The Pulse
Multiverse Teachers Say AI Monitoring Is Causing ‘Horrendous Stress’
Instructors at Euan Blair’s training company Multiverse say AI monitoring of online lessons leaves them anxious and constantly watched. The company says the system flags sessions for human review and that only managers write performance rev
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
AI scoring meets teachers’ accounts of stress
Multiverse says its AI monitoring system directs managers’ attention to sessions that may need review. Instructors at the apprenticeship training company tell The Guardian that the system instead leaves them feeling watched throughout the working day, anxious about how they teach and, in some cases, unable to sleep.
The system analyzes transcripts of online classes and flags suspected problems for human managers. It can mark issues such as taking too long to resolve a connection disruption, using repeated filler phrases, giving vague answers or appearing confused while explaining a task. One teacher told The Guardian: “Since all of this has come in, the stress level has been absolutely horrendous.”
The disagreement is over what the scores mean in practice. Multiverse describes the tool as support for learner experience and staff development; teachers say its judgments can prompt managers to challenge them over apparent digressions that were actually responses to learners’ questions.
From monthly observation to hours of transcript review
Before the system’s introduction, a human manager observed instructors monthly. Teachers now say AI analyzes several hours of their teaching each day, including whether learners go quiet after being asked to contribute or whether an instructor spends too long in a one-to-one exchange while the rest of the group waits.
The agent also assesses whether instructors seem to know their teaching material. Its guidance tells it to judge patterns across a transcript rather than treating one or two filler words as a failure. But it can still count persistent hedging or self-correction against a teacher, including when an unclear instruction is eventually corrected.
Instructors said the monitoring changes what they focus on during class. “Your attention is no longer delivering [the lesson] and listening to the learner [but] am I saying the right thing so the AI doesn’t mark me down for something stupid that I’ve mistakenly said,” one teacher told The Guardian.
Multiverse says people still make the consequential decisions
Multiverse’s spokesperson said the system does not replace human judgment and that only human managers write performance reviews. The company said its agent’s most consequential action is recommending that a person review a session; it also said the rollout was communicated in advance and that instructors would be able to access the collected data.
That assurance does not resolve the teachers’ concerns about accuracy or access. One instructor said managers had questioned them over alleged digressions that, in their view, came from adapting a lesson to a learner’s needs. The Guardian also reported that the dashboard initially showed managers the AI’s assessments while instructors were told they would receive access later.
Workers’ concerns reach beyond one training company
The dispute comes as employers use AI to assess and track worker behavior in other settings. The Guardian’s report cites Burger King’s use of AI to monitor restaurant workers’ customer interactions and Meta’s pause of employee keystroke tracking amid privacy concerns and staff backlash.
John Chadfield, national tech officer at the Communication Workers Union, criticized the use of what he called “deeply intrusive surveillance on workers” and called for rules governing workplace AI. At Multiverse, the immediate question is how managers use the system’s flags—and whether instructors can see and challenge the judgments shaping those conversations.