In this day and age, almost every aspect of our lives is influenced in some way by artificial intelligence. AI powers everything from which video plays next when you're watching YouTube to whether your job application is accepted or your insurance claim is approved. Whether we like it or not, our fate is often determined by algorithms that see us as a cloud of data points, not as humans. So, when we apply this technology to a space as fundamental to our society as education, we must make sure that our approach is responsible and equitable--treating the people affected by our tools as human beings. One of the primary applications of AI is to massively increase an organization's capacity to do tasks that require some form of reasoning. In education, this increase in capacity is already showing up in numerous forms.

EdTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies and solutions in the global educational technology market, today announced that Securly, the market leader in end-to-end comprehensive student safety & device management, has been selected as the winner of its "Best Use of Artificial Intelligence in Education" award in the second annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards program. Securly 360 Cloud platform is a complete end-to-end student safety and device management solution that helps students stay safe online and focused on learning. Securly's advanced AI-based filtering technology significantly decreases the likelihood of students viewing inappropriate content while also increasing the awareness schools have into active and potential incidents of cyberbullying, self-harm or violence. While the majority of the educational technology industry approaches student safety by relying on catalogs of keyword searches to alert schools to signs of troubling behavior. This approach results in districts being inundated with false positives, all of which needed to be followed up on to ensure the safety of the students involved.

For Adam Jasinski, a technology director for a school district outside of St Louis, Missouri, monitoring student emails used to be a time-consuming job. Jasinski used to do keyword searches of the official school email accounts for the district's 2,600 students, looking for words like "suicide" or "marijuana". Then he would have to read through every message that included one of the words. The process would occasionally catch some concerning behavior, but "it was cumbersome", Jasinski recalled. Last year Jasinski heard about a new option: following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the technology company Bark was offering schools free, automated, 24-hour-a-day surveillance of what students were writing in their school emails, shared documents and chat messages, and sending alerts to school officials any time the monitoring technology flagged concerning phrases.

More and more frequently, schools across the United States are turning to artificial intelligence-backed solutions to stop tragic acts of student violence. Companies like Bark Technologies, Gaggle.net, and Securly, Inc., are using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) along with trained human safety experts to scan student emails, texts, documents, and in some cases, social media activity. They're looking for warning signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, depression, and to flag students who may pose a violent risk not only to themselves, but to classmates as well. Any potential problems discovered trigger alerts to school administration, parents, and law enforcement officials, depending on the severity. Bark ran a test pilot of its program with 25 schools in fall 2017. Bark chief parent officer, Titania Jordan, says, "We found some pretty alarming issues, including a bombing and school shooting threat."

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School walk through the Florida state Capitol in Tallahassee. Schools are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-backed solutions to stop tragic acts of student violence such as the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a year ago. Bark Technologies, Gaggle.Net, and Securly Inc. are three companies that employ AI and machine learning to scan student emails, texts, documents, and in some cases, social media activity. They look for warning signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, depression, and to flag students who may pose a violent risk not only to themselves, but classmates. When potential problems are found, and depending on the severity, school administrators, parents -- and under the most extreme cases -- law enforcement officials, are alerted.