cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1377962/no-ai-until-high-school-nyc-schools-announce-major-classroom-technology-overhaul
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels today announced a moratorium on student-facing generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in schools, alongside a new screen time policy, a decision that will impact nearly 600,000 public school students, or two-thirds of the system’s total enrollment. The policy establishes a one-year moratorium, effective in the 2026-2027 school year, on student-facing generative AI for children in 2-K through 8th grade. It also introduces twice-yearly AI critical thinking modules for high schoolers, limited AI pilots for a small number of high school classrooms and age-appropriate screen time restrictions.
I have a feeling NYC school test scores will get a lot higher under Mamdani. Reports suggests more tech doesn’t mean better education. It just creates more distractions.
Not only because of this, but also their investment in early childhood education.
TBD. I’m no fan of AI or especially the companies. But every kid learns differently and our schools are not built for some kids’ learning styles. AI can customize for every single student.
I feel like the ones that could benefit most from AI teachers are the ones in these huge classroom where the teachers can’t give individual help. And AI would be perfect for these grades as the topics are much more basic and easier for AI to get right.
Anyway, I don’t think this’ll be a popular comment, but I also don’t think it’s wrong.
Expecting “individualized” education from a technology known for being abused in sloppy ways, for being non-deterministic to the point it’s producing NSFL content if it doesn’t have safeguards, and that hallucinates inaccurate information while being controlled by the most powerful sociopaths in the world then…
Yeah. That’s a reasonable expectation and not unsafe at all my dude. /s
Narrow minded
Can’t wait for the AI to confidently teach kids stuff like this.
Oh wait, that’s already happening
Close enough for US education.
What are these from? They’re terrible.
Oh you flew to Tijuana East? We’re at Tijuana West!
I can confidently say that if we had tablets or laptops in school before high school, we’d absolutely fuck off with them and mess around. Even back then when we’d go to the computer lab, a lot of people would just fuck around rather than play Type to Learn lol
Not sure what your point is as my comment is about students and learning from AI. Not about tablets and laptops.
And how do you think AI is interacted with? On what device?
Gotcha so you’re not disagreeing with any of the points I actually made about how AI can help individualize learning. Just that kids shouldn’t be on computers or tablets in school.
Well, I don’t have anything to say about that as my kid has a chromebook and outside or using it for certain homework assignments, I don’t think he uses it to learn. If he had some AI software on there designed for him to learn, I bet he’d get much more use out of it.
“… every kid learns differently…” ai not help this. If need 1:1 ai no good. Use internet search self learn.
If internet searching and self learning matches you learning style, great for you.
Personally, I have used AI for many development projects and have learned way more than I was ever able to by googling. Many times I’d take answers from stack exchange and ask AI wtf it meant and it would break it down in a way I could understand.
Now apply this to middle school math and a student that just doesn’t learn math like other kids.
And you sound like an adult who has already learned how to do development. AI in schools makes kids lazy. Imagine if you had an application that answered every question for you, sometimes right and many times incorrect, I would be willing to bet you would not have learned how to do development. I think you are talking about teachers using AI to develop curriculum, which is a great use, just like how you use it for dev.
There’s a difference between handing kids chat gpt and telling them to learn and giving them ai tools designed around teaching children specific topics.
My kid has to do math problems on a website each week. When he doesn’t understand the problem he can click a help button that breaks the problem down for him. When he doesn’t understand that, he’ll ask his teacher who doesn’t have time to break things down even further for him or loses patience with him when he still doesn’t get it. So he goes on without understanding. A built in AI could easily figure out what it is he doesn’t understand and then teach him that and work back to the problem he’s working on.
I think the “wait a year” approach is probably a good one to ensure they are giving the kids the right kind of AI. But a blanket “AI bad” statement I disagree with. I think kids that have access to these kinds of tools will end up better off than those without.
I’m open to this possibility, but a 1 year moratorium while more research on this potential - and how to appropriately execute any use of it if it shows promise - is prudent imo.
