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.
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.