
Camera Above the Classroom - rhema
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003759/camera-above-the-classroom
======
yorwba
Meta-commentary: Sixth Tone is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Chinese
government. So why are they running with this story?

\- The central government's AI strategy is never directly criticized. Instead
you get quotes like

 _She agrees that the intention of “intelligent education” is positive. As the
NGAIDP guidelines suggest, the purpose of the initiative is to assist teachers
in developing customized teaching methods and study plans for every student._

\- On ubiquitous surveillance cameras, the example given is finding criminals
in a crowd, not rounding up dissidents.

\- The parts that _are_ criticized are more about the implementation than the
intention behind it. The potential for misuse isn't even mentioned, the focus
is on potential lack of accuracy instead.

\- Responsibility is shifted to the schools and companies, despite following
the government's plan:

 _The plan’s “intelligent education” section describes in detail how China’s
government hopes to use AI to boost the country’s education system. Zhang
reads me one paragraph from the guidelines without stammering. “So detailed.
It’s like they wrote it with a [facial recognition] product right in front of
them,” he says._

What I think this all means is that Sixth Tone is trying to be a source for
high-quality journalism on social issues in China while conveniently avoiding
topics the government would like to remain unmentioned.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Meta-commentary: Sixth Tone is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Chinese
> government. So why are they running with this story?

No they’re not. They’re journalists living and working in China who publish
pieces they don’t anticipate will get them shut down. They’re not going to
cover the concentration camps in Xinjiang but it’s not an actual propaganda
outlet like Xinhua.

> What I think this all means is that Sixth Tone is trying to be a source for
> high-quality journalism on social issues in China while conveniently
> avoiding topics the government would like to remain unmentioned.

It’s like they expect their readers to be intelligent people who can read
between the lines.

~~~
Mirioron
> _It’s like they expect their readers to be intelligent people who can read
> between the lines._

To put it bluntly: this is what state censorship does to news. Even if they
wanted to do better, they can't, because they'll get shut down or punished.

------
Macuyiko
When I was teaching last time in China, all classrooms in the university I was
a guest at had cameras installed in the back, facing the lecturer. The last
time I was there, only some had them.

What are these for, I asked my host, wondering if it had to do with making
sure courses were in line with party policy and so on.

"Mainly, it is to make sure you start and end courses on time. You need to
start exactly at the strike of the bell and stay until the next bell rings."

What happens when you just turn out to be done with the material for the day,
I asked, or you see the material was heavy and students have lost focus. In
those cases I often end a bit earlier with my students.

"We can't leave. In most cases we just gossip a bit with the students until
class is done."

Students didn't seem to bother, back then, most Chinese don't make a taboo of
sleeping so some were close to drifting off. They're overworked and quiet, so
I didn't mind that much either.

Is there a whole team checking all courses simultaneously, I inquired.

"No, sometimes no one will be watching. They're 'government officers' [officer
is a common English translation used for anything government and
administrative]... I don't think they care too much either. Their job is to
make sure we do our job, you know."

With the advances in AI, the dream becomes a possibility. Watching a whole
society. Even if you're not sure for what or it 'doesn't matter' what you're
actually doing, the fact that something is always watching seems to be
powerful enough on its own. It's for a large part about inspiring the idea of
just behaving and executing your given steps, and you'll be fine.

------
zarify
Whilst the facial recognition aspect of this and the Chinese tie-ins with
total monitoring of its populace are one aspect, in schools (at least in
Australia, and I assume many others) large amounts of centralised data on
behaviour, performance, etc are stored about students by their teachers
already.

One of the comments here makes it sound all so personal, as if that
information never leaves the classroom and is only the domain of the teacher,
but it isn't - it's shared with other teachers, heads of year, deputies and
principals, school psychologists, government departments, and to some extent
(usually in the aggregate) with parents.

Throw some automation in the mix for scale (along with all the issues with
correct facial identification - which as teachers we're not immune to either!)
and we have the same thing.

------
fredsted
Instead of figuring out why children sitting still in a classroom all day
doesn't work, we use technology as a threat to force them to pay attention at
all times.

~~~
gnicholas
After enough training, this system could actually help figure out which
teachers and teaching methods are most successful in keeping students engaged.

~~~
antpls
But what if the premise that a student is only a knowledge sponge is false?

What's the point of going to school if all the world knowledge is in your
pocket?

~~~
massivecali
Whatever you want to call them, the basics/classics/fundamentals are all just
primers to get your mind firing on all cylinders. Having access to all the
knowledge in the world is useless if you don't know what questions to ask or
what direction to take. And since everyone doesn't learn in the same manner,
exposure to a wide variety of subject matter eventually works well enough for
most people.

