Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

My kids’ school added a new weapons scanner as kids walk in the door. It’s powered by “AI.” They trust the AI quite a bit.

However, the AI identifies the school issued Lenovo laptops as weapons. So every kid was flagged. Rather than stopping using such a stupid tool, they just have the kids remove their laptops before going through the scanner.

I expect not smart enough people are buying “AI” products and trusting them to do the things they want them to do, but don’t work.

Were they Evolv? https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24119275/evolv-technologie...

I could see a student hollowing out the laptop and hiding a weapon inside to sneak it in if thats the case

And they trust them more than people.

That is beyond silly. Unless students go naked they can have a weapon in a pocket.

Sometimes suboptimal tools are used to deflect litigation.

Do you think it stupid to scan kids for weapons, or stupid to think that a metal detector will find weapons?

The point was that if the laptop is taken out and doesn’t go through the scanner, but the rest of the student has to go through the scanner, then the laptop is a great hiding place. Presumably that scanner can at least beep at a pocket knife.

Not the OP, but obviously it wasn't a metal detector, otherwise it would've detected all brands of laptops as weapons. It's probably an image based detector.

The problem is, if it has been that badly tested that it detects Lenovo laptops as weapons, there is a good chance that it doesn't properly detect actual weapons either.

Oh, indeed!

But if they are not otherwise checked it would be quite useless.

> I expect not smart enough people are buying “AI” products and trusting them to do the things they want them to do, but don’t work.

People are willing to believe almost anything as long as it makes their lives a little more convenient.

I wonder if it's batteries, they look quite close to explosives on a variety of scanning tools. In fact, both chemically store and release energy but on extremely different timescales.

I think it's overboard to scan for weapons at all school but very important to scan at some schools.

Reading this comment, it sounds to me that you live in a dystopian nightmare.

I think it's stupid to have a country where guns are legal.

Many schools are prisons, same as ever.

Guns are legal in almost every country - I think your problem is with countries that have almost no restriction on gun ownership. e.g. Here in the UK you can legally own a properly licensed rifle or shotgun and even a handgun in some places outside of Great Britain (e.g. Northern Ireland).

Just because something is technically legal, doesn't mean it's in any way common or part of UK culture to own a gun.

There hasn't been a school shooting in the UK for nearly 30 years. Handguns were banned after the last school shooting and there hasn't been one since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_shootings_in_t...

Although that fact is sometimes forgotten by schools who copy the US in having "active shooter drills" though. Modern schools sound utterly miserable.

Clearly the answer is airport grade security at schools and militarizing police, instead of fixing the root causes.

A high school I worked at had a similar system in place called Evolv. It’s not a metal detector, but it did successfully catch a student with a loaded gun in his backpack. Granted, he didn’t mean to bring the gun to school. I think it’s stupid to believe that kids who want to bring a gun to school will arrive on time to school. They often arrive late when security procedures like bag scanning are not in place.

let us ban knives then...

got a license for that mate?

Or it is accepted that said purchase will cover their ass, or even better, that refusing said purchase can be held against them in the future if things happen, even if said purchase would have made 0 difference.

Exactly. It's not the legality of weapons, but the easy availability of them that causes the issues.

It seems to me like victim blaming for U.S. schools to have active shooter drills - it makes more sense to have much better training and screening of gun owners than trying to train the victims. However, given that the NRA is excessively powerful in U.S. politics, I can see why they are necessary, but it just seems easier to me to stop kids from being able to get hold of guns (e.g. have some rudimentary screening for gun purchases and require owners to keep them in locked cabinets when they are not in use).

This is a tired stereotype.

The US has more stabbings per-capita than the UK does, even on top of the shootings.

There's already a UK ban on carrying knives in public unless you have an occupational need and they're wrapped up or at least not just sitting in your pocket.

Licensing wouldn't be worthwhile as almost every household would want knives for food preparation.

