Fox News correspondent Grady Trimble has the latest on fears the technology will spiral out of control on'Special Report.' Schools and museums are installing artificial intelligence that can detect the presence of guns or other weapons in a bid to thwart potential shootings and other violence. Miami's Frost Museum of Science, as well as school districts in states such as Florida, New York and Illinois, have installed various AI tech to monitor for firearms and other weapons through the locations' security cameras. "The AI system monitors all the cameras," Brooks Weisblat, the Miami museum's vice president for technology, told CBS News. "Every tool helps. You know, anything that we can do to further protect the community and our visitors and our staff."

If you're not in the know, artificial intelligence and data science may sound like especially nerdy subsets of the already pocket-protector infused field of computer science. But anyone who is serious about expanding computer science education--a list that includes Fortune 500 company CEOs and policymakers on both sides of the aisle--should be thinking carefully about emphasizing AI, in which machines are trained to perform tasks that simulate some of what the human brain can do, and data science, in which students learn to record, store, and analyze data. That means making sure kids have access to well-designed resources to learn those subjects, bolstering professional development for those who teach them, exposing career counselors to information about how to help students pursue jobs in those fields, and much more. That imperative is at the heart of a list of recommendations by CSforALL, an education advocacy group presented last month at the International Society for Technology in Education's annual conference. Leigh Ann DeLyser, CSforALL's co-founder and executive director, spoke with Education Week about some big picture ideas around the push for a greater focus on AI and data science within computer science education.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education has been profound, with new ways of thinking about how best to teach students reverberating in institutions of higher learning, K-12 classrooms and in the business community. The role of AI is central to the discussion on every level. For the K-12 classroom, teachers are thinking about how to use AI as a teaching tool. For example, Deb Norton of the Oshkosh Area school district in Wisconsin, was asked several years ago by the International Society for Technology in Education to lead a course on the uses of AI in K-12 classrooms, according to a recent account in Education Week. The course includes sections on the definition of artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice recognition, chatbots and the role of data in AI systems.

What makes one intervention work in a school when another seemingly similar one falls flat? Increasingly detailed computer models of student behavior and learning may help researchers avoid such setbacks by better pinpointing interventions before taking them to schools. "In education research, I get a great idea, apply for funding, … then I spend a few months in schools taking time from students and teachers, and often find out it doesn't work," said Richard L. Lamb, an assistant professor of science education and educational measurement at Washington State University in Pullman. "That's great that we have that data," he said, "but it's not the most efficient way to do [research and development]." Instead, Mr. Lamb and colleagues are working to pair education technology and neuroscience to mimic how students learn in a classroom and provide an additional means of testing and honing interventions.

Struggling algebra students in the Everett, Wash., school district get help from special tutors who diagnose their weaknesses, tailor instruction to their needs, and provide on-the-spot feedback-all with an inhuman degree of patience. That's inhuman literally: The tutors are computers. Three years ago, the district started employing Cognitive Tutor, a series of computer programs based on artificial intelligence that were developed by researchers from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The programs provide an alternative form of math instruction to secondary school students who haven't succeeded in regular classrooms. The experience proved so successful that officials in the 20,000-student district have expanded the program.