Backroads

Before reading the friendly article, I figured this was probably a testing failure — as in a lack of testing. If the AI creates the model it should also have a way to test the model. You can do a base-level evaluation by having it validate the previous system and also include a fail model to see if it’s passing everything.
The other testing failure is running the buses on the route and using that feedback. I lived in one place where you would see the buses running a week or two before school started. I lived in another place where you didn’t see a bus until the first day of school.
I read the article, and the district seems confident that the new routes will work. They only tried the routes two days before school started. Either concerns weren’t raised or they were ignored. Might as well add that as another point of failure. Also, other articles may have mentioned AI, but this article only mentions algorithms (which is a really weak AI under some definitions).
I suspect that the reason the superintendent didn’t throw the tech company under the bus because it delivered on exactly what was asked — something like bus routes run only once (previous routes used multiple trips with late batches) with the number of drivers they currently have.

I confess to watching this movie with my young adult daughters and wife. I even wore pink shorts and a blue pullover shirt (I probably looked more like Ken's dad than the man himself). Sure, the movie could be viewed as liberal extreme feminism. However, I suspect that there was a lot of intentional stereotyping going on. Most of the key players were more caricatures than serious representations. With that mindset, the movie was fun and funny. The political commentary might have been an ocean wide, but it was not even an inch deep. 

I watched the entire thing and although I do not agree with everything he says, I felt he made some valid points.
 

It's kind of been a fun disaster to follow
Very geographically large school district doesn't have enough bus drivers. Hires a company who uses AI to create routes. Disaster ensues. School indefinitely cancelled.
My take: I get the desire to create efficiency on fewer bus drivers, but sometimes what you best need is pure manpower (bus power?)

The issue is that for decades now American society has pushed "college is for winners, everything else means you failed" on a large scale. 
As a result, we have a dire shortage of many skilled trades, including heavy vehicle operators. It takes time and money to train someone to operate a school bus or similar vehicle as you have to have certain permits to operate them, and since school boards often don't have the money to train they have to dip into the scarce pool of people who do already have these licenses... people who have probably already been courted by trucking companies and metro bus groups. 

Finding grace. Why, that's just like a tumbleweed.

I told it to tell me about Alma the Younger in cowboy poetry from:
 
Alma's Redemption: Co
  ChatGPT In the land of Zarahemla, a tale unfolds, Of Alma the Younger, a story oft retold. A wild and wayward soul, he once did roam, Like a lone cowboy, far from his home.
With rebellious spirit and heart led astray, He trod a path of darkness, night and day. But a voice from above, like a lonesome breeze, Called him to truth, his heart to appease.
As a thundering stallion, his conversion did come, Breaking his pride, like a bucking bronco run. From a life of sin, he turned his gaze, Finding redemption in unexpected ways.
Like a tumbleweed carried by the wind, Alma found grace, his soul to rescind. With courage renewed, he preached the word, A shepherd to lost souls, his voice was heard.
Through the wilderness of doubt and despair, He rode on the range, spreading a prayer. With the Savior's love, like a campfire's light, Alma's story shone, in the darkest of night.
So remember Alma, the cowboy divine, His journey of faith, like a winding vine. A prodigal son turned preacher so bold, In the annals of time, his story is told.
   

I told it to tell me about Alma the Younger in cowboy poetry from:
 
Alma's Redemption: Co
  ChatGPT In the land of Zarahemla, a tale unfolds, Of Alma the Younger, a story oft retold. A wild and wayward soul, he once did roam, Like a lone cowboy, far from his home.
With rebellious spirit and heart led astray, He trod a path of darkness, night and day. But a voice from above, like a lonesome breeze, Called him to truth, his heart to appease.
As a thundering stallion, his conversion did come, Breaking his pride, like a bucking bronco run. From a life of sin, he turned his gaze, Finding redemption in unexpected ways.
Like a tumbleweed carried by the wind, Alma found grace, his soul to rescind. With courage renewed, he preached the word, A shepherd to lost souls, his voice was heard.
Through the wilderness of doubt and despair, He rode on the range, spreading a prayer. With the Savior's love, like a campfire's light, Alma's story shone, in the darkest of night.
So remember Alma, the cowboy divine, His journey of faith, like a winding vine. A prodigal son turned preacher so bold, In the annals of time, his story is told.
   

