The nonprofit DataKind has a partnership with John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where 44% of students are Hispanic, to run a predictive AI program that helps identify students — especially those from low-income families — who are in danger of dropping out because of grades or other factors.
This is a very dangerous path. I recognize it thanks to Dan Mcquillan, who writes about this a lot. Governments using algorithmic tools to figure out who needs special services ends up becoming automated neoliberal austerity. He frequently collects examples. I just dug up his mastodon and here’s a recent toot with three: kolektiva.social/…/111207202749078945
Also, the main headline is about automated text translations for calls, which is now AI. Ever since ChatGPT melted reporters’ brains, everything has become AI. Every time I bring this up, some pedantic person tells me that NLP (or machine vision or LLMs) is a subfield of AI. Do you do this for any other field? “Doctors use biology to solve disease,” or “Engineers use physics to to build bridge.” Of course not, because it’s ridiculous marketing talk that journalists should stop repeating.