’SMART EYE’ WATCHES FOR DISTRACTED STUDENTS

A school in China has installed facial recognition technology to monitor how attentive students are in class. Every movement of pupils at Hangzhou Number 11 High School in eastern China is watched by three cameras positioned above the blackboard. The ‘smart eye’ works by identifying different facial expressions from the students, and that information is then fed into a computer which assesses if they are enjoying lessons or if their minds are wandering. The computer can pick up emotions, including neutral, happy, sad and disappointed. If it concludes that the student is distracted, it will send a notification to the teacher to take action. Human rights groups fear that authorities are using the data to keep track of citizens and crack down on dissent.