It's not Baxter Black, but it's also not half bad. 

I find the story- and essay-writing features of ChatGPT interesting. Quite formulaic, but within the rather narrow bounds they prescribe, pretty versatile. Not exactly well done, but I'd say better than the average high school junior (not a high bar, I realize).

Thinking is the issue. Think: I think the problem is that folks think that computers can think. Our common language usage encourages and exacerbates this misconception. People don't understand what AI is. You have highly educated fools like the Google employee (I think?), issuing dire warnings that an AI has "achieved consciousness" or some such absurdity. What a situation we'll be in when our elected decision-makers start turning over crucial decisions to AI algorithms. It is probably already happening; the bus snafu described by @Backroads is one such example.

Yeah, it's not enough to know the roads - you have to know the traffic patterns, how the lights work, how the drivers behave, etc.  It doesn't take that long to learn all that - if you're driving 8+ hours a day all over the whole city, but folks these days think computers can do everything.

I heard in the teacher internet realm from those in the area that the bus driving jobs don't pay as well as other available jobs of similar skill level, and the retired folks who are driving bus because they're bored don't want to deal with the chaos of the kids. Multi-pronged.
I don't know what the unemployment is pay is like there, but at the same time if you're trying to hire, you sometimes have to compete for employees.

I've seen a few complaints that say "the system has never driven around here!"

It's kind of been a fun disaster to follow
Very geographically large school district doesn't have enough bus drivers. Hires a company who uses AI to create routes. Disaster ensues. School indefinitely cancelled.
My take: I get the desire to create efficiency on fewer bus drivers, but sometimes what you best need is pure manpower (bus power?)

Consider the chuckles endless, from just about everybody, on that one.
Wendover is on the Nevada border, half the town exists in Utah, half in Nevada.   If you live in SLC (no matter how you define it), and you want to legally gamble, Wendover is your shortest drive to casinos and sin.  
My father was a massive gambler, and "family vacations" to Wendover happened at least 3-4 times a year as I grew up.   This was his escape from being surrounded by mormons, a critical and regular need for him.

 
This was pretty much a holy pilgrimage when I was a kid.  Across the Utah Salt Flats, home of the land-speed world record.  As they improved I-80 to 2 lanes in both directions, I learned to drive at 14 on the old abandoned I-80 road, now a frontage road, sometimes 2 inches underwater, depending on what the Great Salt Lake was doing. 
President Carter's 55MPH national speed limit was a frequent source of swearing.  Then the evil republicans and Newt Gengrich made it 65, and life was better.  I think the record was 98 minutes, on the tour busses.  To get from SLC to wendover on a tour bus for free, you just had to show up, and prove you had $200 in cash on you.  They gave you round trip travel, and several coupon books for free drinks and cheap food and whatnot.  They initially let minors like me ride with an adult, until someone got mad and they passed a law.
My dad would drop $20 in quarters on me, and I'd go spend the day at the arcade.  In the '70's, casinos had not discovered children yet, so I'd be on the Utah side at Ivan's Fun Palace: Pinball and pool until they invented Space Invaders and Donkey Kong.  I'd walk from the Utah side of Wendover, across to the NV side.  It really was like the air and sun felt different.   Immigrants and poverty and the abandoned air force base on one side, then you take one step west, and it's all glitter and lights and raucous loud laughter and alcohol.  Then in the early '80's, the US discovered how much $$ kids are worth, and all the casinos finally developed "family centers", and I had an arcade in every casino.
I spent hours sitting on bar stools at the entrance to the casinos, watching my dad play craps.   I got good at looking sad, and cocktail waitresses would take pity on me and bring me a Coke.  It didn't dawn on me until my mid-'20's why that worked, but the story has been getting consistently funnier ever since. 
Yeah, Wendover and SLC have much to do with each other, but I doubt you could find a single human who thinks Wendover is a part of SLC, "Combined Statistical Area" notwithstanding.

