Surveillance Tech Is Tracking You From the Classroom to the Office

As AI-enabled surveillance technologies mature, they're quickly finding a way into the nooks and crannies of physical spaces around us. Let's go on a quick tour.

School

K-12 schools monitor students and that's not new. But now, some are using always-on machine learning software to scan online correspondence and social media for preemptive signs of self-harm or violent behavior. New startups are even pitching computer vision/CCTV camera solutions as a way to detect guns in school.

• But as the Guardian reported yesterday, these surveillance products come with privacy and bias tradeoffs. They don't always work as intended and it's near-impossible to independently verify security vendors' claims.

Job Interview

To get through that impossibly fat stack of resumes, companies are leaning on AI to determine whether a job candidate moves on to the next round. Over 100 employers have used HireVue's popular AI screener on more than a million interviewees, the WaPo reported yesterday.

Here's how the HireVue interview goes: Look into your phone or computer camera. Answer the questions you're asked. Thanks, you'll be hearing from us shortly.

• The system analyzes facial expressions, cadence, tone, and many other data points to assess candidates. At the end, each interviewee receives an "employability" score.
• The tech behind this is emotion recognition, a blossoming but unproven AI field.

Workplace

At the worksite, managers are deploying new tools to monitor and assess productivity. There are too many examples to count, so I'll just give you the latest: an Oregon Outback Steakhouse. Using overhead cameras and AI, the restaurant's system judges whether the kitchen and wait staff are "adequately doing their jobs," Wired wrote. Nothing like data-driven insights with your bone-in ribeye.

Zoom out: These places are embracing AI-powered systems to improve efficiency and safety. Critics have valid concerns about the accuracy, potential misuse, and unintended consequences of the technologies. Will the tradeoffs be worth it for principals, hiring managers, and executives?

Update: After publication, a spokesperson reached out and said the Outback test was cancelled and that the Portland, OR, restaurant "is no longer using this program."