
Under AI’s Watchful Eye, China Wants to Raise Smarter Students (2019) [video] - seventyhorses
https://www.wsj.com/video/under-ais-watchful-eye-china-wants-to-raise-smarter-students/C4294BAB-A76B-4569-8D09-32E9F2B62D19.html
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273737e7eudhd
Everyone's focusing on the pressure this adds but that seems largely due to
cultural factors. Of course students feel more pressured if the data is
primarily used to criticize them. But what about evaluating the teachers
ability to keep students focused on a task? Or evaluating if a new medication
is making a difference for a student with ADHD? As a side note, it seems like
lazy journalism to not seek out more commentary from people involved in the
project. Their expert was a random Neuroscientist from San Fransisco for gods
sake, they could at least have explained why they found his particular
criticism worthwhile but they never even establish if he's familiar with the
specific work being done in China. If the research is being done in China and
the tech is bespoke to the research program in China it's weird to prioritize
input from American researchers without some degree of explanation is all I'm
saying.

~~~
Udik
> If the research is being done in China and the tech is bespoke to the
> research program in China

The headbands are produced and donated to a Chinese school by an American
company! The people protested and the authorities told the school to stop
using them.

~~~
273737e7eudhd
The headbands were handled via a partnership with Zhejiang Brainco Technology
Co Ltd. so donation is far from the right word to use. One of their partner's
cofounders is also a Harvard PhD holder so it's hardly a case of the Chinese
company just being there to take up space as is often claimed around here.
This is a donation in the same way that lots of large American companies are
Irish. And the objections from parents as well as the government's cited
reason for the shutdown were on data privacy grounds according to multiple
articles which is a valid criticism but unrelated to the actual usefulness of
the devices. So I'm not sure what you're actually driving at here.

~~~
Udik
> The headbands were handled via a partnership with Zhejiang Brainco
> Technology Co Ltd

Which I guess is a subsidiary of the US-based company BrainCo located in
Massachusetts. The article describes the provisioning of the headbands as a
donation, which I guess makes sense if you're a startup and you want to test a
pilot program in a market that might be receptive to your product.

The fact that Chinese parents protest on social media and with the authorities
(on ethical grounds, it appears from the Quartz article) and the authorities
banned the device on privacy concerns, sounds a lot like what would happen in
the West.

As an aside, every time I read an article about the Chinese society I discover
a much more nuanced picture than "it's a dictatorship with no free press and
human rights". It's not a democracy for sure, but the idea it's a totalitarian
state where all dissent is banned seems very far from the truth.

~~~
christophilus
> every time I read an article about the Chinese society I discover a much
> more nuanced picture than "it's a dictatorship with no free press and human
> rights".

This is a generalizable realization. If you’re aligned with any political
faction, it’s best to assume that what you hear about other factions is more
negative than the reality.

------
honkycat
as an autodidac that did extremely poorly in school, but flourished when
people FINALLY left me alone and let me concentrate on what I am interested
in: I could not imagine what kind of hell this would be. For a lot of the
population School sucks and is a waste of time.

~~~
malux85
I’m similar to you - autodidact, poor in school, successful later - and I
think it depends how the A.I. is implemented.

My observation of school was that the ratio of 1 teacher to 25 students (who
all have different learning speeds) means that the teacher is optimally
teaching only a fraction of the kids, the rest at each side are overwhelmed or
bored.

If the AI is able to help the slower students and stimulate the brighter ones,
then I think that would have taken away a lot of the boredom for me and made
it a much better experience

~~~
javajosh
_> the ratio of 1 teacher to 25_

As an aside, I've often wondered if it's not class size that's the issue, but
conflicting ability and _personality types_. Things like the GATE program
grouped high ability kids, but personality matters and it would be interesting
to match students together and with a compatible teacher. Of course, this
might fail spectacularly as one of the benefits of diversity is getting other
perspectives, and learning empathy. But I think it would be an interesting
experiment, especially in a class like math.

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sdan
Training kids like this reminds me of training AI itself:

Make the reward getting a better grade and the kid will only optimize for
that. Eventually the kid (the agent) will be out in the wild and they will
have a weak understanding of what the reward is and how to optimize for it (it
will be harder for a fine-tuned kid to do domain adaptation towards different
and more abstract fields and problems).

~~~
spideymans
There’s another side to this issue too: Professors themselves are often
optimizing their content for testability, rather than for providing actual,
functional lifelong knowledge.

