Artificial intelligence is becoming deeply embedded in Americans’ daily lives, from education to shopping. But is there a place for AI in school safety?
Some school leaders say there is. Recently, two school districts—Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia and Robinson Independent School District in
Texas—announced partnerships with an AI company designed to detect threats.
VOLT AI, a Maryland-based security firm, says its system can detect potential safety risks such as medical emergencies, firearms, and fights. The company’s technology is now used in public and private K-12 schools and universities across 12 states.
VOLT is not the only AI company involved in the school security industry. Lightspeed Systems, ZeroEyes, and Omnilert all have software programs that integrate AI into a school’s existing security structure in an attempt to better flag potential dangers.
Lightspeed uses AI to scan a student’s browsing activity on school-owned devices to identify potential safety concerns. Rob Chambers, the executive vice president of products at Lightspeed, said the program focuses on the context of a student’s actions rather than keywords.
“I really want to stay away from the idea that it’s keyword scanning because that could just overwhelm [a] tremendous amount of false positives and things that you don’t really want to get into,” Chambers said.
How does it work?
The AI software VOLT uses connects to a school’s existing surveillance system and scans video feeds for “potential risks,” said Dmitry Sokolowski, the company’s CEO and founder. When the software flags a concern, a trained human validator at VOLT reviews it to decide whether to alert school officials or local authorities.
VOLT employs and trains validators worldwide to offer 24/7 coverage. They review flagged clips, watching a few seconds before and after the incident to assess risk.
“We try to make the human judgment be as less ambiguous as possible, so that they can make [a] quick, split-second decision without making mistakes,” said Sokolowski.
Similar to VOLT, Omnilert, an AI gun detection system, also uses human validators. However, school officials can also opt to monitor the alerts instead of using one of Omnilert’s validators, said the company’s CEO, Dave Fraser.
Validator decisions are continuously analyzed to improve the system’s speed and accuracy, and to refine the software over time.
Having AI-enhanced security technology is “like adding a couple of extra security people to my system,” said David Wrzesinski, the safety director for Robinson school district in Texas.
The cost for Robinson’s district: $385 per camera stream per year, according to the company.
Omnilert has a slightly higher price of $500 per camera stream per year. But the cost per stream goes down as schools utilize more of the software, Fraser said.
Traditional school cameras are typically used to review events after the fact, Wrzesinski said. But VOLT gives schools a way to monitor activity in real time, both inside and around buildings.
“If you’re paying somebody $30,000 a year just to sit and watch a camera, whatever performance level they had, and as sharp as they are, they’re never going to be able to focus consistently the way that artificial intelligence does,” Wrzesinski said.
The Robinson district already uses metal detectors on campus, but Wrzesinski sees VOLT as an added layer of protection, especially if someone bypasses those systems.
“We want to try to react before that happens, and so if we can catch somebody on our perimeter that has the weapon in their hand, and it’s obvious, and you can pick it up, there won’t ever be any screams. There won’t be gunshots because we can get to it before that happens,” Wrzesinski said.
Alerts include the exact location of the potential threat, inside or outside the building.
“When it comes to mass shootings, the faster you can get there, the less loss of life and injury is going to occur, and so that’s why we wouldn’t just want to rely on hopefully we hear it or we see it,” Wrzesinski said.
What about bias and false alarms?
Facial recognition tools—which rely on AI technologies—have drawn criticism from experts for inaccuracies, especially with people of color and gender nonconforming individuals.
Sokolowski said VOLT focuses on behavior, not identity.
“It has to do with the actions of what is happening,” Sokolowski said. “For example, a break-in into a car. We’re looking for a beam window being smashed, rather than, a specific type of a person doing it.”
Even so, false alarms sometimes still happen. The Robinson district has received alerts for potential weapons that turned out to be objects like a toy gun at a basketball game, a theater prop sword, and a color guard rifle after further investigation.
What experts say
Before adopting new technology for school security, safety experts say school leaders should ask critical questions first.
The school safety market is largely unregulated, said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. That can lead districts to spend money on tools that aren’t effective or that trigger false alarms.
“With products AI and otherwise, [the] first question I tell school officials to ask is, how [does] this proposed product or technology work day-to-day in a school?” Trump said.
He believes AI will play a growing role in the security industry in the future, but not yet. “I don’t think that schools should be the first in line to be the guinea pigs for the vendors so that they can train their systems or fine tune their systems at the taxpayers’ expense, particularly in a school setting,” he said.
Trump added that school leaders should weigh both the cost and potential downsides of new AI-integrated systems.
Elisa Mula, a school safety and surveillance expert, said machine learning tools—like VOLT—can help security staff be more efficient, but they’re not a substitute for trained personnel who know how to use them wisely.
She also noted that AI can be outsmarted. For example, an intruder might blend in with a crowd to evade detection.
“If I know a school has a technology like this, and I can identify typically [that] the system would pick up me going in the wrong direction, ... [then] I’ll blend in with a whole bunch of kids, and I’ll just go in with them,” Mula said.
As a guide for evaluating new security tools, both Trump and Mula recommend third-party safety assessments to help schools make informed decisions.
