Schools are using AI to spy on students and some are getting arrested for misinterpreted jokes and private conversations
Schools are using AI to spy on students and some are getting arrested for misinterpreted jokes and private conversations
no paywall https://archive.md/1lSRA
Some good news here is that if they apply this to society as a whole the jails would be too full, keep saying the no-no words online!
I was already glad being out of school before widespread take-home laptops and required after-school logging in to check for homework and shit, but this AI-driven surveillance is on a whole other level. Sometimes I'm wondering if it's just me getting old and doing the old people thing thinking things were better "back in the day" but is this current state not objectively worse, being monitored so much and having no way to really disconnect from school?
Its not a technology issue, its a capitalism issue.
Idealy, people should be able to afford their own devices and just log in via a browser, but capitalism fucks everyone and kids are too poor to have their own laptop and has to use the school-issued one which is obviously managed and surveilled because they can't have you watching porn on it.
Also, #SaveSnowDays, stop forcing an online meet if its snowing and they cant get to school, just let kids have a day off once in a while.
when we're saying that if the group chat leaks, we end up in prison, it seems like it was true
When the memes become real life
Sounds more like they are maybe using ML classifiers on all the communications they are spying on by conventional means. To me that's not the same as using AI to spy but whatever.
Isn't this the plot of Shimoneta?
What is sad is that an environment like this ruins someone’s mental health and ironically increasing the overall risk of violence.
Don't remember whose quote it was, maybe Hannah Arendt, that the real tragedy of tyranny is not when people self-censor what they say out loud, but when this leads them to filter out those thoughts from arising at all
That's the surveillance panopticon, they know they are being watched, but not when.
Then, those in charge can criminalise you.
Thought control
“I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,” said Patterson.
Seems like the Gaggle CEO has a good view. They're still an enabler in these situations. Be it poor guidance or training. With the impact they have, taking responsibility would be tracking and ceasing contracts that do not follow this soft response approach.
Human nature dictates we do things before we discuss if we should do things.
To me it starts getting into a philosophical discussion but unfortunately I don't think as a species we are mature enough yet to have these discussions.
A good real world example of this is in Canada the separation movement by Quebec vs. Alberta. In Quebec there have been years of open public discussion before they ultimately took a vote. They were painfully away of all the nuance that came from leaving Canada. They did it right to a large extent. Compare that to Daniella Smith in Alberta and she's hammering through the mechanisms for a vote to happen meanwhile the public has absolutely no understanding of the ramifications of if they do vote to leave Canada. They're doing it wrong.
Human nature by default seems to want to change the front tyre while doing 120 on the highway. This needs to change.
Imagine it's 1995 and you're an average person. You don't know all that much about separation, you just know that the coming referendum is about it and you don't want to separate. You likely are not a college/university graduate and a significant amount of the people you know haven't even graduated high school. You probably don't have a personal computer or internet access even if you do. Your primary news source is likely the odd updates you get on the radio while driving to or from work, and you haven't been following and aren't familiar with how people talk about separation. You show up to vote and you get this question:
Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?
French:
Acceptez-vous que le Québec devienne souverain, après avoir offert formellement au Canada un nouveau partenariat économique et politique, dans le cadre du projet de loi sur l'avenir du Québec et de l'entente signée le 12 juin 1995?
What the hell are you even voting for or against here?
The Québec referendum on separation was so confusing people remarked they didn't actually know what they were voting for. The situation resulted in a law (Clarity Act) that forced all secession votes to pass some tests to be considered valid, and also indicated that a secession requires amendment of the Constitution of Canada, which makes it incredibly difficult to actually do.
I really don't want to give Québec undeserved credit on this, they handled it quite poorly tbh and the whole thing felt like it was exploiting the ignorance and anger of a minority population that had even less education and literacy than the average Canadian at the time. That said, Canada has since devolved further into being a neoliberal anglosohere shithole so perhaps they were on to something.
We are living in the shittiest kind of cyberpunk dystopia. Can't wait for AI-induced cyber-psychosis once people implant Musk's chips into their brains and give MechaHitler full access to their subconscious.
I can't say for certain because I wasn't given one but I can't imagine me and my friends would have been willing to communicate with each other on devices provided by our school. Even in the early 00s it would have been filled with spyware.
I cannot possibly imagine trusting a school issued device.
Government goes for all it can get… until people start revolting
More free child labor in jails.
LOL the land of the free.
"... Whoever told you that is your enemy"
Think it's the same people that talk about our glorious western democratic values™️.
You know, keeping those pesky refugees out, supporting genocide and wars.
Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance
This is the problem
Yea, if nothing else hopefully this will make at least a few kids think about online privacy.
no paywall https://archive.md/1lSRA
I got a captcha on the archive, but was able to read the original just fine. I guess archives are not necessarily lower barrier.
WTF America?
Surprised from that shithole?
Talking about online privacy has become the “safe sex talk” of the last decade or so. You have to keep reminding kids so that it sticks. Nothing you say online is private, it can all be copied/screengrabbed/recorded/photographed and shared by the recipient. What you say, any images you post, etc. On school or work devices they can essentially see most everything, nothing is private. Even if you make efforts to cover your tracks, a truly determined agency with enough resources likely will find out who you are if they want to.
Nothing you say online is private, it can all be copied/screengrabbed/recorded/photographed and shared by the recipient.
Even if you fully trust the recipient, often times it can still be intercepted unless it's end-to-end encrypted, but even then the end device can still be stolen too.
Lots of wannabe authoritarians out there in educationland.
All those decades that the schools just -couldn't afford- more (well-educated) teachers and smaller class sizes. Lots of low-end look-good.
And then along came tech, and lo-and-behold, IT was going to be the savior. Let's buy into that! We may not be able to teach them to read, write or think, but they can learn to kneel!
I couldn't agree more.
It's fucking pathetic.
Citizen! Good news! Your writings have been randomly selected by Friend Computer for review!
A select team of Troubleshooters has been dispatched to bathe your general area in soothing Raytheon (tm) Brain Beams until your attitude improves.
Holy shit, the amount of surveillance the teens are under is ungodly and people blame the chatbot? And there wasn't even a human kind enough to speak with the girl before calling the fucking cops? I see a lot of blame to place here, but it's not the chatbot who is to blame.
Everyone of them failed a 13 year old girl. All of them should be ashamed.
The kids for bullying her for her tan
To me it didn't sound like she was being bullied, it seemed like her friends made a stupid joke and then she responded with another stupid joke. Which makes it even stupider that she got arrested. Literally just kids being kids.
The cops for arresting an 8th-grader
This is America, that's what they do. They love overreacting to small problems.
I was arrested for self-defence in a highschool fight, the actual bully who attack me did not get in any sort of trouble. If I didn't have citizenship, there was a chance that incident could've led to my deportation, even tho I was a minor. (USCIS can see all your arrests, including those that did not led to a conviction, or even expunged or pardoned offences, and they could retroactively revoke your legal status if they find out you lied.) But luckily charges were dropped because of couse they don't have the evidence to prove it and I have a clean record so they didn't bother prosecuting.
There is probably an alternate timeline somewhere out there in the multiverse where I got deported and had to learn another language that I haven't spoken for over a decade. Depressing to think about.
(Well that is still technically a possibility, all they have to do is make up some bullshit about "being a spy" and put me in gitmo)
I'm in Canada and it's only marginally better with respect to police under/overreaction. A friend and I once got the "don't go to school on X day" message and we went immediately to local, provincial, and federal police. No one took us seriously. We had a friend working at CSIS (American analogue would be CIA) look into it and later that week we saw the article in a local paper.
Police investigated the home and found:
Point being we couldn't get the police to lift a finger to check out what we believed to be a credible threat (this guy never even joked about that stuff), but boy were they willing to burn rubber racing to my school when I committed the crime of defending myself in a "normal" school fight and one of my bullies claimed they felt threatened by me. This event set off a whole series of events, like requiring me to get a full evaluation at a psychiatric facility, before being allowed back in school. Our system is broken.
They love overreacting to small problems.
It's what they do instead of reacting to major problems in any way.
One of my possible theories is that the alternate timelines diverge for each of us at moments we could have died. The timeline diverges and one continues on with us and one without us; sometimes while "dying" timelines merge back together resulting in stories like reddit's r/glitchinthematrix
So if it's any consolation, your bully probably died in your deportation timeline.
Ya, AI is not the story here.
The next few years is going to be like the time Post Office employees were hounded and had their lives destroyed over what was later found to be a software fault and not mass Human corruption, but on a far grander scale.
This is exactly what is going to happen with the fucking chat control of the EU actually enforces it, but for an entire continent. Fuck this shit. Privacy is a human right.
What a great way to prepare students for our AI enabled social media and digital surveillance society. Take note kids, trust no one!
It not just schools. Its everywhere. I was on reddit just last week, talking about when I was 15 and fancying one of my teachers. I got banned for "soliciting sex from a minor"... And whats worse, when I appealed, they upheld it. Some human actually read a comment in which I spoke about when I was 15. And took that to mean I was asking kids if they want to see some puppies or something. The insane online world of the far left and right has fucked us all.
Sorry I could believe this if it weren't for your right-wing chud reveal at the end. Also chuds tend to have pedo tendencies so I think you're misrepresenting what you were banned for; as much as I hate to give the benefit of the doubt to reddit's moderation team.
Yes, thank you for the example of what I was talking about. Very much appreciated.
With you up until bringing the far left into this. What does universal healthcare, trans rights or taxing billionaires have to do with the surveillance state, aside from dismantling it?
There is something fundamentally fucked up in a country that arrests and puts in jail a 13 years old kid over a bad joke.
And strip-searched!
The result of "no tolerance policies".
You don't understand, they are brown \s
With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement.
Not sure what's worse here: how the police overreacted or that the software immediately contacts law enforcement, without letting teachers (n.b.: they are the experts here, not the police) go through the positives first.
But oh, that would mean having to pay somebody, at least some extra hours, in addition to the no doubt expensive software. JFC.
Not sure what’s worse here: how the police overreacted or that the software immediately contacts law enforcement, without letting teachers (n.b.: they are the professionals here, not the police) go through the positives first.
The idea behind the policy is to stop school shootings. If there were a legitimate threat of violence, you would likely want the police to be notified as soon as possible. The issue here is that the authorities are letting a piece of half-ass code (Read: AI) decide what is a legitimate threat and, worse still, acting on that determination without question.
They have literally sacrificed an essential freedom for some temporary, and probably illusory, security.
So the police sexually assaulted a minor. I'm not even fucking surprised anymore, wtf.
We all know teachers are the laziest people known to man...
Teachers are generally awesome. But school boards and superintendents are almost stereotypically control freaks; and that's who sets this stuff up. There are plenty of good ones too, but it's not nearly as selfless a group as teachers.
I was kinda being ironic... but yep
“Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good,” said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting.
No no no no.
Exactly.
Its not even for the greater good: Ask for an example of chat control type laws leading to convictions and the only answer you will get is ”we cant discuss individual cases due to privacy / prejudice for a court case"
They want more slave labor. The greater good is enriching themselves.
It is not the tool, but is the lazy stupid person that created the implementation. The same stupidity is true of people that run word filtering in conventional code. AI is just an extra set of eyes. It is not absolute. Giving it any kind of unchecked authority is insane. The administrators that implemented this should be what everyone is upset at.
The insane rhetoric around AI is a political and commercial campaign effort by Altmann and proprietary AI looking to become a monopoly. It is a Kremlin scope misinformation campaign that has been extremely successful at roping in the dopes. Don't be a dope.
