Education

Parents Revolt After College Tries Surveillance Experiment On Kids, Report Shows

(Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)

Researchers shuttered a plan to train AI by filming preschoolers after facing backlash from parents, according to an investigative report.

University of Washington researchers planned to ask preschool teachers to record student behavior with wearable or fixed cameras, 404 Media reported Monday. Parents successfully had the study cancelled over concerns for their children’s privacy.

“I am troubled by the idea of using my child’s likeness in unknown AI tools and how this could be abused,” one parent reportedly told 404 Media.

“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. Many families in our school are migrants and non-native English speakers, but forms were not provided in any of their native languages,” she said.

Dr. Gail Joseph and the university’s Cultivate Learning team aimed to develop AI tools “that can help assess classroom interaction quality,” according to a document sent to parents and shared with 404 Media. These recordings would cover their normal daily routine and “occur during morning program hours up to 150 minutes, up to 4 visits in one month.” It also stated that students’ faces would have been blurred and their names edited out of the audio.

While the document stated participation was “completely voluntary,” parents would have been required to manually withdraw from the study if they didn’t want their children recorded.

“The UW College of Education is a leader in early childhood education in part because of the relationships and trust we’ve built with our community partners, including schools and parents,” university spokesperson David Rey told DCNF in an email Tuesday.

“Prior to terminating the study, we were working to identify research sites using informed consent and in compliance with all University of Washington Institutional Review Board guidelines. Classroom participation was contingent upon receiving parental permission for all children. If any parent did not provide permission, the classroom would have been excluded from the study,” Rey said.

“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,” university spokesperson Jackson Holtz told 404 media in an email.

The University of Washington reportedly removed the section of the website detailing the study after 404 Media asked the school for comment.

This cancelled study comes as Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI have doled out millions of dollars to teachers unions for AI training, the Associated Press reported last October.

Privacy concerns aren’t the only challenge this industry-backed venture faces. A-grades have apparently inflated 30% since ChatGPT‘s release, Futurism reported Monday. Additionally, an elementary school student in California reportedly generated an “explicitly sexual” image by accident after she was instructed to use an AI-tool for a project last December, the DCNF previously reported.