A Chinese university stopped using artificial intelligence to measure whether students looked toward their lecturers following backlash over privacy and student consent.
Here's what to know
The South China Morning Post reported Nanjing University used "head-up rates" to gauge engagement based on whether students faced the lecturer or looked down at devices or desks.
It announced Nov. 4 that it would stop calculating the metric, according to VnExpress International.
Concerns about facial recognition and personal data collection followed the circulation of screenshots pairing live classroom video with attendance counts and statistics on lateness and attention, per the SCMP.
The smart classroom platform analyzes camera feeds with AI to count students, record attendance, and assess attention. Students had been told it would be used for a weeklong attendance check during routine teaching inspections, the outlet said.
More background
The university said attendance figures would not be tied to grades and that authorities had not ordered the inspections. Some teachers had reportedly warned that attendance records could affect grades or students' eligibility to take course exams, as VnExpress International detailed.
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The screenshots were taken during a May trial at one campus, the university clarified. The saga pointed to a controversial application of AI in both education and monitoring.
That doesn't even get into the tech's tremendous toll on resources. Computing systems require electricity, while larger AI operations can consume substantial power and water for cooling.
Though AI can help optimize clean-energy systems, it also demands resources and carries the potential for misuse.
What's being done?
Automated attendance figures were meant to guide teaching evaluations and later course changes, the university said. It defended the broader platform as a way to improve teaching quality even after dropping its attentiveness score, according to VnExpress International.
Students can also use the system to review recorded lessons, and it supports lecture livestreams and connections between campuses. The university said it had not used facial recognition in teaching activities or collected facial or other biometric information without authorization, per the outlet.
Some students nevertheless feared that the university and private technology firms could obtain their biometric information through facial recognition. Nanjing University is highly invested in AI technology.
According to the SCMP, the university spent more than 30 million yuan, or $4.5 million, on the project. The upgrade covered more than 100 classrooms and several public spaces, VnExpress International reported.
That means while the attentiveness monitoring might be going by the wayside at Nanjing University, AI is going nowhere.
Where can I learn more?
Other schools and universities are weighing where AI belongs in the classroom and what limits it needs.
• New York and Los Angeles banned most student AI use for the school year.
• Half of Chicago school board candidates support an AI pause as students experiment with the technology.
• Stanford University faced accusations of using AI to change students' race and gender.
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