Imagine that you are calmly getting bored in class, and suddenly red alarms go off everywhere, the doors close automatically so that no one leaves, and all you have to do is wait for a disturbed man with a gun shoots himselfif the police don’t stop him first. This is what day-to-day life is like at a high school in the United States.
This is what happened a few days ago in Lawton Chiles Middle School in Oviedo (Florida). The code red was activated, which locks the classroom doors while the students hide behind the tables, and a police assault occurred, because an artificial intelligence had mistaken a clarinet for a weapon.
It’s not the first time it happens. A few months ago a minor student was subdued and handcuffed by eight police officers, because the AI said he had a gun in his pocket. It turned out to be… a bag of Doritos.
An AI failure that can cost lives
In the United States, many schools and colleges use artificial intelligence software that examines security cameras for weapons.
In the case of this institute in Oviedo, it uses a cloud-based AI developed by ZeroEyes, which detects more than a hundred different weapons. And some that are not, from what it seems. The subscription costs $250,000, and covers all schools in the district.
We are facing a very serious situationbecause if those students who were carrying the clarinet and the bag of Doritos get scared when they see the police rushing at them, they run away or resist arrest, and a shot escapes, we could be talking about a tragedy.
It must be clarified that AI is not to blame for everything. When it detects a weapon, it sends the photo to a human supervisor, who decides whether or not to call the police.
Why did those people fail? Does a clarinet look so much like a weapon? And a bag of snacks? Or is the submission to AI already so high that they prefer to believe AI over their own eyes? Unfortunately, they haven’t made those photos public, so we can’t comment.
The problem is that the secrecy of these companies is total. None communicate how many weapons they successfully detect, and how many failures occur. Many parents complain that there are too many false alarms that stress students, and ask that the data be revealed.
The United States is sinking into its labyrinth of violence and police surveillance, because unwilling or unable to address the root of the problem: that anyone can buy a gun in a store, with very few requirements.