The injured teenage survivor of a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee high school recently sued the manufacturer of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that left two dead, including the shooter.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, the security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations in its gun detection system that could result in detection failures during actual emergencies, including limitations based on camera placement, proximity of the weapon to camera sensors, camera angle, lighting, and weapon visibility.”
Omnilert cofounder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’ invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. System Integrations, the other defendant in the case, which resold the Omnilert system, also did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.
Asking the real questions here. My guess would be: they didn’t have metal detectors, the metal detectors they had reached end-of-life, or preexisting metal detectors failed to integrate into a modern, unified surveillance system. And so the use of AI analytics tools, atop (preexisting) camera systems seemed more hassle-free (a subscription-based software integration) and cost-effective in the short term; that is if the unproven compromise bares any trust…
@Passerby6497@lemmy.world @driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br If you install multiple gates side-by-side, and let students leave any metal objects in their lockers, I don’t think it’s that restrictive. But in my country of residence these cases are so rare, considering these systems is a first for me, so I’m by no means an expert.
This is the logical endpoint of technology capitalism. Even authority figures have so many constant draws on their attention? And so many suffer from un-or-under-diagnosed attention issues, coupled with constant and unrelenting anxiety about performance and about the world around them collapsing, that “outsource thinking so that I have less of it to do” is the hot new commodity
Metal detectors in schools are dystopian and nobody who works in a school wants them.
Sounds like they fit right in in the country where children are regularly and routinely murdered while at school and society at large is ok with it.
AI is so much better and not dystopian 🙏
The detection processing is completely invisible. It’s just a tool. How it’s used is what determines if it’s dystopian or not. Seeing the state the US is in, I’d argue the country itself is dystopian and this system is trying to somewhat protect people from that dystopia.
Metal detectors are a logistical nightmare in a school
Worse than getting shot?
On average, yes.
Yeah, then they have to limit the entrance to the school, add wait times to get in because of processing, and it gives a convenient mass of students for wannabe shooters
What’s the problem? It’s still gotta be like, 99.9% accurate in detecting guns, right?
That’s fine, right? What are the chances that the 0.1% of guns that get through will happen here, right? Right?
In all seriousness (in case you couldn’t sense the sarcasm), I bet the company will stand by that 99.9%, and will win.