Japanese city to use AI to predict seriousness of school bullying

The board initially found no connection between the suicide and bullying,

No wonder they need AI if this is their level of intelligence.

In my opinion they are just afraid to make any decisions on their own and want a "computer" to do it for them! They dont want to be held responsible if someone makes a mistake or doesnt do their job.

New scapegoat? I can hear it now; Sorry for the death of your child. Their must have been a problem with the AI software. But don't worry, our techs are checking it out.

Sounds unnecessary but it might stop something falling between the cracks. Japan has a tendency to brush things under the carpet and this might call incidents out as potentially being more serious.

Typical.

Pass the buck on their own children. Terrible

''The more of your data i gather, the more i understand what it means to be human''.

You child’s life will be decided by an algorithm.

Ugghhh!!

So, instead of teachers and school administrators actually taking bullying seriously so that kids feel comfortable reporting bullying.....

They do this. So that they can wash their hands of any responsibility!!

This might be a good idea if it were done by experts, but it's likely to be just some off the shelf solution that is being sold to bureaucrats who only want to be seen to be doing something.

More like the city plans to use AI as a cop-out b/c they've proven incapable of taking school bullying seriously enough. Is AI going to suspend or expel kids found to have bullied their peers? Is AI going to tell the bullies' parents that their kids are little monsters or are they going continue to abdicate all responsibility ("childcare") and portray the victims/their families as being at least partly culpable.

Bullying here is rarely one on one. It's a herd thing and schools have no interest in punishing 12 kids if the other option is letting one mistreated child be sacrificed.

oh dear oh dear oh dear!!!!!!!!! machines to tell us how to be human..... sometimes I despair!

Haha! How long before the AI joins the bullies?!?!

The victims are doomed!

Interesting how this AI will only compare student on student bullying. It will not include teachers or parents bullying kids. Just about every aspect of Japanese life is built around bullying, intimidation, ridicule, threats and academic conformity. They should be more concerned about a culture that supports bullying than anylising kids bullying each other. Kids are a product of their environment. A bad environment produces bad kids.

Let's just remove the human factor required to truly understand bullying to a machine. AI, you are the new scapegoat when all things fail

That does not compute!

A smart phone is only as smart as the person using it. The save goes for AI.

Taro: “Sensei please help me. I’m being bullied and my life is a living hell. I can’t deal with it any more.

Sensei: “Just a minute...tap tap tap... Well the system is telling me that your case is only 70% serious at the moment. I can’t do anything until I get a reading of over 80%. So maybe if you could just go back to class and suck it up for another couple of weeks and then get back to me...

AI is not that advance in human behavior patterns yet:

https://youtu.be/6mx6paHrnIE

One of the biggest issues with bullying in Japan and anywhere in the world is that majority of cases are never reported. I don’t know much about Japan, but when growing up in America, one of the quickest ways to lose friends was to be a tattle tale.

Many people being bullied are genuinely afraid and they also fear repercussions. Many fear that things will become much worst if they say something.

Bullying will be difficult to stop unless create a system that proves it can actually protect someone.

Although I never thought about it at the time. When I was growing up, the hazing rituals on the football team in JHS and HS could eventually become a form of bullying. That particular form of bullying is also allowed by coaches. Which only furthers the problems. The same thing when I joined a fraternity during college. Most bullies don’t realize the damage they cause.

In order to make it possible for AI to accurately identify potential problems, it’s going to need a LOT of data that people are not going to want to have exposed to potential leaks.

One of the questions has been leaked:

While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?

It may save some lives because it will be far quicker for AI to analyse 9,000 cases than a team of humans. It would take a very long time for humans to compare aspects of 9,000 cases. Not saying it's the only thing they should do but it could well help them to do a better job.

Artificial intelligence is only useful if there is actual intelligence there in the first place. Intelligence is almost totally absent in the Japanese education system and mental “health” industry. Simply put, they haven't a clue what they are doing.

What is AI? A substitute for God? As other posters have pointed out, another convenient scapegoat?

Japan, drop the AI and reliance on computers, how about having some mature conversations with the students?

Perhaps in junior and senior high there could be a class on appropriate behaviour towards fellow students or case studies on bullying and it’s affects? Call it the ‘Junior/Senior High Code of Conduct’ and have each student sign to it? Drastic perhaps but might be a start..

Just my two cents

If Japan dropped the "everyone graduates no matter what" way of thinking and started removing problem students, it would be much better. Kids know they won't get in any serious trouble. Even if they are the direct cause of another student's suicide, nothing appropriate will happen to them. Take that away.

I have a concern of introducing AI to detect the seriousness of bullying. How should teachers and edcation board deat with the problem when students, who are under the bully, are judged as low risk of being escalated? I think the education board is over looking this point.

You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?

because the tortoise is perfectly capable of flipping itself back over onto its front.

There seems to be a confusion here that AI is to replace human assessment, rather than complement it.

The AI should be there as an additional check, to note that there are certain characteristics of a particular case that are common among many higher risks cases.

Over and over again we see that abusers are manipulative and deceitful and often good at explaining individual incidents away, hoping that patterns are never picked up. A good computer assistant might help draw attention to worrying patterns.

Yes, it needs to be used properly and does not replace human judgement but don't write it off.