------
ydnaclementine
All of this surveillance with cameras from china articles has me highly
skeptical. Can CCTV quality cameras really be used for on the fly person
recognition, including determining if an identified student is 'focused' or
'dozing off'?

I keep thinking that this type of surveillance from China is all smoke and
mirrors, to make it seem like they have more of a lock down than they actually
do. Even if an automated person recognition/mood judgement system was 99%
accurate for a public CCTV camera, that's 10 false positives per 1000 people,
and consider how many people it would see a day. But I don't work in
image/video processing, so idk. But I think it's harder than identifying
crosswalks, fire hydrants, and storefronts.

~~~
bubblewrap
In a classroom, it only needs to recognize 30 people. That seems doable.

Car makers also claim to work on detecting dozing off of drivers. What about
it should be impossible? Detecting if eyes are open or shut sounds doable,
unless everybody is wearing sunglasses.

------
userbinator
This is disturbingly Orwellian.

~~~
mythrwy
It is.

Particularly to my Western values of freedom and privacy and individuality.
Much of what China does seems like that. Horrible and anti-human.

What concerns me most however, is that this (and similar Orwellian schemes)
might actually be truly effective, and our fixation in the West with
individual liberties might not be competitive in the long run.

~~~
MrTonyD
There are lots of effective things - enforce a healthy diet, monitor everyone
continuously, reduce the population to improve the environment, put criminals
to death.

The goal of a society should not be "to be effective, efficient, and cost-
justified". Other values must be considered.

~~~
chr1
I believe effective culture in this context should be understood as one able
to produce and sustain larger number of people, and spread it's influence to
more societies.

Reducing population for instance is clearly not effective, because society
that does it will be replaced with the neighbour that doesn't.

Putting criminals to death doesn't help much as well, and can harm when an
innocent person is killed by mistake.

In this sense western values have been very effective so far, but as
technology changes, they may need to change.

Personally i don't think that privacy by itself is a good thing, if there was
a device allowing anyone to see video of any place at any time (eliminating
all privacy) people would be better off.

Things get bad only if a small group that already had control over the society
gets exclusive access to the information, further reducing the power of other
groups. This is bad, because it reduces the complexity of the society and
doesn't allow to explore more paths (which in the long run have always failed
so far). But if the powerful group is smart enough it may still make society
more effective, by reducing the crime and vandalism, by helping to develop
better school programs etc.

So if western societies want to remain effective the answer can't be simply
'no cameras' it should be cameras plus better mechanisms for distributing the
power of the state between more groups.

~~~
Mirioron
I disagree. I think that "no cameras" by itself is a useful value, because
surveillance makes humans behave differently.[0] People have higher levels of
stress, are more likely to conform, and probably more likely to engage in
civic life. Perhaps the cameras themselves will make surveillance states less
competitive?

[0] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201409/all-
eyes-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201409/all-eyes-you)

------
onesmallcoin
Freder looked across the city at the building known to the world as the "New
Tower of Babel."

In the brain-pan of this New Tower of Babel lived the man who was himself the
Brain of Metropolis.

As long as the man over there, who was nothing but work, despising sleep,
eating and drinking mechanically, pressed his fingers on the blue metal plate,
which apart from himself, no man had ever touched, so long would the voice of
the machine-city of Metropolis roar for food, for food, for food...

She wanted living men for food.

Then the living food came pushing along in masses. Along the street it came,
along its own street which never crossed with other people's streets. It
rolled on, a broad, an endless stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They
walked in even step. Men, men, men--all in the same uniform, from throat to
ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard shoes, hair tightly
pressed down by the same black caps.

And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to be of the same age.
They held themselves straightened up, but not straight. They did not raise
their heads, they pushed them forward. They planted their feet forward, but
they did not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the machine
center of Metropolis, gulped the masses down.

An snippet from Metropolis by Thea Von Harbou

------
stevebmark
One of my favorite professors would do something like this manually. He would
know everyone's names, call on people he thought were slacking or having
trouble, and keep everyone alert and engaged and learning because you knew you
were being, well, watched.

This seems like it achieves something similar, just automatic. Yet it makes me
uneasy. Why? Are human brains unable to cope with the benefits of technology
if there's not a consciousness doing it? Or is there something inherently evil
about this? Or could it be great if used ethically with ethical rules imposed
on it (like, say, the data is never stored for more than an hour).

~~~
meruru
Permanence can be a big difference. What you did in class isn't going to
follow you forever if it's only in your professor's head.

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
Here's the point. It won't be too long before these children graduate to the
job market carrying along some sort of summary score about how good or lazy or
naughty they were in school.