I recently attended a parents night at my daughter’s school where one of the teachers laid out the schools new AI policy and guidelines which were the result of at least a year of research. My favorite slide was the don’t and do of AI under the new policy.
Don’t: Use AI
Do: Not use AI
This school also generally limits the usage of technology. They do have laptops on hand, but they come out only for very specific subjects such as coding or robotics classes, both of which are optional classes.
This is right in line with my thinking. You don’t teach math to a second grader by handing them a graphing calculator. You need to learn to do things manually first before you start letting the machines do it for you so you understand it
No, make it though high school, that’s just as important.
The problem is “AI” is a very broad term, and programs that fall under that term could start showing up in highschool curriculum. This allows highschools to teach nuance about the subject.
Why not at hs as well?
I doubt you can stop a high schooler from using AI if they wanted to.
I mean you can do something’s like not allowing it’s use on campus.
I guess I’m seeing it as just a critical period of mental development as the years before. Its probably the thing that has me the most worried about the whole thing is the drop in any kind of thinking skills among the general population.
I agree with you. Was just playing advocate. I do think if they ban it from HS that will impact kids way of using it, in a good way.
:100:
I just see no way in which the injection of AI into an already crumbling education results in anything resembling “good outcomes”.
You gotta learn to think. It takes time and effort and dedicated practice. And you need space, time and an environment for that.
As bad as this is for grown adults, it seems orders of magnitude worse for kids/ young adults.
has me the most worried about the whole thing is the drop in any kind of thinking skills among the general population.
Sounds like the general population would need to use more AI.
Thats the rub aint it.
They steal it from you then sell back a cheap imitation.
As problematic as AI is, these students are going to live in a world where it exists. I would much rather live around people who were taught how to use it well and as a tool to aid thinking and understanding rather than a total replacement to thinking. I’m sure it will take years of refining how we teach high schoolers to live around it to get good results, but we have to start somewhere.
Nah, I disagree. Let’s stop normalizing this “AI is here to stay, embrace it or get left behind” rhetoric. That argument only serves the people pushing the technology.
We don’t need AI, and I haven’t seen a compelling argument for supporting it yet. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner this bubble pops, the better.
It’s already pretty integrated in a lot of white collar work.
Honestly? For some tasks it really does seem useful. My wife is in middle management of a tech company in a non tech role. She doesn’t really have much programming experience aside from HTML. She is encouraged to use AI for generating small SQL scripts and such in situations the company would never have, and never did, give dev time for. And certainly they aren’t going to train every middle manager in SQL. They were just manually completed tasks before that took everyone more time as employees had to manually send over certain data every day.
Which, agree with that use or not, that AI use is already pretty integrated into the corporate world on such a basic workflow level, not flashy stuff like creating an app or something, tells me it’s really unlikely it’s going to go away. I think the hype will die down and we’ll see less of the flashy use being pushed by upper management, but that kind of unsexy use by the rank and file? Can’t see why that will go away.
I don’t think the two things are compatible.
They’re not compatible, under the current paradigms. You’re not wrong, imo.
But neither is the commenter you’re replying to.
It ain’t going away, and as it is (in every respect from function to marketing to access) ‘AI’ is currently absolutely poisonous for mental development, no matter the age.
But that’s not inherently married to the way it will always be used.
Imo, the ban should be in place all the way in K-12, for no less than 5 years, and some resources devoted to enable school districts to engage the necessary mechanisms to assess how to marry the use of AI technology into educational use, with an actual thorough process in place to assess how and if it can be done in a manner beneficial to educational goals.
It’s not enough to have a techbro declare it the best thing in the world for learning, a child development psychologist declare it the worst thing to exist, and an education expert sitting between them looking anguished.
They need to all be locked in the same room, metaphorically speaking, and honestly arrive at a form that is meaningfully impactful to student outcomes (if one can be found), before it’s something that schools should attempt to use within the curriculum.
Is that a lake america laptop he’s sitting behind?