The Blog

2022-

2022-05-25 g
WHERE ARE NANNY STATE AI PROGRAMS WHEN YOU NEED THEM?

REVEALED: Uvalde school district was part of AI program that rooted out potential mass killers and monitored social media for threats and potential shooters

Texas school officials had been monitoring students' social media prior to the deadly shooting in Uvalde Tuesday - but failed to pick up on posts from gunman
As an 18th birthday present to himself earlier this month, now-deceased suspect Salvador Ramos bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media
The ensuing massacre left 19 students aged under 11 and two adults dead
Before the rampage, Ramos reportedly also shot his 66-year-old grandmother
Uvalde School District officials say they had been monitoring its students' social media pages using an advanced AI-based service called Social Sentinel
The software is designed to find signs of potential harm in digital conversations

Texas school officials had been monitoring students' social media prior to the deadly shooting in Uvalde Tuesday, it has been revealed - but still failed to pick up on concerning posts from the teenage gunman in the days leading up to the tragedy.

As an 18th birthday present to himself earlier this month, now-deceased suspect Salvador Ramos bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media - including in ominous messages sent hours before the killing started.

The teen's photo-op also saw him share an image to his since-scrubbed Instagram account, of him cradling the magazine of a rifle on his lap.

The ensuing massacre - the deadliest at a US elementary school since the infamous 2012 Sandy Hook shooting - left 19 students aged under 11 and two adults at Uvalde Elementary dead. Ramos also reportedly shot his 66-year-old grandmother before embarking on the killing spree.

Now, Uvalde School officials say they had been monitoring its students' social media pages using an advanced AI-based service called Social Sentinel, designed to recognize signals of potential harm found in digital conversations.

The district revealed Monday it had been using the platform 'to monitor all social media with a connection to Uvalde as a measure to identify any possible threats that might be made against students and or staff within the school district.'

According to its creators, the service - powered by advanced linguistics technology - scans and analyzes digital content to pick out and flag potential safety and security risks, as well as mental health and social and emotional concerns.

The software scans selected digital content - in this case, thousands of students' social media accounts - and identifies language that fit those criteria.

The powerful technology is designed to then alerts leaders if a community member is showing signs of crisis, so they can intervene before an incident occurs.

The service also scans threatening images, along with its associated text, before determining whether it is something community leaders should look into.

However, in this particular instance, the technology fell short - failing to spot Ramos' objectively concerning posts and notify district officials.

It is not immediately clear why the technology failed to flag Ramos' posts. DailyMail.com reached out to Social Sentinel and Uvalde district staffers for comment on the software's apparent failure Wednesday morning, but did not immediately hear back.

Students and parents also failed to spot the post from the troubled student, who was described as a bullied loner who slowly dropped out of school due to teasing about his lisp, habit of wearing eyeliner, clothes and his family's poverty. (read more)

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