Kids will use AI everywhere except school? That’s what this policy actually produces, and it isn’t a neutral outcome.
They’ll use it at home tonight, on their phones, and in every job they’ll ever apply for.
School is the one place an adult could teach them to use it well.
Ban the companion chatbots. Ban the data mining. Write the strictest student privacy rules in the country. I’m with the Mayor on all of it.
But personalized learning isn’t a tech pitch. It’s one of the most replicated findings in education: kids learn faster when instruction moves at their pace instead of the middle of the room’s. For a century only families who could afford tutors got it. AI is the first thing that puts it within reach of everyone else.
A pause doesn’t protect the kids who are behind. It protects the gap.
New York should be leading here. Whoever gets this right — the privacy standard, the safeguards, the evidence — gets copied by every school system in the country. That should be NY.
Just because technology is everywhere doesn’t mean it belongs everywhere.
The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We don't see it that way.
This week, we announced a moratorium on all generative AI for public school students in 2K through 8th grade.
Because New Yorkers deserve to know that their kids will receive a high-quality education. They deserve to know that their children’s data won’t be mined by Big Tech. And they deserve to know that their children’s growth won’t be compromised for a corporation’s bottom line.