AllHere's Chatbot 'Ed' Fails and Costs Los Angeles Unified School District $6 Million
July 1, 2024
The Los Angeles Unified School District invested up to $6 million in developing the AI chatbot "Ed," meant to provide academic and mental health support for students. The chatbot allegedly failed to meet expectations, and the project collapsed when AllHere, the contracted start-up, faced financial difficulties. Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland was also affected. Founder Joanna Smith-Griffin was removed as CEO in June 2024 and later arrested on fraud charges.
- Alleged deployer
- los-angeles-unified-school-district-(lausd), allhere, alberto-carvalho
- Alleged developer
- allhere
- Alleged harmed parties
- taxpayers, prince-george's-county-students, prince-george's-county-public-schools, prince-george's-county-parents, los-angeles-unified-school-district-(lausd), los-angeles-students, los-angeles-parents
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/793
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.