Iowa school district using AI to buy time in an active shooter situation
By Aaron Hegarty
Click here for updates on this story
WOODBINE, Iowa (KCCI) — No school can have eyes on every camera feed at once. But using artificial intelligence, Woodbine Community School District believes it has the next best thing to get a head start in responding to an active shooter situation.
“What we’re trying to do is buy time in an emergency,” said Justin Wagner, the superintendent of Woodbine Community School District.
An alert comes when a gun is brandished in front of a camera.
“This is the stuff that keeps us (superintendents) up at night,” Wagner said.
When the AI sees a gun, it’s sent to a command center at the company ZeroEyes. There, someone manning a computer will confirm it’s a gun. Then, the alarm is sent to school officials and nearby law enforcement with an exact location.
ZeroEyes says that happens in seconds.
“Very often, there’s minutes before they ever pull the trigger,” said Rob Huberty, the chief operation officer of ZeroEyes and a founder.
He says he’s doing this today because he grew up near Sandy Hook Elementary. He knows some of the first responders.
He said ZeroEyes is in hundreds of schools in 40 states, including some others in Nebraska and Iowa.
The AI is constantly trained by bringing different types of guns into a green screen room, which teaches the computers what a gun will look like.
In Woodbine, the superintendent says they’re not looking to keep up with the latest safety tech.
“No, we’re trying to lead it,” Wagner said. “On safety and security, we’re trying to absolutely lead it in schools. We believe ZeroEyes does that for us. We aren’t afforded the luxury of trying to keep up.”
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
