Any parent with a child in public school should read this carefully and then talk to their local school board. (Don’t worry, the incoming Trump administration won’t send the FBI after you.) The New York Times reports that districts across the country are now secretly installing AI spyware on school-issued devices like laptops and tablets. The AI spies on and analyzes every word your child types. If the software decides that your child might be thinking about harming themselves or someone else, it can call the cops to your home. This is already happening to families across the country.
The results of this new trend have been described as chaotic and traumatizing for families. An algorithm in the software analyzes what kids write and tries to determine if they’re considering suicide. There are a host of problems with this.
Most teenagers are not great communicators or writers yet. That’s why they’re in school! The AI can and does easily misinterpret the intent of kids as they work on writing assignments. Plus, has there ever been a teenage girl in history who didn’t go through a “Look at me, I’m writing dark and brooding poetry because I’m so edgy” phase?
The Times describes the result that happened to a family in Fairfield County, CT this year. The parents were awakened by the police pounding on their door at midnight. Three cops were frantically asking them where their 17-year-old daughter was. The girl was asleep in her room. The cops informed them that their daughter’s school computer software had flagged her as an extreme risk for suicide.
They woke the girl up so they could interrogate her about something found on her school-issued laptop. The language that triggered a midnight visit from three police officers was from a poem that the girl had written several years ago.
“It was one of the worst experiences of her life,” said the girl’s mom, who added that her daughter is still traumatized by the event.
The rise of this intrusive AI spying software actually happenedduring the COVID lockdowns. America went through a youth suicide crisis that was directly caused by the lockdowns. Kids started killing themselves at record numbers because they were kept isolated and lonely. The solution that school districts came up with was to have AI spy on the kids. Go figure.
Congress passed a law called the Children’s Internet ProtectionAct back in 2000. The law required schools to install filters on school-issued computers that protect kids from finding harmful stuff on the web. Schools have interpreted that law as permission to install suicide-detecting AI software on the kids’ computers. Some of the biggest tech companies leading the charge include GoGuardian, Gaggle, Lightspeed, Bark, and Securly.
Millions of kids across the country are now being surveilled by this technology. Parents often don’t know about it because the language authorizing it is buried in the lengthy technology agreement they sign at the start of the school year.
During school hours, kids can be yanked out of class and subjected to a psychological screening because of something they type. After school hours, the AI can call the cops to the parent’s home.
All the data on the effectiveness of these AI programs is being concealed by the tech companies that developed them. We don’t know how accurate the software is, how many false alarms it generates, or whether it has even saved the life of a single teenager. But the AI is on the school-issued computers of millions of children across America—watching them.