In Louisville, Kentucky, many parents were worried and upset when their kids didn’t arrive home from school until around 10 at night. Most spent hours trying to locate their children while others waited desperately at the school hoping to seek answers from administrators on what was occurring. Where were their children?
Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), Kentucky’s largest school district, led by superintendent Martin Pollio partnered with Alpha Route to address the bus driver shortage in their school district and across Kentucky. Alpha Route was created to be an advanced routing software that could manage a school’s bus route. Polio’s administration spent over $100,000 to incorporate Alpha Route in the school district’s transportation system because they believed it was a promising technology that could solve the bus driver shortage. However, what happens when these sorts of technologies fail? In this case, the software did fail and left many kids on school buses for several hours on their first day of school, leaving parents angry with many questions. Alpha Route’s algorithm couldn’t adjust to the addition of new bus stops and the change in school bell times, which forced the district to close for several days.
After the school closure, Alpha Route issued a report in which they stated, “Some may ask whether artificial intelligence is to blame for the issues JCPS encountered, and we can emphatically say that is not the case. Artificial intelligence is not, and it has not once been a part of our work with JCPS (Sarah Magin 2023).” They also claim that other factors (which are still unknown) contributed to Alpha Route’s malfunction. Personally, I don’t buy their statement because if AI wasn’t a factor in their system, then what did they use? Also, if the issue wasn’t a problem with the algorithm they created, then who is to blame? To me, they are trying to paint a picture where they fail to publicly admit that Alpha Route isn’t as promising as it seems. Their technology is indeed flawed. Aaron Schetcher, a Professor at the University of Georgia in the information and management systems department, says, “The underlying principle here is that people were wooed by something that seemed sophisticated, and they trusted that AI would be a magic fix, who hadn’t evaluated the specific technology used” (Fox News Associated Press 2023). I agree with Schetcher, and this has been a recurring pattern that I’ve noticed from our class discussions. There are a ton of people who consider AI as “the tool to fix all” in which many people are in a race to see who can develop it first. Although it may seem promising, it shouldn’t be a competition, especially when lives are involved. Alpha Route even says, “We had some room for error in our former schedule. We do not have room for error now (Fox News Associated Press 2023). When something like this can affect the lives of children, there shouldn’t be any room for error at all. This is a frustrating case because I question JCPS involvement with this technology. Were they not aware of these risks? Did they not think that Alpha Route could fail?
These questions remind me of our class discussion today on the film, Computer Chess (2013), in which a common theme was fallibility. The film has many different examples of fallibility in its cinematography as there are several glitches and unsynchronized sound, and one of the competing groups even discovers a problem with their chess program and can’t compete for the rest of the tournament. Together with the problem of Alpha Route, I think all of these factors magnify AI’s ability to have flaws. I also think it is important to recognize when there is fallibility in a system and not to ignore the matter at hand. Whenever AI is involved, I think people should always consider the risks and take them seriously. It seems power and money plays a huge role in this process, and it unfortunately comes at the expense of people’s lives.
Over decades, the progression of AI has grown tremendously, and the stakes are higher now. I’m not arguing that AI doesn’t have the potential to be promising or infallible, but I think it is worthy to consider what could happen if plans don’t work and AI fails.
Here is a screenshot I pulled from a Youtube video which shows a few comments on the matter. As mentioned above, JCPS spent over $100,000 on Alpha Route to try and solve for their bus driver shortage problem. Why invest such a large sum of money into technology, when that same money could be given to the actual workers? Most of the comments address this issue here, and some offer other opinions worthy of considering.
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