I just love when the computer tells them something and they ask it to verify / re-check what it just said, without any further input - as if a computer could come up with a different answer without further input.
Meanwhile, as to the school buses...  I agree, this seems like an "easy button" problem.  As a former driver and dispatcher, it's not that hard to plan routes, assuming you have all the data you need and know the city.  I wonder why it's so hard for them to hire enough bus drivers.  Perhaps the feds are paying too many people not to work.  I would consider being a bus driver (I did that in Moscow, Russia, after all), but only if there were another adult on the bus whose job it was to watch after the children - you can't do that and drive - and I'll bet they can't afford that, either.

I think this fiasco can be laid at the doorstep of the willingness of decision-makers to hit the Easy Button by putting the onus on a magical computer algorithm that they manifestly do not understand. This is Star Trek thinking. "Well, the computer was supposed to blah blah blah! Why didn't it work?!"
The threat is not that computers will do our thinking for us. The real threat is that, so often, we WANT the computers to do our thinking for us.
The irony about ChatGPT is that it's a computer, yet is really very bad at math. Very bad. Like, couldn't pass a basic math class past, say, arithmetic. (And maybe not that, if you're adding five-digit numbers.) ChatGPT is a language model, and responds to questions by trying to match linguistic patterns. Not really what you want with math or science.

It's kind of been a fun disaster to follow
Very geographically large school district doesn't have enough bus drivers. Hires a company who uses AI to create routes. Disaster ensues. School indefinitely cancelled.
My take: I get the desire to create efficiency on fewer bus drivers, but sometimes what you best need is pure manpower (bus power?)

It's kind of been a fun disaster to follow
Very geographically large school district doesn't have enough bus drivers. Hires a company who uses AI to create routes. Disaster ensues. School indefinitely cancelled.
My take: I get the desire to create efficiency on fewer bus drivers, but sometimes what you best need is pure manpower (bus power?)

I finally signed up for it yesterday. I used it to write some back-to-school documents. And a full-on Dungeons & Dragons campaign. You have inspired me to reach for the stars.

@mikbone got up this morning and said to himself, "Self, what off-the-wall topic can I post on TH that will be sure to bring a reaction from Vort?" He quickly settled on circumcision.
Well, I'm not playing your game. So there. Nyah nyah nyah. This post doesn't count, since it's just a recognition that I refuse to recognize this topic. But I fully recognize your nefarious intent behind it. You Can't Fool Me.
(And since this post doesn't count, I will divulge that I lied to myself and was swayed by familial peer pressure, self-deception, foolishness, and idiocy into allowing my oldest son to be circumcised, a decision that I would literally give all my money away for if I could go back in time and disallow that. Only my first, though. My other sons were left intact.)

Today...right now...I am reminded of how grateful I should be to be the father of daughters. 😉

I've been coming up with wilder and wilder suggestions for ChatGPT exercises, and have been constantly amazed: LIke
Please write a story which is a combination of Pride and Prejudice and War of the Worlds
Thanks! Now write me a version in which Mr. Darcy is a part-lizard alien from the planet Zog, and Elizabeth is a cave-woman brought from the distant past by a time machine invented by Mr. Bennet.
OK, now please write a story combining Pride and Prejudice, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (a version in which Augustus Gloop is the hero) and Treasure Island, which features the Brady Bunch, Noddy and Ego the Living Planet.
Is there nothing beyond the power of this algorithm? (Admittedly it took progressively longer to write each story.)

Educator here from Colorado, and we just finished our annual Mandatory Reporter training. According to that, at least within Colorado, we are mandatory reporters at all time, and under an obligation to report suspected abuse even for things outside of work. In fact, we could technically receive a misdemeanor charge if it was discovered that we had reasonable cause to suspect abuse and fail to report it no matter where or when we witness it.