Above is a video of the forum held on Dec. 6, with panelists including Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, students, teachers, parents, and professionals from a variety of fields. They explained the risks of AI, to student privacy, cognitive development, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and emotional wellbeing, as well as to the local and global environment.
Now we have posted a petition, urging Mayor-elect Mamdani, a to support a two-year moratorium on AI use in NYC public schools. This moratorium would allow the DOE to establish rigorous processes for responsibly assessing the risks and impacts of AI, before introducing these programs in classrooms and schools. If you agree, please sign our petition now! Also see this AI Toolkit, with links to resolutions for CECs, posted by Parents for AI Caution.
· AI undermines children’s ability to learn. AI use in schools has a negative impact on students’ cognitive skills, critical thinking, and creativity. It undermines the relationship between teachers and students, which is at the center of how students learn. The RAND Corporation’s report on AI in K-12 contexts finds no teaching and learning gains from AI use. In fact, there is increasing evidence that AI use in educational contexts rewires your brain. An MIT team found a significant decrease in brain activity among students asked to write an essay using AI. Research suggests that students do worse when "taught" by AI instead of human teachers. There is also racial, ethnic, and gender bias built into AI models, which influences the feedback students are given and the material they are exposed to. Finally, there is increasing evidence of the mental health toll of AI: children have formed “romantic relationships” with chatbots, and several tech companies are being sued because their platforms coached children into dying by suicide.
· AI invades our students’ privacy and puts them at risk of surveillance. AI use in schools undermines student privacy, as most AI-enabled programs data-mine, meaning they collect and process personal information for commercial purposes and product improvement, which violates the New York student privacy law Ed Law 2D. Currently, parents have no means of knowing how their children’s sensitive biometric data is being used by AI companies like Amira, which collects student voices. The State Education Department has issued guidance that schools should not allow the collection of biometric data without parent input, but Amira is widely used without any such input.
· AI undermines a “Green and Healthy Schools” agenda and our city’s climate goals. AI is driving fossil fuel expansion and thus fueling climate collapse; MIT researchers estimate that “by 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers will rival that of whole countries like Japan or Russia.” AI data centers are also consuming our drinking water at a moment when climate change is leading to more frequent droughts. NYC children, particularly students of color, unhoused students, and low-income students, already face harms from fossil fuels, including air pollution, flooding, and extreme heat. All of these negatively impact their ability to thrive and learn. If large consumers like NYC public schools continue to fuel AI data center growth, our children will face more catastrophic disasters, famine and mass displacement.
· AI use in schools undermines an affordability and worker-first agenda. Data center expansion is driving up electricity prices for working New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the funds used for expensive contracts for ed-tech could instead be used to expand universal childcare, reduce class sizes, upgrade aging school buildings, or otherwise benefit students, educators and families.
An AI moratorium should be a top priority for the Mamdani administration in the first 100 days. The largest school system in the country should use its purchasing power and moral authority to protect children, not leave them subject to a surveillance experiment that will undermine learning and leave them a world on fire. There is overwhelming support for a moratorium from across the political spectrum: CECs are already passing resolutions supporting an AI moratorium, and parents and teachers have repeatedly made their voices heard against AI contracts at PEP meetings. The ban on cellphones in schools has been an overwhelming success—but it came ten years too late. Let’s not make the same mistake with AI.
Signed by:
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
Alliance for Quality Education
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
Class Size Matters
The Circle Keepers
NYC Kids PAC
Zephyr Teachout, Law Professor, Fordham Law School
Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, PhD, Assoc.Professor Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Pres. CEC4
Liat Olenick MSEd, Climate Families NYC
Martina Meijer, MORE-UFT
Kelly Clancy, PhD, CEC-20, Parents for AI Caution
Oscar Romero, Educator
Kyle DeAngelis, 3rd Grade Teacher, UFT Chapter Leader, MORE-UFT
Alina Lewis, PhD, CEC-20, President of the Brooklyn School of Inquiry PTO
Mustafa Sullivan, Coalition for Educational Justice
Lauren Monaco, Early Childhood Educator, UFT Chapter Leader, MORE-UFT
1 comment:
As an educator and active advocate for equity in tech I find this moratorium extremely concerning. The data/research is valid, but the conclusion is not. How can we as educators prepare students for the AI revolution they are actively growing up in if its banned? Rather than ban AI, we need to TEACH students how they can use it, how to think critically about the sources, the implications, the prompts to yield more reliable responses and results. AI should NEVER BE "THE TEACHER," but instead a resource that students need to evaluate like they do websites for credibility. We have been here before with the internet. We are extremely far behind our counterparts world wide when it comes to preparing our students for THEIR FURTURES. It is no longer the same workforce they will be graduating into. "21st century skills" referred to in the standards are a joke compared to the tech skills these kids will need to be successful post k-12 education. I fear our students are ill prepared to compete with their counterparts worldwide, considering so so many countries have adopted CS education for k-12 as a core content area for years, acknowledging that it is a subject that is critical to their long term/future success as much as math and reading. In NYC public schools the MAJORITY of students do not take computer science AT ALL in their K-12 education. How can we claim to be preparing students for their futures when so so many of them don't know how to use technology beyond gaming or shopping? By banning AI our students will be ignorant to the pitfalls, the privacy concerns, the data biases, to all of it - instead we need to cultivate their criticality - otherwise we are setting them up for failure. Do we really think because it is banned in schools means they will not use it on their personal devices/accounts? No, they will. Only, if this passes they will be using it without the skillset necessary to ensure they will not be victims.
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