Biden administration guidance reveals how AI in schools could be racist, anti-transgender

On Tuesday, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released executive order guidance explaining how schools' use of artificial intelligence (AI) can discriminate against minority and transgender students, making them the subject of federal investigation. There is a “high” possibility that it will be targeted.

Last year, President Biden announced that the Department of Education would increase resources, policies, and policies related to AI in schools to ensure responsible and nondiscriminatory use “including the impact of AI systems on vulnerable and underserved communities.” Signed Executive Order 14110 mandating the development of guidance.

The Department of Education's guidance states: “The use of AI in schools for instruction and school safety purposes is increasing, and the ability of AI to operate at scale may create or encourage discrimination. “There is.” “This resource provides information about federal civil rights laws in OCR’s jurisdiction and includes examples of the types of incidents that, depending on the facts and circumstances, may provide sufficient cause for OCR to initiate an investigation. ”

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The first seven examples provided in the guidance are scenarios in which AI could potentially deny benefits or unfairly single out or exclude students based on race, color, or national origin. It was.

In one scenario, a plagiarism checker run using a generative AI that “shows high error rates when evaluating essays written by non-native English speakers” was exposed as racist without the teacher’s knowledge. It has been suggested that it may be. Nevertheless, if a school continues to use racist plagiarism checkers after complaints from students or parents, the guidance says it is “likely” to result in a federal civil rights investigation. has been done.

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Another example suggests that schools using AI to determine appropriate disciplinary procedures for students may also be exhibiting racial bias.

“Significant racial disparities continue to exist in the application of student discipline in schools, with black students being punished more frequently and harshly than similarly situated students of other races. ”, the guidance says. “As a result, the historical school discipline data that this software relies on reflects the discriminatory discipline practices of that school.”

Other sections of the guidance touch on how AI could lead to sex discrimination, one example of which is the potential for AI to discriminate against students who do not conform to traditional gender norms. It details a scenario in which there is. In this scenario, a school that uses facial recognition software to check students' attendance at school “complies with the technology's assumptions about how girls and boys should look based on the school's assigned gender.” This suggests that students may be inappropriately flagged as a security risk because they are not compliant. record. ”

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The guidance states that students who are incorrectly reported may become “embarrassed and miss class time” and continue to use the screening software anyway, even though administrators are “aware of the problem.” If so, there will likely be a Title IX violation and an investigation by civil rights officers.

This photo illustration created in Washington DC shows an AI image generator in front of an image of a school bus.

Challenging discrimination within AI has been a focus of the Biden administration, with top leaders from the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last April He promised to start using it. Federal civil rights and consumer protection laws to crack down on discriminatory AI systems.

These calls from leaders within the Biden administration come ahead of the president's October 2023 executive order mandating a range of efforts to eliminate discrimination in AI, including guidance released Tuesday by the Department of Education. I was disappointed.

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President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will nominate former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon to be the next secretary of the Department of Education.

The Department of Education did not provide any on-the-record comment to Fox News Digital prior to publication of this article.