A new system called Scanary uses AI and radar to scan up to 25,000 people an hour. School is back in session, but here's something no one told you at orientation: Your kids may have more eyes on them than just their teachers'. Even if you don't have kids in school, you really need to know about this. A new study from UC San Diego uncovered what's really going on with those student safety tools schools buy. You know, the ones that are supposed to stop bullying, flag mental health struggles and prevent school shootings?

Joaquin Oliver was 17 years old when he was shot in the hallway of his high school. An older teenager, expelled some months previously, had opened fire with a high-powered rifle on Valentine's Day in what became America's deadliest high school shooting. Seven years on, Joaquin says he thinks it's important to talk about what happened on that day in Parkland, Florida, "so that we can create a safer future for everyone". But sadly, what happened to Joaquin that day is that he died. The oddly metallic voice speaking to the ex-CNN journalist Jim Acosta in an interview on Substack this week was actually that of a digital ghost: an AI, trained on the teenager's old social media posts at the request of his parents, who are using it to bolster their campaign for tougher gun controls.

The Final Exam, a recently released video game in which you play as a student caught amid a school shooting, lasts for around ten minutes, about the length of a real shooting event in a U.S. school. The game opens in an empty locker room. You hear distant gunfire, screams, harried footsteps, and the thudding of heavy furniture being overturned. The sense of disharmony is immediate: a familiar scene of youth and learning is grimly debased into one of peril. As the lockers surround you, their doors gaping, you feel caged: get me out of here. Moments later, as you enter the gymnasium, a two-minute countdown flashes on screen.

Samsung and LG have a long-running rivalry, both Korean corporations, both make TVs, speakers, freezers, toothpaste (maybe?) and the rest. It's a frosty relationship, with many trade shows revealing new TV products from both companies with nigh-on identical specifications and sizes. So it's a bit of a shock to hear from Reuters that Samsung has inked a deal with LG to buy its white OLED (WOLED) TV panels. The plan, according to the report, is for LG Display to supply two million panels next year, then three million and five million, respectively in 2025 and 2026. These high-end white OLED panels would be 77 and 83 inches, so they're likely to be in Samsung's most premium TVs.

Joe Levy is working hard to help avoid another mass school shooting tragedy. He says his technology, designed to spot a gun using existing CCTV cameras, could make a critical difference in future life-or-death situations. Seventeen people died in 2018 when a 19-year-old student opened fire at Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, USA. Fifteen died in the Columbine High School massacre, near Denver, Colorado, in 1999 when a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old shot fellow students. And 22 people died in May of this year when an 18-year-old rampaged through the Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas – one of the worst school shootings in US history.

The tragic school shootings of recent years have led to a great deal of discussion around "hardening" K-12 schools to gun violence. And, the concept of "hardening" usually conjures visions of metal detectors, armed guards, active shooter drills and any number of bullet-proof products, from windows to white boards. Truly hardening a K-12 school system from gun violence, however, requires a more nuanced approach. First of all, disrupting the normal flow of education with pat-downs and other intrusive activity can have a detrimental effect on students by instilling the notion that they are constantly in danger, or that the school perceives them as a threat. The tradeoffs between security and the student experience need to be considered, particularly when it involves introducing more stress on kids who already have to spend too much of their childhood participating in active shooter drills.

After a school shooting in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead, RealNetworks decided to make its facial recognition technology available for free to schools across the US and Canada. If school officials could detect strangers on their campuses, they might be able to stop shooters before they got to a classroom. Anxious to keep children safe from gun violence, thousands of schools reached out with interest in the technology. Dozens started using SAFR, RealNetworks' facial recognition technology. From working with schools, RealNetworks, the streaming media company, says it's learned an important lesson: Facial recognition isn't likely an effective tool for preventing shootings.

People have long blamed video games as a cause of school shootings, but a new study has found that this is more likely to be the case if the perpetrator is white. Researchers have found that video games are eight times more likely to be mentioned when the perpetrator was a white male than if the shooter were an African American male. Experts believe the public looks to find an explanation for this type of behavior if the act is carried out by someone who doesn't match the racial stereotype of a violent person. Although many politicians and media outlets point to violent video games as the cause of school shootings, experts have yet to find scientific evidence to support these claims. 'Video games are often used by lawmakers and others as a red herring to distract from other potential causes of school shootings,' said lead researcher Patrick Markey, PhD, a psychology professor at Villanova University.

Kimberly Krawczyk says she would do anything to keep her students safe. But one of the unconventional responses the local Broward County school district has said could stop another tragedy has left her deeply unnerved: an experimental artificial-intelligence system that would surveil her students closer than ever before. The South Florida school system, one of the largest in the country, said last month it would install a camera-software system called Avigilon that would allow security officials to track students based on their appearance: With one click, a guard could pull up video of everywhere else a student has been recorded on campus. The 145-camera system, which administrators said will be installed around the perimeters of the schools deemed "at highest risk," will also automatically alert a school-monitoring officer when it senses events "that seem out of the ordinary" and people "in places they are not supposed to be." The supercharged surveillance network has raised major questions for some students, parents and teachers, like Krawczyk, who voiced concerns about its accuracy, invasiveness and effectiveness. Her biggest doubt: that the technology could ever understand a school campus like a human can.

The facial-recognition cameras installed near the bounce houses at the Warehouse, an after-school recreation center in Bloomington, Indiana, are aimed low enough to scan the face of every parent, teenager and toddler who walks in. The center's director, David Weil, learned earlier this year of the surveillance system from a church newsletter, and within six weeks he had bought his own, believing it promised a security breakthrough that was both affordable and cutting-edge. Since last month, the system has logged thousands of visitors' faces – alongside their names, phone numbers and other personal details – and checked them against a regularly updated blacklist of sex offenders and unwanted guests. The system's Israeli developer, Face-Six, also promotes it for use in prisons and drones. "Some parents still think it's kind of '1984,' " said Weil, whose 21-month-old granddaughter is among the scanned.