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Los Angeles Unified School District students will soon have their own individualized AI tool, a “personal assistant,” to help them with everyday tasks and remind them about school work when they forget.
The tool, named Ed, is the first of its kind in the nation and will be able to accommodate students verbally and on screen in 100 languages.
“What we are announcing here today is a vision that was built over years of thinking about it, but only one year in actually bringing the necessary partners together — to give a voice, to give a simple life, to give a color, to give an experience,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho during Wednesday’s inaugural event at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. “And what has emerged is Ed.”
Ed includes a number of features. It will, for example, be able to remind students of upcoming tests, inform them of the cafeteria menu, provide updates on school buses and even wake them up in the morning, Carvalho said.
“Ed will tell Maria ‘You’re falling a little behind in reading, but we got you – click here,’” Carvalho said. “Maria will click, and, without the need for an additional sign on … (it will) open the doors to all of the resources to elevate each student’s needs.”
Carvalho said this tool will not replace the many people in LAUSD who teach and support students on a daily basis.
During the pilot period, Ed will be available immediately to 55,000 students in 101 elementary, middle and senior high schools. Once an initial pilot period is over and the program proves successful, Carvalho said it would expand to the whole district.
“Just like humans are not perfect — although sometimes, in certain political circles, some say they are — the technology produced by humans isn’t perfect either,” Carvalho said.
“With all of the protections against the vulnerabilities, there is always a concern. That’s why we are over vigilant.”
Carvalho also tried to dispel potential cybersecurity concerns — emphasizing that the district has had support from local, state and national agencies in monitoring the program’s evolution.
He also said Ed is currently operating at 93% accuracy, several percentage points above the gold standard of 85% to 87% for ChatGPT.
A strong set of filters will also ensure the program is free from any kind of offensive language, Carvalho added.
More than 100 people, including LAUSD school board members, partners from various universities and businesses as well as representatives of local and state government officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, attended Ed’s inauguration.
The event space was decorated with balloon archways and various photo backdrops — along with Lego building tables, face painting, juice stations and food trucks to celebrate the occasion. Students also sat at tables testing out various features provided by Ed, while the parent interface was displayed on iPads.
“It is the power of artificial intelligence that will allow us for real-time understanding of where students are and where they need to go,” Carvalho said.
“It is the power of this technology to ensure that we will meet every one of our students where they are and accelerate them academically and in terms of enrichment towards their full potential.”
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Les 4 weeks ago4 weeks ago
Former LA Unified teacher / programmer / regular-AI-user here. Six million dollars in the overall context of school district spending isn't that much so what follows isn't that much of a complaint. But, it has to be said by someone somewhere that none the of tasks, except one, that are being assigned to "Ed" require artificial intelligence. To find out a lunch menu, the school or the district just publishes it to a website … Read More
Former LA Unified teacher / programmer / regular-AI-user here.
Six million dollars in the overall context of school district spending isn’t that much so what follows isn’t that much of a complaint. But, it has to be said by someone somewhere that none the of tasks, except one, that are being assigned to “Ed” require artificial intelligence. To find out a lunch menu, the school or the district just publishes it to a website that can be updated with changing data. The same for bus schedules being on time. It would be easy for students to provide their phone number and get text updates if they don’t have that already. None of this requires AI.
As for getting advice on how to keep up with your class or recover lost instruction due to Covid, students will need specific information about this or that class or program, and that can only come from their teachers. I suspect teachers are being encouraged to update some sort of information in that regard that the AI can “scrape” or read from an updated table. But again, a simple website with the information would be a simpler and more reliable way to get the information (to the extent that teachers go to the trouble of making it available).
The only area where AI can do something that ordinary technology cannot do is in the Social/Emotional advice category. AI is amazingly good at understanding plain text, and students who would be embarrassed or afraid to broach personal subjects with adults at school would probably feel better talking with an AI. And this is where the whole $6 million should have been dedicated. With all the money for that, the program could be made more robust with intervention from real people when the student-AI conversation seemed to be taking a dark or alarming turn. Hopefully the district will appreciate this before long and better deploy their “AI resources” for that.
Chiara 1 month ago1 month ago
Where is a link to the company? Who else uses this program, or is it just another untested software that LAUSD dumps money into that doesn’t do a thing for anyone?
Gay Lannon 1 month ago1 month ago
Seems like we eliminate the need for teachers with online tutoring, and now we eliminate the need for parents for all the reminders. When are we going to teach them to be responsible for themselves ?