jules White - headteacher and school funding campaigner
• Heather Wright - primary teacher and founder, Reading Rocks
• Jan Dubiel - head of national and international development, Early Excellence
• Meg Hillier - Labour MP and chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee
• Baroness Mary Warnock - life peer and SEND champion
• Professor Becky Francis - director, UCL Institute of Education
• Clare Sealy - headteacher, St Matthias Primary School, and education blogger
• Pepper the Robot - robot that gave evidence to Commons committee
• Shakira Martin - president, NUS students’ union
• The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida