u/404mediaco

NEW: University of Washington researchers planned to have preschool teachers wear cameras that would record everything they saw from a first-person perspective, including the children they were teaching, then use that footage to develop AI models.

Crucially, it was opt-out, rather than opt-in.

“I am troubled by the idea of using my child's likeness in unknown AI tools and how this could be abused,” a parent said. “I was particularly concerned about families’ ability to give informed consent. As a native English speaker, the vague language in the handout left me with a slew of questions."After 404 Media contacted the university for comment, the section of its website describing the study was taken offline.

Read now: https://www.404media.co/researchers-wanted-preschool-teachers-to-wear-cameras-to-train-ai/

Arizona State University rolled out a platform called Atomic that creates AI-generated modules based on lectures taken from ASU faculty by cutting long videos down to very short clips then generating text and sections based on those clips. 

AI in schools has been highly controversial, with experiments like the “AI-powered private school” Alpha School and AI agents that offer to live the life of a student for them, no learning required. In this case, the AI tool in question is created directly by a university, using the labor of its faculty—but without consulting that faculty. 

“When I looked at it, I was really surprised to see my own face, and the faces of people I know, and others that I don't know” in module materials generated by Atomic, Hanlon said. It had clipped a one-minute snippet from a 12 minute video he’d done as part of a lecture mentioning the literary critic Cleanth Brooks, which the AI transcribed as “Client” Brooks. “What was in that video did not strike me as something anyone would understand without a lot more context,” Hanlon said. When he contacted his colleagues whose lecture videos were also in that module, they were all just as shocked and alarmed, he said. “I mean, it happens to all of us in certain ways all the time, but have your institution do it—to have the university you work for use your image and your lectures and your materials without your permission, to chop them up in a way that might not reflect the kind of teacher you really are... Let alone serve that to an actual student in the real world.”

The videos appear to be scraped from Canvas, ASU’s learning management system where lecture materials and class discussions are made available to students. Canvas is owned by Instructure, and is one of the most popular learning management systems in the country, used by many universities. “ASU Atomic currently draws from ASU Online's full library of course content across subjects including business, finance, technology, leadership, history, and more. If ASU teaches it, Atom—your AI learning partner—can build a hyper-personalized learning module around it,” the Atomic FAQ page says.

Read now: https://www.404media.co/asu-atomic-ai-modules-arizona-state-university/