Schools in America are utilising new surveillance techniques in a bid to detect threats before they result in catastrophe.
But for one Oviedo, Florida, middle school, using artificial intelligence to spot potential weapons ended in a lockdown over a clarinet.
Lawton Chiles Middle School went into a lockdown, and officers began searching after an image flagged to police appeared to show a gun.
An artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance system used by the school mistakenly flagged the clarinet as a weapon, according to ZeroEyes, the security company that runs the system and contracts with Lawton Chiles’s school district.
Police swarmed the school and found a student wearing a military costume for a dress-up day holding his clarinet.
Surveillance like the system offered by ZeroEyes uses artificial intelligence to scan footage of the school to spot any potential weaponry – something more American schools are looking into as school shootings persist.
ZeroEyes co-founder Sam Alaimo told The Washington Post: ‘We don’t think we made an error, nor does the school. That was better to dispatch [police] than not dispatch.’
The system does train employees to look at alerts before sending police, but it appears the clarinet closely resembled a rifle.
The technology isn’t without issues – a student was handcuffed after a similar surveillance system thought a bag of crisps was a gun.
Gun violence has been a hot topic in the United States for decades, with hundreds of students, ranging from grade school to pHd students, gunned down in classrooms.
Just this weekend, two students at Brown University were shot and killed when a man walked into a classroom and opened fire.
The gunman is still on the loose, with hundreds of officers currently searching for him.
People were seen fleeing out of the engineering building, where students were taking a final economics exam review.
Police released CCTV footage of a person they believe is the shooter, though his face was not visible.
The person is seen walking with his back to the camera, turning the corner onto Hope Street, where the engineering building is located.
He was described as in his 30s, wearing dark clothing or grey camouflage.
Sophomore Zoe Weissman, who witnessed the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, said it ‘feels like 2018 again’.
She told CNN: ‘I’m just angry that there are kids like me in this country who have had to go through this not once, but twice.’
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