This situation with AI tools is exactly 100% the same as every past scapegoated tool. I can create undetectable deepfakes in gimp or Photoshop. If I do so with the intent to harm or out of grossly irresponsible stupidity, that is my fault and not the tool. Accessibility of the tool is irrelevant. Those that are dumb enough to blame the tool are the convenient idiot pawns of the worst of humans alive right now. Blame the idiots using the tools that have no morals or ethics in leadership positions while not listening to these same types of people's spurious dichotomy to create monopoly. They prey on conservative ignorance rooted in tribalism and dogma which naturally rejects all unfamiliar new things in life. This is evolutionary behavior and a required mechanism for survival in the natural world. Some will always scatter around the spectrum of possibilities but the center majority is stupid and easily influenced in ways that enable tyrannical hegemony.
AI is not some panacea. It is a new useful tool. Absent minded stupidity is leading to the same kind of dystopian indifference that lead to the ""free internet"" which has destroyed democracy and is the direct cause of most political and social issues in the present world when it normalized digital slavery through ownership over a part of your person for sale, exploitation, and manipulation without your knowledge or consent.
I only say this because I care about you digital neighbor. I know it is useless to argue against dogma but this is the fulcrum of a dark dystopian future that populist dogma is welcoming with open arms of ignorance just like those that said the digital world was a meaningless novelty 30 years ago.
I can create undetectable deepfakes in gimp or Photoshop.
That is crazy, dude. You gotta teach me. There are soo many impoverished countries I wanna fuck over with this skill.
In such a world, hoping for a different outcome would be just a dream. You know, people always look for the easy way out, and in the end, yes, we will live under digital surveillance, like animals in a zoo. The question is how to endure this and not break down, especially in the event of collapse and poverty. It's better to hope for the worst and be prepared than to look for a way out and try to rebel and then get trapped.
You know what really grinds my gears? This shitty dystopia completely eschews any potentially cool aspect of invasive exploitative authoritarianism. The (not so) secret police is patching together their own "uniforms" by browsing the bargain bins at the local tacti-cool mall-ninja outfitters. Where's the black leather trench coats, stylish sunglasses worn after dark and slicked back hair? If they're going to ask me for 'ze papers' all the time, the least they can do is look cool doing it, godamnit. At least get Hugo Boss to design your attire; that's just about the only thing that worked out well for the last bunch of pricks.
I mean, where's the towering brutalist architecture? Where's my mandatory daily dose of SOMA? Or my idiotically wirelessly hackable cyberware? Hell, they can't even do bread and circuses right anymore. The bread is CO2-pumped flour glue and the circuses is an endless stream of more Marvel projects and Disney violations of Star Wars.
And don't get me started on the quality of our dictators these days. They sure don't make them like they used to.
I mean, where's the towering brutalist architecture?
I think China is doing a good job at that.
Can’t they at least smoke cigarettes in a cool and threatening manner?!
I think that's illegal now too. Can't have anything interfering with the glorious vision of a relentlessly productive citizenry that ideally slave away for the benefits of their owners until they die in the office chair at age 74 - right before qualifying for pension.
Well, except for the health "care" system. That's an exception, but only because the only thing better than ruthless exploitation is diversified ruthless exploitation. Gotta keep the peons on their toes, lest they get uppity.
Mom, can we have Equilibrium at home?
"ICE reached out to both Mr. Bale and Mr. Bean in an attempt to address the current gun-fu deficit of the agency, but regrettably neither had any interest in the job."
Hey, some of the newer Star Wars stuff is alright! Sometimes!
My sense of humor is dry, dark, and absurdist. I’d go to jail every week for the sorts of things I joke about if I was a kid today. This is complete lunacy.
Example of an average joke on my part: speed up and run over that old lady crossing the street!
