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

The thing that struck me, and I’m really curious about your perspective on this, Brian, as someone who has kids, is that the mentors, these people who were brought in, were actually in the room with the students to help them with any technological glitches or sorting out anything that was going on in the real world. While some had experience as educators, others did not, and not only that, Alpha actually often targeted individuals without educational backgrounds, turning instead to people who were into entrepreneurship, because nothing screams early stage funding quite as loudly as Series A funding. I’m confused as to what the point of this is.

Brian Barrett: It feels reductive, doesn’t it? It’s the idea that school is about grades, grades are about numbers, and programming is all that matters. School is clearly about learning to interact with people, it is as much a social thing as it is a matter of numbers. I’m also thinking about, how do you measure and categorize art class and finger painting and all the other things that are good for social development, good for mental development that doesn’t process numbers. That doesn’t seem to be part of the calculus here, which is unfortunate.

Leah Weiger: And we haven’t even gotten into WIRED’s primary area of ​​interest, which is surveillance issues. These children are being monitored.

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

Leah Weiger: As a final little monitoring anecdote, there is one report that Todd shared that really scared me about this student who at home received a notification that she was flagged for an anti-pattern or alpha distraction while she was working on her schoolwork. It turns out she says Alpha sent her a video of her in her pajamas, taken from her computer’s webcam that showed her talking to her younger sister. Once again, she’s home. This doesn’t end once they leave the classroom either. This is beyond that. I’m sure everyone thinks they are collecting data. This is a comprehensive experience. This is still scary to me.