Impact of AI experiment on Chinese students . .

Preparing tor the management classes that are coming up from Monday 4 Jan '21, the new topic of Management of Artificial Intelligence and its varied impacts, besides being advanced is at the same time challenging too for classroom discussions. 

Placing headbands on school children's heads and monitoring their concentration levels with 3 sensors,  one on the forehead and 2 others behind the ears to help monitor concen6and attention spans is in itself a draconian exercise. Why ?

 

Wall Street Journal in October '19 came out with this very controversial video. It shows Chinese school students with headbands attending school.  Click here to watch the video ..

Watching the video, educators around the world are besides shocked, very alarmed at how Chinese school students are being made the items of experimentation. What will happen if in future these students are adversely affected out of the experiment and develop adverse negative reactions and are unable to cope up with adolescence and adult hood peacefully ? Inside the class, the willingness to concentrate or not is personal. Having a machine through sensors individually monitor each student all the time in the class is no doubt, invading student privacy.

Some questions that arise in our mind are the following : 

• Do we really need such monitors to constantly keep track of activities ? 
• Will the improvement in productivity and performance be compensated by the deterioration of mental health ? 
• Will it result in a sort of phobia for machines and AI in children that could develop into mental health problems for future generations of children  ?
• Will it cultivate a slave mentality in children compromised at the altar of high academic grades ?

Variety is the spice of life. The inherent variety and diversity in class student performance adds flavor to school performance . If all students consistently give high academic achievements and performance,  where is humanity heading to ?

Is successful life solely dependent on one's academic grades ?

Will this experiment have any long term impact on mental health of the students or into the future into adolescence? Has any initial experiment been done to assess the long term impact of this experiment on students  ?

On the face of it, the study appears very wrongly oriented, planned and timed.  The world would be very interested (if and when China discloses it), in knowing the immediate positive and negative impact of this experiment on student population and on the future personality development of these students. 

George ..