this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
357 points (98.9% liked)

Technology

81451 readers
4451 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
357
'Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:' Inside an AI-Powered Private School (www.404media.co)
submitted 17 hours ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Alpha School, an “AI-powered private school” that heavily relies on AI to teach students and can cost up to $65,000 a year, is AI-generating faulty lesson plans that internal company documentation find sometimes do “more harm than good,” and scraping data from a variety of other online courses without permission to train its own AI, according to former Alpha School employees and internal company documents.

Archive : https://archive.is/uUjmy

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 68 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

My investigation into Alpha School also reveals that the massive amounts of data the company collects on students, including videos of them, is stored in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link—even if they’ve left the company, or if it was sent to them—could access. In turn, that sensitive material is viewed by more Alpha School employees than students and parents may realize.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I'm gonna stop you right there with a huge huge WHAT the FUCK. That is an incredible decision to have made. Stunning.

I saw that Alpha School maintains a spreadsheet which contains a list of student names, their grade, and an archive of their recordings which shows what’s happening on their screen, their remote tutor, and a video of the student taken via their webcam. This spreadsheet is not only available to anyone at the company, but is also shared in such a way that anyone on the internet who has the link can access the spreadsheet and the videos of students.

“If I wanted to, I could go there and just watch students. Anybody who worked in this capacity could watch the videos of students working on their laptops,” one Alpha School employee told me. “So many hours of just students’ faces [...] I'm not sure parents understand exactly what's going on with that data [...] I don't think that this is clearly communicated, because I'm sure there'd be a lot more opt outs if it was.”

Wonder how many pedos work for the company.

[–] Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

If that's true, I bet the reason is that "security is difficult", easier to just leave it open to all.

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Oh yeah, I assume it's that level of stupidity. Idiots in charge with zero concept of laws or IT or security.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 10 points 14 hours ago

Find out who owns it and that's a start