Ynet: AI is draining school budgets

Schools adding artificial intelligence tools are finding the real price often runs well past the sticker price vendors advertise. (ynetnews.com) Ynetnews reported on April 27 that token charges, system maintenance, hardware and integration work can turn a promised savings tool into a recurring budget line. (ynetnews.com) The article ties that warning to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on computer-vision work, a branch of artificial intelligence that lets software classify images and video. (ynetnews.com) (futuretech.mit.edu) MIT researchers examined about 1,000 visually assisted tasks across roughly 800 occupations and found only 23% of wages tied to those tasks were economical to automate at current costs. (futuretech.mit.edu) (ide.mit.edu) The same research found just 3% of the tasks studied were cost-effective to automate today, even before schools layer on training, support and procurement overhead. (ide.mit.edu) (ynetnews.com)) For school systems, that means an artificial intelligence chatbot or grading assistant is not a one-time software buy. It behaves more like a utility bill that rises with usage. (ynetnews.com) MIT said the economics could shift if costs fall quickly or if artificial intelligence is delivered through larger shared platforms that spread expenses across many customers. (futuretech.mit.edu) (computerworld.com) That leaves schools with a narrower question than the hype suggests: not whether artificial intelligence can do a task, but whether it can do it cheaply enough to beat the full cost of people, software and infrastructure. (ynetnews.com) (ide.mit.edu)