It makes my partner laugh. I laugh. We both know I don’t mean it. But a crappy AI tool wouldn’t understand that.
Something tells me that our type of jokes are on the way out bro. As you said, there's no room for nuance in this story, so I'm afraid we'll eventually all be listened in on 100% of the time until someone says something 'actionable'. If you're not already on a multitude of lists by now, you're doing something wrong.
Yeah especially around middle school, the "darker" the "joke" the more funny it was
Just don't allow an ai on the jury. If you are on a jury tell tpe judge you want the prosecuting lawyers disbarred for wasting your time.
I didn’t know Reddit admins were also school admins
Another school shooting avoided! Just kidding, we just tortured a child for fun.
Which kinda seems like a villain origin story to me.
It seems that Big Brother is wathing you... But now it’s already a reality, oh and what will happen if someone commits a thoughtcrime?
They finally get to play GOD, rip out your brain, and let an AI torture it to the maximum extent possible for all eternity.
Optimized to torture you in more than one way. Take your dignity, break you down into every way possible to make you a bad person, then use that as leverage to make your suffering even worse.
In fact, the best choice we can make to avoid suffering from all this is to wipe all humans off the face of the earth, leaving no DNA or anything else, then everything will be fine. Until then, we will have a spiritual war.
Well, we can only prepare ourselves, we are in for a truly exciting adventure in a concentration camp. :3
In a world where the powerful do what they want, there can be nothing but suffering. although it is precisely in suffering and pain and the struggle for one's freedom and life that the meaning of life lies, in my opinion. And art without pain is no longer art, but only quality content.
Although, to tell the truth, they will introduce this slavery in any case, the question is whether people will accept it voluntarily, and if they do not accept it, then they will impose it by force and poverty. I think you understand the disadvantage we are in: we are being driven into a corner like prey.
I don't understand why she was arrested, her "threat" was obviously a joke. I guess jokes are illegal now
Well in Scotland they certainly are
Snapchat’s automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours.
Someone should tell the kids about Signal.
As for monitoring on school computers, that seems OK to me if it's disclosed to the students and parents in advance. What's problematic is the responses, which seem much more focused on ass-covering than student welfare. I imagine most 13 year olds have made jokes about killing people once or twice and any adult with common sense would be able to tell they're jokes.
What a shithole country.
This is frustrating. Obviously it's not okay to make jokes like that and I even think some sort of punishment might be okay, but strip searching and jailing her overnight? You aren't creating someone who will think before they speak, you're making someone who will be paranoid of all legal processes and never trust any government official ever again for anything because they got fucking STRIP SEARCHED AND DETAINED OVERNIGHT over a really shitty joke.
To me this is equivalent to dropping bombs on the Middle East and expecting not to create a lot more terrorists. If she didn’t want to go shooting before maybe she wants to now.
Unsurprising to me this is happening in schools, they've got to be ready for the low wage retail jobs many will have after graduation. A lot of places have been upgrading their phones to Zoom-enabled devices, which have the ability to record and summarize all employee conversations held near them for management or HR. I've worked in a couple places recently where it got rolled out and there were hints they were using it that way.
Anyone willing to call me paranoid, or supportive of the idea this tech is used this way or will be, please respond, retail isn't really full of many tech savvy people and I'm curious if I'm imagining the capability/use of this, or if others have had similar experiences.
In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement.
The 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students’ accounts.
Murica
“It made me feel like, is this the America we live in?”
Some people are really fucking ignorant.
AI is a virus
AI is a machine that cannot be held accountable and has no will.
Stop being distracted by the tool, look at the humans.
AI is all about the humans.
AI is the last to blame here:
this is a societywide issue, dont blame the bot.
Gotta indoctrinate them into the surveillance state early. Gotta break them before they learn to resist.
Do you want to badly fuck up a society? Because that is how you badly fuck up a society.
put the phone down
Shouldn't they have used AI to collect the messages and then have a human manually intervene?