Plan For Teachers to Record Children For AI Training Purposes Scrapped After Parent Backlash
A controversial research project led by the University of Washington that would have seen teachers wearing cameras in the classroom has been scrapped after parents expressed outrage.
As 404 Media reports, the program presented to the parents of children was opt-out rather than opt-in. Researchers wanted to fix a camera on teachers to record a first-person-view. A document given to parents says that the videos would capture the “normal interaction between teachers and children during regular classroom activities.”
While the goal of the study was to ostensibly “better understand children’s everyday learning experiences and to develop AI tools that can help assess classroom interaction quality,” parents immediately raised concerns. “I am troubled by the idea of using my child’s likeness in unknown AI tools and how this could be abused,” says one parent, per 404 Media.
Despite the document that was presented to parents stating that the videos would be used to train “secure, private AI models,” it made no mention of which models. This omission alarmed the experts that 404 Media spoke to.
“Who may the data may be shared with? How long will it be maintained? Who is funding the research? Those are questions that I would want answers to,” says Faith Boninger, co-director of the National Education Policy Center, who also took issue with the wording “not limited to,” which implies that the data could be used in the future in unforeseen ways.
Tech companies like to include such wording in contracts; it’s what tripped up the founder of an image archive called Diversity Photos after he signed up with Adobe on a stock image licensing deal, but his photos wound up being used to train Adobe’s Firefly AI image model — leading to a legal dispute.
After parents raised concerns over the University of Washington’s AI research project, it was shelved. “Our initial outreach was intended to help us better understand how families would feel about a project that uses artificial intelligence to support teachers,” assistant director of University of Washington News Jackson Holts tells 404 Media. “Given the early responses from parents, we have terminated the study and are no longer seeking participation at any site. (It is not unusual to terminate a study in the early stages as we receive feedback from community partners.) All programs are in the process of being notified that this particular study is now terminated.”
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
