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00:00The red is showing that your support is very high.
00:04Teachers at this primary school in China
00:08know exactly when someone isn't paying attention.
00:15These headbands measure each student's level of concentration.
00:19The information is then directly sent to the teacher's computer and to parents.
00:25China has big plans to become a global leader in artificial intelligence.
00:30It has enabled a cashless economy where people make purchases with their faces.
00:36A giant network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition helps police monitor citizens.
00:42Meanwhile, some schools offer glimpses of what the future of high-tech education in the country might look like.
00:52Classrooms have robots that analyze students' health and engagement levels.
00:56Students wear uniforms with chips that track their locations.
01:00There are even surveillance cameras that monitor how often students check their phones or yawn during classes.
01:06These gadgets have alarmed Chinese netizens.
01:10But schools say it wasn't hard for them getting parental consent to enroll kids into what is one of the world's largest experiments in AI education.
01:22A program that's supposed to boost students' grades while also feeding powerful algorithms.
01:28The government has poured billions of dollars into the project, bringing together tech giants, start-ups, and schools.
01:42We got exclusive access to a primary school a few hours outside of Shanghai.
01:49To see first-hand how AI tech is being used in the classroom.
01:58For this fifth-grade class, the day begins with putting on a brain-wave sensing gadget.
02:05Students then practice meditating.
02:07The device is made in China and has three electrodes, two behind the ears and one on the forehead.
02:20These sensors pick up electrical signals sent by neurons in the brain.
02:24The neural data is then sent in real-time to the teacher's computer.
02:28So while students are solving math problems, a teacher can quickly find out who's paying attention and who's not.
02:37A report is then generated that shows how well the class was paying attention.
02:42It even details each student's concentration level at 10-minute intervals.
02:47It's then sent to a chat group for parents.
02:54The reports are detailed, but whether these devices really work and what they exactly measure isn't as clear.
03:04We were curious if the headbands could actually measure concentration, so one of our reporters tried on the device.
03:10This is a new technology with still fairly little research behind it.
03:21Theodore Zanto is a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.
03:26He was surprised to learn that this tech called electroencephalography, also known as EEG,
03:32is being used in the classroom on children.
03:35It's usually used by doctors in hospitals and labs.
03:37EEG is very susceptible to artifacts.
03:40And so if you are itchy or just a little fidgety, or the EEG wasn't set up properly so that the electrodes didn't have a good contact, affects the signal.
03:52Despite the chances for false readings, teachers told us the headbands have forced students to become more disciplined.
03:59teachers say the students now pay better attention during class, and that has made them study harder and achieve higher scores.
04:13teachers say the students now give higher scores.
04:14I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure they're doing this.
04:15I'm sure they're doing this.
04:16But not all students are as enthusiastic.
04:17But not all students are as enthusiastic.
04:23This fifth grader, whom he caught dozing off in class, told us his parents punish him for low attention scores.
04:39And that kind of data adds a new kind of pressure for students.
04:42Companies we interviewed said the data can go to government-funded research projects.
04:58We spoke to parents who were unclear about where the data ended up, and they didn't seem to care too much.
05:03Santos says there's likely no privacy protection at all.
05:08In a classroom, if you're trying to make an assessment of an individual student, you really can't anonymize it.
05:16Experts and citizens alike are sounding alarms about various aspects of the country's huge push into artificial intelligence.
05:24These classrooms are laboratories for future generations.
05:27And while these new tools may potentially help some 200 million students raise their grades, just how this all works out won't be apparent until they become adult citizens.