Incident 793: AllHere's Chatbot 'Ed' Fails and Costs Los Angeles Unified School District $6 Million

Description: 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.
Editor Notes: Reconstructing the reported timeline of events for this incident: (1) 2016: AllHere is founded by Joanna Smith-Griffin to help schools address chronic absenteeism through automated text messaging. (2) 2020: AllHere acquires technology developed by economist Peter Bergman, enabling "nudges" to parents via text messages. (3) 2021: AllHere expands its marketing, claiming to serve 9,100 schools across 36 states, and shifts focus toward "A.I.-powered intuitive chatbots." (4) June 20, 2023: AllHere signs a $6 million dollar contract with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to develop the Ed chatbot for student academic and mental health support. (5) Mid-April 2024: LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho promotes Ed at a major tech conference, describing it as a transformative A.I. platform. (6) June 14, 2024: AllHere announces furloughs for most employees, citing financial difficulties. (7) June 18, 2024: Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland is informed that AllHere can no longer provide its services. (8) July 2024: AllHere files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidating its assets. (9) November 19, 2024: Joanna Smith-Griffin is arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud related to false claims made to investors and school districts.

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
793
Report Count
5
Incident Date
2024-07-01
Editors
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

Risk Domain

  1. Malicious Actors & Misuse

Entity

Human

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Intentional

A.I. ‘Friend’ for Public School Students Falls Flat
nytimes.com · 2024

An A.I. platform named Ed was supposed to be an "educational friend" to half a million students in Los Angeles public schools. In typed chats, Ed would direct students toward academic and mental health resources, or tell parents whether the…

LAUSD shelves its hyped AI chatbot to help students after collapse of firm that made it
latimes.com · 2024

A much vaunted AI chatbot --- custom designed to help students thrive academically and parents navigate the complexities of Los Angeles public schools --- has been turned off after the company that created it furloughed "the vast majority" …

CEO Of Artificial Intelligence Startup Company Charged With Defrauding Investors
justice.gov · 2024

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and James E. Dennehy, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), announced today the unsea…

Start-Up Founder Who Sold A.I. Chatbot to Schools Is Charged With Fraud
nytimes.com · 2024

The founder of an artificial intelligence start-up focused on education was arrested and charged with defrauding her investors, lying about the company's profits and falsely claiming that some of the largest school districts in the country,…

Founder of AI education chatbot charged with defrauding investors of $10 million
usatoday.com · 2024

The founder of an artificial intelligence startup, promoted to strengthen communication between school districts and families, has been arrested on charges of defrauding investors.

Joanna Smith-Griffin, the founder and CEO of AllHere Educat…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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