During the last 10 years, the US has witnessed 180 school shootouts with a staggering 356 victims. With weaker gun control laws in the country, schools are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect the students. But a recent AI system installed in almost 9 US public schools, according to Recode, raised some privacy concerns.
The software is integrated into the surveillance system of the school. So if a school safety officer witnesses any suspicious student activity, he/she can click on the particular student’s body to attain more information of the student. The software will analyse the physical properties of the student like the clothes, gender, hair colour and what the Avigilon says some facial characteristics. After analysing the said features, the software will then match the image with any image having similar characteristics of other camera feeds.
As usual, with AI software comes obvious privacy concerns and this software is no different. Many security and privacy experts have questioned Avigilon’s Appearance Search.
“People don’t behave the same when they’re being watched,” reminds Brenda Leong, the director of AI and ethics at the Future of Privacy Forum. “Do we really want both young students and high schoolers, and anybody else, feeling like they’re operating in that environment all the time?”