It's stupid to bring yourself into a position where scanning kids for weapons is necessary. In this case we're already past that, so the stupidity is that the device isn't updated to not identify laptops as weapons. If that's not possible, then device is a mislabeled laptop detector.

don't forget...natures pocket.

“Regularly” is not a particularly accurate word.

50 million K12 students in the U.S. — how many mass murders are “regular?”

Yet the murder rate was unaffected by the gun ban.

Any at all? I don't think Americans realize how much of a US-only problem it is, and how some of the non-US mass shootings are explicitly inspired by US media and discourse.

More than once a week not quite once a day.

Rather than trying to diminish something that's completely preventable and abhorrent maybe we could discuss ways to actually prevent it. Because this isn't a problem anywhere else so clearly it's preventable.

If AI can be part of a solution here this is a reasonable place to discuss it.

Why do people say such unsubstantiated nonsense. Places with guns have more death. And it's obvious to see why guns are a tool for for killing, and they're pretty effective.

Nobody said we shouldn't try to solve the problem. But the first step is accurately describing the problem to be solved. Something that occurs once a year across the entire country has very different solutions than something which occurs once a week in every county.

I wonder if you realise how much of a dystopian nightmare you have to be living in to write a comment like this and consider it reasonable.

This is what we really need AI regulation for. The accuracy rates should be advertised in a standard format like a nutritional label. People purchasing the systems on public dollars should be required to define a good plan for false positives and negatives that handles the expected rates based on the advertised precision and recall.

Yet the USA's intentional murder rate per 100k population is 6.383 while the UK's is 1.148 [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

No, they’re inverted prisons.

More than once a week is regularly. Doesn't matter how wide the geographical area is - ANY school in the USA might be next, so they ALL have to take precautions.

I had the same line of thought as I am not following the topic and media hype can make an elephant out of a mouse.

But based on this 2022 statistics USA really has a thing going on with school shootings... more than a hundred per year is way too much. I would definitely consider it "regularly" even if it seems a low number statistically (50 million students === 1 shooter / 500000 student ~?~ 1 shooting / 1000 school).

https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19982.jpeg

The problem is already well defined as regular school shootings. I don’t think redescribing the problem helps anyone apart from the NRA.

Nobody knows how to fix the root causes.

If the US were a functional democracy, and continued letting unrestricted gun ownership be legal, you could argue that the US citizenry is being stupid. But the US is not a functional democracy, and meaningfully reforming anything is impossible, regardless of whether most people want it or whether it’s a good idea.

Poe's law strikes again.

> 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...

All pre-secondary schools are designed to control the movements of students. It is one of their fundamental benefits to society.

Thoughts and prayers.

And reduce as much as possible gun control.

Should eventually work. That's how they avoid it everywhere else, no?

The political system in the US is unique among developed countries. What, concretely, do you suggest should be done?

How do you suggest we reduce the prevalence of guns / improve gun control in the US? Keep in mind that the US is not a functioning democracy and its political system is structured to allow any side to block any substantial reform.

Perhaps. Can’t afford books and friend trips, spending on buggy AI scanners.

They're designed to isolate and control everyone outside of them in order to keep the children inside safe? That is certainly an opinion.

Yes, but the nightmare is that we can't assume that children won't have guns on them.

Are you answering your own question? I read your reply as :

"How do we stop Z? X and Y are the cause of Z.

The thing is, I said gun control, but I'm not even sure that's real issue. I kinda took it backward. There are mass shootings because of the ease of access to guns, but it's not the ease of access to guns that pushes people to this.

In other ords, remove the guns, the mechanisms that drive people to think they want to kill remains. I might be wrong but it feels like in Europe there are more and more cold weapons attacks, or the use of ramming trucks.

I guess I have no suggestions.

Gun control can’t be implemented in the US because the political system makes it impossible to do so. I don’t know any way to change this.

As for the problems that would persist even if we could ban guns: I don’t know how to fix those, either.