NEW HANOVER COUNTY — An AI camera pilot program, politicized since its approval by the General Assembly, remained controversial even after the New Hanover County school board voted it down at a Tuesday meeting.
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At its agenda review meeting this week, the board picked up a conversation on a state-funded pilot that would ally artificial intelligence with the district’s current camera systems. The AI plug-in would trigger alerts in a potential emergency, students all running one way for example or a person brandishing a weapon.
However, the board voted 4-3 to do without the program, chair Melissa Mason and board member David Perry departing from their Republican colleagues, along with Democrats Tim Merrick and Judy Justice. The decision came down to the perceived untrustworthiness of the AI system company, Paris-based Eviden.
“We, as a board, as a community, a district, have been working so hard to be more transparent, to be a community we have worked to rebuild back and it bothers me to no end — to the point where I lose sleep — to partner with somebody who doesn’t have that integrity, who doesn’t have that accountability,” Mason said.
The chair reported on a conversation she had with Davidson County school board chair Nick Jarvis; Mason said the chair told her Eviden had been resistant to a third-party audit, which the Davidson board made a condition for when it voted to partner with Eviden in February.
Davidson County and New Hanover County have been linked through a provision of the Hurricane Helene relief bill passed by the General Assembly, at the behest of Sen.Michael Lee (R-New Hanover), last year. The provision, one of many items tied up in the bill but not disaster-related, granted funds to cover three-year pilots of AI security technology in both districts.
The law requires counties to use the same vendor, stipulating whichever board approved a contract first determined the company used in the other district. So while NHCS had the option to reject the pilot, as the money cannot be used for anything else, it would have had to move forward with Eviden.
Though neither responded, Port City Daily reached out to Jarvis and the Davidson County superintendent to confirm Mason’s comments, because two NHCS board members have contradicted the chair’s version.
On Wednesday, Josie Barnhart posted on social media she received an email from an Eviden representative minutes after the board meeting concluded Tuesday.
“We have never declined the audit; in fact, we are actively working to finalize it with Davidson,” Vice President of DataOps and Support Shawn Hall said, according to Barnhart’s post. “I’d love to bring you up to speed on its status and clarify the actual hold-up. We have always been completely transparent about our efforts, and we will continue to do the same with the technology we are implementing.”
Board member Pat Bradford told PCD Wednesday night she also spoke with an Eviden representative who reported the company was complying with the audit. Bradford added she’s reviewed emails, which she said she wasn’t sure she could share with PCD, between the Davidson board attorney and Eviden attorney that showed no pushback.
“All indications are the Davidson attorney was not corresponding with the board that the delay was due to the attorney’s full plate,” Bradford said.
She thought if the board had approved, or even delayed, the vote the confusion over the audit would have worked itself out. Bradford’s motion was the one voted on, and it included the same audit contingency and a prohibition on activation of the technology’s facial recognition features.
The feature was a major point of contention for community members at a town hall the district hosted about the AI system last week. The event was attended by the board and some district staff, with two representatives from Eviden answering questions and around 20 community members, most of whom voiced their opposition to the program.
Like he did back in January, Eviden’s Hall gave an initial explanation of how the system functions and all its capabilities, including detection of the perimeter for intruders or students skipping class, falls or open door, smoke or fire, overcrowding or large crowd movement, threatening objects, and “aggression.”
The camera system uses what’s called computer vision AI, a neural network training of objects so computers can recognize what it’s looking at from a video image. The Eviden team pre-trains the cameras, showing them thousands of image examples of the above instances so it knows when to send an alert, which is done through Eviden’s tech partner Raptor. The video footage remains on the school server and is erased as it comes in; Eviden does not store the footage, it merely makes an alert, but the ability to playback footage as evidence will be possible through the camera system the school already has in place, which the AI technology integrates with.
The state is covering the implementation of the system in three schools for two years; after, the cost to run the program is estimated at $300,000 to $400,000 a year. The $3.2 million grant does not cover any additional cameras that would be requested by the district should it need further angles beyond what its current cameras cover.
In attendance at the town hall, former school board candidate and Moms for Liberty leader Natosha Tew questioned how the system would be paid for following the grant — NHCS would have to decide to pick it up — and pointed out the teacher positions that could be covered by that funding.
Hall also fielded questions about Eviden, whose parent company Atos has undergone a bankruptcy crisis. Hall explained Eviden is being spun off from Atos and has retained its profitability. Attendees also questioned Eviden’s experience in schools; it has none, though the company has installed in airports, universities, and government facilities.
Audience members also questioned the effectiveness of the system, as it could be prone to false alarms and relies on administrators to be responsive to every alert.
“I get hundreds of push notifications a day,” former New Hanover County commissioner candidate and current NHC GOP Chair John Hinnant said at the meeting. “How do we make sure the people responsible for carrying the handheld device don’t ignore it?”
Hall said the system is not a replacement for human intervention, but rather a way to make response times faster.
Several audience members spoke of the privacy concerns they have, likening the system to George Orwell’s vision of “Big Brother” government surveillance in his book “1984.”
Board member Perry spoke to those concerns Tuesday.
“AI is a tool; it’s like a gun, it can be used for good or bad, can be used responsibly and it can be used irresponsibly,” Perry said. “I’m not opposed to AI at our schools in some context, but we have to take safeguards and guardrails there. To ensure that the liberty of our students, we need to proceed with caution.”
Barnhart said she spoke with NHHS Principal Philip Sutton about the 2021 school shooting that left one person injured and concluded the Eviden system could be an asset in emergency situations. It has the ability to continuously track an intruder or student that may be unaccounted for.
“I have friends and I have administrators — and their bravery I commend them and I’m sorry to relive this part of their life — but sharing with me that that was the worst thing that ever happened, not being able to account for kids,” Barnhart said.
Bradford supported the implementation also as a response to violence.
“The world is getting more and more violent, and we need to put every safety protocol that we can give, every tool to our staff that we can because this is all about protecting our kids and our staff,” she said.
Board member Merrick said he has received countless emails from the community and only one was supportive of the AI implementation. This is in contrast to principals and school leaders, board member Pete Wildeboer reported.
“Every single one of them recommended we move ahead with the pilot helping to keep our students and staff safe,” he said.
He continued the board has the ability to change the scope of work depending on which functions it would like the system to perform. Board member Justice pushed back, saying the board’s preferences could change in the future and she would not like to open the door to any implementation.
“We may not be on the board [in the future], Dr. Barnes, he may not be the superintendent,” Justice said. “Who knows what could happen down the line, under different leadership.”
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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