What AI College Exam Proctors Are Really Teaching Our Kids

When Haley, a sophomore at Indiana University, took a test for an accounting class in September, she--like many college students during this pandemic--was sitting not in a classroom but in her bedroom. And instead of a teacher watching for signs of cheating, there was something new: an AI, studying Haley's every move through her laptop's webcam. The university was conducting remote exams using Respondus, a type of "online proctoring" software. The software locks down a student's desktop so they can't switch tabs to Google an answer, and then it uses visual AI to examine--among other things--their head movements to judge whether they're looking somewhere other than at the screen. Haley's head was setting off alarms.