How China Is Using Artificial Intelligence in Classrooms?

China is conducting a number of experiments in the classroom that use AI in an effort to improve student performance and feed sophisticated algorithms. Headbands are used to measure each student’s level of concentration; the results are sent to the teacher’s computer and the parents. Three electrodes — two behind the ears and one on the forehead — are placed on these headbands, which are manufactured in China. These sensors detect electrical signals that are sent by brain neurons, and the teacher’s computer receives the neural data in real time.

Every ten minutes, a report is generated that details each student’s level of concentration and demonstrates how well the class was paying attention. Next, this data is forwarded to a parent chat group. It’s unclear, though, how well these tools work and what exactly they measure. Therodore Zanto, a neural scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, was taken aback to discover that electroencephalography (EEG), which is typically utilized by physicians in hospitals and labs, is being utilized on children in classroom settings. Because EEG is highly prone to artifacts, an improperly positioned electrode or an improperly positioned device could have an impact on the signal.

Instructors claim that because headbands have made students more obedient, they have improved their focus in class and received higher grades. Not every student, though, shares this enthusiasm. Students now face additional pressure after a fifth-grader who was observed nodding off in class revealed to us that his parents had disciplined him for receiving poor attention scores. Parents seemed uninformed about the data’s final destination and unconcerned about it, despite companies interviewed saying that the information may be used for government-funded research projects.

Concerns are being raised by both experts and regular people regarding different facets of the nation’s massive push toward artificial intelligence. Future generations will learn in these classrooms, and even though these new resources have the potential to improve academic performance for about 200 million students, it won’t be clear how everything ends up until those students are adults.