'Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:' Inside an AI-Powered Private School

My investigation into Alpha School also reveals that the massive amounts of data the company collects on students, including videos of them, is stored in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link—even if they’ve left the company, or if it was sent to them—could access. In turn, that sensitive material is viewed by more Alpha School employees than students and parents may realize.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I'm gonna stop you right there with a huge huge WHAT the FUCK. That is an incredible decision to have made. Stunning.

I saw that Alpha School maintains a spreadsheet which contains a list of student names, their grade, and an archive of their recordings which shows what’s happening on their screen, their remote tutor, and a video of the student taken via their webcam. This spreadsheet is not only available to anyone at the company, but is also shared in such a way that anyone on the internet who has the link can access the spreadsheet and the videos of students.

“If I wanted to, I could go there and just watch students. Anybody who worked in this capacity could watch the videos of students working on their laptops,” one Alpha School employee told me. “So many hours of just students’ faces [...] I'm not sure parents understand exactly what's going on with that data [...] I don't think that this is clearly communicated, because I'm sure there'd be a lot more opt outs if it was.”

Wonder how many pedos work for the company.

The school’s primary selling point is its “2 hour learning” philosophy which promises to give students their required education and prepare them for necessary standardized tests, AP tests, and the SATs in just just two hours of learning.

Real "Eight Minute Abs" tier pitch work.

Former Alpha School employees and internal documentation don’t disprove Alpha School students’ high test results, but show that students often have to study more than two hours a day, that they sometimes arrive at Alpha high school classes unprepared and below grade level reading skills, and that some students had to go back and fill holes in their education before they were prepared for high school level classes.

:-/

This is an enduring refrain with pilot program education systems. Your initial crop of students get bespoke treatment (to match the astronomical cost - $60k/yr is more than most colleges charge). Then their performance is tied back to the gimmick - AI, SmartBoards, School Uniforms, Montessori style teaching, Jesus classes - that's rolled out to the hoi paloi at a cheaper price but absent all the personalized, expensive tutoring.

1. Privatize education
2. Use AI to form personalized propaganda for each child
3. Lock in generations of ignorance and harmful behaviors while profiting

At $65K per year I'm at least happy that only kids with rich parents will be subjected to this shit.

For now...

Technology has so greatly and so significantly outpaced the law for so long now, that we may never recover from unregulated tech bro shit from my youth, and now that I'm old enough to have school aged kids, it has only gotten exponentially worse.

• "AI school?" A technological horror beyond comprehension
• "65k annual tuition?" For ChatGPT school? ChatGPT is FREE, you freakazoids
• "Our little Xyler graduated AI kindergarten with a 5.0 GPA and a Doctorate in brain surgery?" Please let there be a god and let him be vengeful I need to know that there will someday be an end to all this

When aren't students treated like guinea pigs? Hank Green once pointed out that most science done on "people" were actually done on mostly white, mostly American, mostly young, mostly male college students, because that's who signs up for "studies."

Grift on top of a bigger grift.

And consumers are treated like Guinea Pigs in an unregulated market.

Sure, but who wants to be at Beta School? Miss out on first-mover-advantage in (mis)educating your child? Only an idiot would do that!

I think we should call this period in time, "The Great AI Theft"

Hahahahahaha. It's not funny tho. Those idiots will become elected Republican politicians.

Perhaps the same could be said of all human! /hj

Wild that they are paying so much money to be the test subjects rather than companies just doing it for "free" as they do for a everyone else.