~~~
bsder
> Professors themselves are often optimizing their content for testability,
> rather than for providing actual, functional lifelong knowledge.

Hah! I think you have this backwards. Most professors are quite concerned
about imparting knowledge when the vast majority of the students simply want a
piece of paper with the University's logo on it.

I knew of _very_ few professors in electrical engineering or computer science
who tried to optimize for "testability".

~~~
Stammon
The choice of using the word professor, seems misleading to me. Far more often
teachers will adjust their content to ensure optimal performance in tests.
Especially in a education system like this.

I can only imagine what side effects this must have for motivation. When you
are cautiously trying to appear focused, can you even develop a passion for a
subject?

~~~
bsder
Oh, you mean high school.

In the US, at least, the answer is actually "Yes. You can even develop a
passion for a subject and instill it into your students."

My father taught English almost 4 decades in a very rural school. No Child
Left Behind had him quite concerned intially.

Until it came down ...

He laughed at it. "Flag poor students early"\--okay, his grades were in Excel
since he was _terrible_ at math--sort, print, tell administrators to go away.
"Need writing samples"\--"I have two entire filing cabinets of writing
assignments for this years classes. Which drawers do you want?"

Now, I have to avoid generalizing. My father did not teach in an inner city
school (the area had brutal poverty--but probably less crime) where they were
continuously under threat of being forced closed by the government. He also
did not teach in China or South Korea where getting the piece of paper seems
even worse than the US.

However, the US isn't as brutal on the "teach to the test" fronts as many
other places.

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Udik
Here's a more complete story:

[https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-
bac...](https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-backlash-in-
china/)

Seems that the headbands were donated to a school by a US startup that put
them on the market as a consumer product, probably targeting China's 'tiger'
mothers; that people protested, and the authorities banned them.

The video says "this school is using" and while it sounds like an generic
example, it's actually ONE school, using for a short period of time a product
donated by a US startup.

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methou
I remember reading this in 2019 even before I ever noticed(2019) is a part of
the title. The tech antagonized me by a lot, to my belief, the attempt went
way way beyond necessary evil and also scented of scam. This is disgusting,
it's narrated by a curious young male voice, explaining how the device is
working on himself, his classmates, and how the teachers and others will know
then their attention is drifting away from the class. This shouldn't happen, I
can't even imagine how they got their IRB approval in the first place.
Collecting and using EEG data from a consented subject for a scientific
investigation is one thing, but using a poorly designed toy to regulate human
behavior is another. The former one has an explicit scope that helps the human
race to understand itself, but the later one is an onset of nefarious control
freaks en masse that targeting not only your body, but also your mind.

Btw as a previous research assistant who spent 5+ years in brain imaging, the
tech behind this also looks weird to me, you can't get meaningful EEG data in
a room with so much interference. I don't see any follow-ups on this either.
It usually takes 2 painful hours, give or take, to properly prepare ONE
subject for an EEG experiment, and 15 minutes at least after that for them to
wash off the glues on their head.

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dejj
It reminded me of Brad Pitt's character in "Ad Astra", when he talks about
"compartmentalization". As a human, you become part of a machine that is
society / the military. You become part of "an effective team".

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victornomad
This is probably just research from some institution. Why the WSJ generalize
and say that "Under AI’s Watchful Eye, ---> China <\--- Wants to Raise Smarter
Students".

They should rephrase it into something like "Research tries to find if..."

I trust western media the same as Chinese media...

(Edit: format)

~~~
101404
> media the same as Chinese media

Not quite. Western media lies because they want to earn money and survive.

Chinese media lies because they are government controlled and the CCP
propaganda arm has a well planned communication strategy to steer public
opinion in the desired direction. Both in China and worldwide.

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namelosw
The design is ironically could be seen as an anology to one of the most famous
novels in Chinese history of all time - 'The Journey to the West'[0].

In the novel, the monk Sanzang has a golden ring on one of his disciples -
Wukong's head, and it was used for causing extreme headaches with a spell, in
order to control Wukong to follow his will because he is smart but violent,
and IMO sounds like an ADHD guy.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West)

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OneGuy123
The primarly role if these headbands since more like conditioning to me than
to actually read brainwaves.

You condition them as kids to respond to these headbands, then sooner or later
companies will require them for workers.

