Alliance formed to set standards for biometric proctoring, AI in education

Education artificial intelligence company Riid and non-profit consortium DXtera have partnered to launch the EdSAFE AI Alliance to increase public trust in the use of artificial intelligence in the education sector, which has been shaken by problems with facial recognition-powered proctoring systems.

The alliance was announced at EdTech conference ASU+GSV Summit, and brings together businesses in the space with non-profit organizations and industry associations. It seeks to establish a set of voluntary benchmarks and standards to measure the quality and reliability of AI technologies in education.

The EdSAFE Alliance will target safety, including security and privacy, accountability, fairness and efficacy as four critical areas for standards. Safety, accountability, fairness and efficacy provide the letters for the ‘SAFE’ acronym.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) published guidelines for remote testing and exam proctoring just weeks ago, in the wake of concerns about the effectiveness and fairness of proctoring systems using face biometrics. Those concerns have included inadequate performance for people with darker skin, and weak privacy protections.

The alliance will consider how to create anonymized datasets and open infrastructure for training and using AI tools in the sector, and how to ensure the tools are safe, fair and unbiased. The alliance also intends to encourage the use of random controlled trials and other rigorous evaluation methodologies for AI education systems.

Riiid Chief Officer for Equity in Learning Jim Larimore is leading the company’s efforts in forming the AI alliance.

“One of the things we know of those proctoring systems that rely heavily on computer vision or facial recognition is that there are hardware and software limitations to that,” he told GovTech in an interview.

Larimore also suggested more front-end testing is needed to identify shortcomings and address potential risks associated with the technology.

Members of DXtera include several colleges and education system councils, businesses, and the EduCloud Alliance.

Article Topics

accuracy  |  AI  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  education  |  facial recognition  |  privacy  |  remote proctoring  |  schools  |  standards