The Wake County Board of Education has decided that students are now too immature to see pictures of math problems.
At least, that is the message that they are sending after implementing their newest screening system for school managed devices. On Jan. 28, the Board decided in an 8-0 vote that they will be implementing Howard Technology’s Lightspeed Internet Content Filter. This $335,000 one year deal aims to keep students on task at school and safe from inappropriate online content.
Lightspeed has many problems in its design, as it attempts to use AI to distinguish between clean content and what should be censored. Unfortunately, it does a terrible job at this. Pictures of even really basic things, ranging from animal cells and the color green, to the American flag and even peace signs are being blocked from WCPSS computers.
Students at FVHS are finding it hard to complete even the simplest of projects that require pictures, such as presentations, because of the lack of pictures students have access to now.
“I was doing some research for HOSA and it blocked medical images that don’t have any political connotations at all, which made the process even harder than before, especially for the diseases that have less media of them in the first place,” said senior Jamie Jordan.
Wake County claims that they want its students to “lead productive lives in a complex and changing world,” but it is impossible for students to do so if they can’t be trusted to access images to complete digital projects, which are increasing in number each year.
Another change that came with the installment of Lightspeed is the removal of suggested videos on YouTube. Does Wake County simply not trust its students? Obviously, recommended videos could be distracting, but when using YouTube for research, the recommendations could lead students to more sources, instead students get an ugly white bar and no explanation.
Students are outraged across Wake County, with one student starting a petition on Change.org to garner attention to the matter. The petition only has 82 signatures right now, most likely because this problem has just started.
Commenters on the petition voice their disapproval, saying that it crashed their computers, is an overuse of AI, wasted county funds and makes Wikipedia “more censored than the Epstein files.”
Wake County is obviously trying to protect its students— a valiant effort— but Lightspeed, or any other AI powered service, is not the solution they are striving to find. Not only does it do a poor job of censoring, it also hinders each student’s ability to complete basic research tasks in the classroom.
Students are tired of Wake County’s half-baked solutions to complex problems, and Lightspeed is the perfect example of using too much money to improperly fix a non-problem that didn’t affect learning in the first place.
