In watching a presentation about academic surveillance technologies, I was made aware of many cases and points that show the harm of AI software. Surveillance, as a whole, is used to show power and control which is not a healthy or productive environment for academic success. Proctoring students taking physical tests is an ordinary part of the exam format, but when online learning was taken up over recent years, especially since covid, this forced students to do their studies and tests online. The level and methods to which proctoring took place is where the concern lies. AI online tools were used to track virtually everything during an exam from mouse clicks and typing to eye and head trackers, sometimes even making you video the room you were taking the test in. This is immoral for a multitude of reasons: invasion of privacy, discrimination against disabled people and people of colour. The invasion of privacy is clear as you are required to film what is potentially your living space in order to have the opportunity to take an exam. When it comes to discrimination I can see how that’s not as obvious. Many differently abled people attend post-secondary institutions and may require additional aid. Screen readers are common practice for visual impaired individuals, and this software could be flagged as cheating by the AI. Another case is for students who are neurodivergent. These students can be flagged for head movement and eye movement that’s different from other students overall making it biased against students who are differently abled. There were also cases that were shown in the presentation about face recognition software not recognizing people of colour and specifically involving black people. In addition to the negative effects toward minorities, according to a study from the University of Twente in the Netherlands (which I won’t link to keep specific companies out of this post) the proctoring being used didn’t prevent any cheating. The only potential benefit of the software is that of a placebo in that it may work from students believing they’ll be caught but there is no true substance. I believe that with all the information presented that proctoring as a whole brings harm to marginalized groups and brings no additional assistance and therefore should not be used in online settings.