A U.S. charity in Gaza is worried that teachers at its schools might stray from a curriculum it says promotes peace and tolerance, so it plans to record classroom conversations and use artificial intelligence to flag speech deemed “hateful” or “inciting.”
There is no indication the charity intends to share its classrooms’ recordings with anybody else, but fears about the potential misuse of surveillance technology are heightened in Gaza after three years of war. The Israeli military has used AI to sift through intercepted communications and find suspicious speech, including to identify targets for strikes.
The charity has raised money largely from individual donors, including American Jews, and says it’s partnering with North American, Israeli and European aid organizations and hospitals. Its schools, called Academies of Hope, provide meals and medical and psychological care. The first school opened last summer.
There is something particularly insidious about bombing the shit out of people, locking down their access to food, medicine and medical care, and generally isolating them from the outside world while silencing classrooms from talking about all the hateful, genocidal shit the Israelis have done…. because it might incite violence.