A Pennsylvania school district is using artificial intelligence to keep guns off its campuses. But civil liberties advocates have warned that the technology could lead to mass surveillance and violation of constitutional rights.
The Chartiers Valley School District in Allegheny County has implemented AI that harnesses the district’s Wi-Fi signals to determine whether people are carrying weapons as they enter the schools.
The technology, called Wi-AI, was developed by CurvePoint of Pittsburgh. CurvePoint grew out of AI research at Carnegie Mellon University.
According to the company, Wi-AI uses “spatial intelligence” to find weapons such as guns before they enter a school.
The AI system analyzes a space and detects where potential weapons are located by interpreting “how Wi-Fi signals reflect off people and objects.”
Once a possible weapon is found, security personnel, school administrators, or others can go to the location to determine whether there is actually a threat.
It is now in use at Chartiers Valley School District high school, middle school, and primary school campuses. CurvePoint CEO Skip Smith said that in a recent test, the system found a pistol hidden in a backpack. He said the technology has a 95 percent success rate, failing only 4 percent of its searches.
Smith said the Wi-AI does not carry the same privacy concerns of other security systems because it does not rely on facial recognition or biometric data.
“We don’t know it’s you,“ Smith told The Epoch Times. ”We have no biometric information about you. Our system just sees a big bag of salt water.”
Darren Mariano, president of the Chartiers Valley Board of School Directors, said the district is excited to be the first in the country to adopt the technology.
“The safety of our students and staff is always our top priority,” he said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be the first district in the nation to implement this groundbreaking technology.”
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