~~~
aleyh
Yeah, the headbands appear similar to Scientology's "E-meter", which is a fake
tech device used to control the victims.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
It seems "1984" and "Brave New World" came with a bit of delay. First rule of
abstraction, whenever you abstract something you loose intrinsic value. Why is
"concentration" favouritised? What about other brain states. I am afraid this
experiment is wrong as much as it can get, what we believe we become.

So I can easily imagine, kids that deals with emotional issues of tyrant
parents, and then get double punished because they were dealing with those
emotions.

~~~
godelski
I thought concentration was weird too. I've had a few EKGs and they don't read
anything above the noise when I'm doing simple math (which is what they ask
most people to do). So I just started coming up with really difficult problems
for myself to do and bingo, they can read activity again. This leads me to
believe that if someone is performing well but concentration is in the noise
or low, that you would want to instead push them to new topics, not punish
them. Giving this data to parents seems like a bad idea because of this. You
already know material well, so while the teacher is discussing it you drift
off or your brain doesn't have to work hard to take information in. Parents
see low concentration so get mad because you aren't using your time in school
wisely (which is true, but not your fault). You then score low on tests
because of the stress. Cycle repeats.

------
livealife
In addition to grades, these headband readings add additional pressure to
kids. Forcing kids to improve their grades at the cost of their mental health
is unacceptable.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
> Forcing kids to improve their grades at the cost of their mental health

This sounds like the status quo of many educational systems worldwide. It's
very depressing to me. Obviously some countries are worse than others, but
even the US isn't great compared to say, Nordic countries.

~~~
vulcan01
This.

It's easier to criticise other countries' education systems, but for some
reason we try to avoid criticising our own.

------
bobthechef
To be honest, few today are educated. The most favorable characterization is
that we're putting the youth though a mill that produces semi-technically
savvy savages. That fact that so few people with diplomas (of which I am one)
fail to see that is because they haven't the slightest clue what being
educated means. Also, fallacy of sunk costs (that piece of paper was rather
expensive and time consuming).

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m463
I wonder if there will be some sort of feedback where they discover the
conditions under which kids ACTUALLY learn and thrive.

Like they figure out the successful ones slept in every day, had sex early,
went to parties and drank from time to time.

~~~
Udik
On the other hand, all school teachers pay attention to check that their
students are focusing. They use neural networks for that (their own neural
networks) that are very well trained in detecting lack of focus from body
movements, facial expressions, chatter, etc. A device that actually allows
more easily to detect focus is scary if it's used improperly, that is, if
focus is required all the time. But if used in a balanced way allowing for
prolonged periods of relax and "mind wandering" it might actually be helpful.

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aaron695
This stuff is SciFi and doesn't exist.

FFS if it exists sell it to adults and make $$$

This conspiracy that China has all this secret technology is a bit embarassing
to believe.

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auggierose
Sounds to me like a fashist's wet dream.

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rmrfstar
Because micromanaging people is how you get more Feynmans and Shannons.

Bengio, Hinton, and Lecun were pariahs for decades, until all of the sudden
they were rock stars.

I feel so bad for the 1.3bn people living under this. If we're not careful its
going to keep creeping into the West and creativity will suffer.

Edit: removed profanity

~~~
Udik
> I feel so bad for the 1.3bn people living under this bullshit.

So the WSJ succeeded in its purpose of spreading anti-Chinese propaganda. Wow,
so easy. Check a more complete story here:

[https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-
bac...](https://qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-backlash-in-
china/)

EDIT: less snarky. Please pay attention, I have the feeling that Western media
are building an anti-China sentiment because the West (the US in particular)
feels threatened by China's economic and technological growth. Criticism of
China is fine and due, but let's avoid being tricked by the media (of both
sides) in re-aligning with our own tribes. This is the way conflicts are
prepared and started. We need understanding, diplomacy and cooperation, not
anger and sabre-rattling.

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sadmann1
Reminds me of a certain novel I read about few years back where certain people
would become living calculators through some kind of chemical intervention.
Losing all personality in the process they'd become incredibly productive
savants capable of sifting through an ever increasing volume of data.

~~~
phased20
Guessing you're also excited for December 18? ;)

