A US charity plans to use AI to monitor its Gaza classrooms for 'hateful' speech

A U.S. charity in Gaza is worried that teachers at its schools might stray from a curriculum it says promotes peace and tolerance, so it plans to record classroom conversations and use artificial intelligence to flag speech deemed “hateful” or “inciting.” The plans laid out by the founder of the Gaza Children Village in a webinar last month have elicited ethical, safety and privacy concerns from some Palestinian and advocacy groups and at least one of the charity's partners.There is no indication the charity intends to share its classrooms’ recordings with anybody else, but fears about the potential misuse of surveillance technology are heightened in Gaza after three years of war. The Israeli military has used AI to sift through intercepted communications and find suspicious speech, including to identify targets for strikes.Palestinian rights groups have been critical of the charity's education agenda more broadly, saying it is unaccountable to local and U.N. agencies that have long managed Gaza’s schools. Who controls education in Gaza is one of many unresolved questions about its postwar governance.It is unclear when the classroom monitoring is supposed to begin, what specific la...