The school’s AI gun detector failed to detect a weapon during the Nashville school shooting

An artificial intelligence-powered weapon detection system installed at a high school in Nashville, Tennessee, was unable to detect the gun a 17-year-old used to shoot another student and kill himself earlier this week, according to district officials.

Sean Braisted, an expert in research and development, said that the Omnilert system “is designed to activate immediately upon detection (of a gun), and as we described, it did not detect that weapon in this case due to the location and placement of the cameras.” A spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools, according to Cover local news During a press conference on Thursday. Braisted said the system detected police officers’ weapons when they arrived at the scene and has detected weapons in the past, a local NBC station in Nashville reported.

The school district approved $1 million for two years a contract With Omnilert in 2023.

In an email to Gizmodo, Omnilert CEO Dave Fraser said his heart goes out to the students, families and greater Nashville community in the wake of the shooting. “We can confirm that the Omnilert weapon detection system is deployed at MNPS, but in this case, the location of the shooter and firearm meant the weapon was not visible,” he said. “This is not a case of the firearm not being recognized by the system.”

The shooting happened Wednesday in the Antioch High School cafeteria.

Data from GovSpend, which collects information on government contracts, shows that more than 100 cities, school districts, community colleges and universities have purchased Omnilert systems. The company is part of the AI-based weapons detection industry—Which also includes companies like Evolv Technologies and ZeroEyes-This leads to winning multi-million dollar contracts from schools and other government agencies despite mounting evidence that the systems are not as effective as advertised..

In November, the Federal Trade Commission filed an application complaint v. Evolv, accusing it of deceptively marketing the accuracy of its rapid weapon scanning system. The agency pointed to the Express system in the Utica area of ​​New York, which failed to detect the knife that was used in October 2022. Student stabbed. After the incident, the school district increased the system’s sensitivity, but that change doubled the rate of false alarms, as the system incorrectly alerted security personnel about nonexistent weapons, according to the FTC.

During a pilot at Jacobi Medical Center in New York City, more than 85% of alerts triggered by Evolv scanners over a seven-month period were false alarms, and another 14% involved law enforcement officers, according to documents obtained by Jacobi Medical Center. Hell Gate. When the city tested the Evolv device in subway stations, it detected no weapons, 12 knives, and issued 118 false alarms over 30 days, according to the British Daily Mail. City and State of New York.

In March, Philadelphia’s public transit agency, SEPTA, He terminated his contract With ZeroEyes because the company’s weapon detection system failed to integrate with SEPTA’s surveillance cameras. Raised by a 2023 report from the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory Similar concerns About ZeroEyes’ ability to work with anything but high-quality camera images. Residents also complained that the company did not provide data on the accuracy of the system.