A Florida middle school went into a full code red lockdown this week after an AI weapon detection system wrongly identified a student’s clarinet as a gun. A musical instrument caused a complete security response at Lawton Chiles Middle School in Oviedo, raising serious questions about how accurate and reliable these expensive AI systems really are.
When the automated system saw the student carrying the clarinet and thought it was a gun, the campus immediately started its code red safety procedures. School administrators and police rushed to the scene, only to find out the supposed threat was just a regular woodwind instrument from band class.
According to TechSpot, Principal Melissa Laudani quickly sent a message to parents explaining that while the incident triggered safety protocols, there was no real threat to the campus. She also asked parents to talk to their students about the dangers of pretending to have a weapon on school grounds, which seems odd when the student was simply carrying their band equipment.
The expensive system still made a costly mistake
The school district, Seminole County Public Schools, uses the ZeroEyes threat detection platform. This technology is not cheap. Public records show the district pays $250,000 for the subscription service, which is marketed as a cloud-based gun detection system. ZeroEyes is a Pennsylvania-based company that operates in 43 states, working with existing security cameras and using computer vision algorithms trained on images of over 100 types of firearms…