WIRED Roundup: Alpha School, Grokipedia, and Real Estate AI Videos

The thing that gets me, and I’m really curious about your take on this, Brian, as someone with children, that the guides these people that were brought in, they were actually in the room with students helping them with any technological glitches or settling anything that’s happening in the real world. While some had experience as educators, others did not, and not only that, Alpha actually had often targeted individuals without teaching backgrounds, going instead for folks that were in the entrepreneurship space, because nothing screams early childhood education like Series A funding. I’m so confused as to what the entire point of this is.

Brian Barrett: It feels reductive, right? It is the idea that school is about grades and grades are about numbers and coding is all that matters. When obviously school is about learning to interact with people, it is a social thing as much as it is a numbers thing. I think too, how do you quantify and nextify art class and finger painting and all the other things that are good for social development, good for mental development that aren’t crunching numbers. And it just feels like that’s not part of the calculus here, which is a shame.

Leah Feiger: And we didn’t even get into a core WIRED area of interest, which is surveillance issues. These kids are being surveilled.

Brian Barrett: Yeah. There was a report that our reporter, Todd found that there was eye tracking software involved in this. Again, for some parents, I am sure that this is great, and again, Alpha School has a lot of parents who say, “Yes, this is what we want.” They’ve got a lot of great reviews, a lot of glowing press. What we found in Brownsville was not that.

Leah Feiger: And as that last little surveillance anecdote, there’s one piece of reporting that Todd shared that really freaked me out of this one student who at home received a notification that she’d been flagged for an anti-pattern or a distraction by the Alpha system while she was working on her schoolwork. It turns out she says that Alpha system sent a video of her in her pajamas, taken from the computer’s webcam that showed her talking to her younger sister. Again, she’s at home. This doesn’t end the minute that they leave the classroom either. This is so beyond. And I’m sure there’s the case that everyone’s making, oh, they’re collecting data. This is a holistic experience. That’s still creepy to me.