An AI security camera being tested at Hinsdale South High School flagged a student as carrying an AR-15 rifle. It was a backpack strap.
Geoffrey Cooker, security director for Hinsdale South and Hinsdale Central high schools, disclosed the false alarm at the District 86 board meeting Tuesday, Oct. 27, as first reported by Patch. Cooker, a retired police officer, said shadowing and pixelation in the camera footage made the strap look like a weapon.
"It sure looked like it, but what it was was his backpack strap," Cooker said.
The two campuses have 600 security cameras. Board member Jeff Waters asked whether AI could reduce the need for humans to monitor all those feeds. Cooker said vendors have approached the district and it has evaluated a couple of systems, but he has not found one he trusts enough to act on its alerts without a person verifying first.
"I still haven't seen a platform that I'm 100 percent confident in," Cooker said.
He added that an emergency response triggered by a faulty AI alert would have been hard to accept, though he acknowledged the technology is improving each year.
The security discussion comes as District 86 deepens its broader AI push. The board approved an agreement with Nvidia on Sept. 29, Patch reported. Officials said the program targets technology support internship students and AI club members at Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South, with a focus on practical skills in AI, accelerated computing and data science.
Waters has been a vocal proponent of AI in the district. At an earlier board meeting in August, he said the Nvidia pilot was a learning opportunity for students, according to Patch's coverage of that session. District officials said the pilot project would be free.
Under the Nvidia agreement, all student data remains district property, and Nvidia is barred from selling district information or delivering targeted advertising, Patch reported.
