Craig Garrett on the need for human-centered schools rather than learning based upon AI.

 Craig Garrett is a parent leader in District 14 whose group, District 14 Families for Human Learning, has just created a new website here.  You can sign up for more info at the website.  Below are the comments that he delivered at the D14 CEC meeting last month.  If you agree, please sign our petition for a moratorium on the use of AI in schools here.

    Last night I delivered the following remarks at the end of District 14's CEC meeting, a few minutes after Superintendent Cintron glowingly described his forthcoming "AI vision statement". The first half of the meeting was spent prioritizing urgent funding requests from individual schools (a process one CEC member referred to as "the hunger games"). Mostly of those requests were about fixing problems like inoperable bathrooms and broken PA systems. It really underlined the absurdity of signing multimillion-dollar contracts for unproven ed-tech while our schools can't afford functioning bathrooms. 

    Let's all cast our minds back one year, to early January 2025. At Coney Island, long-shot mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was doing the Polar Bear Plunge in a suit and tie. At movie theaters across the country, kids were flocking to see Moana 2. And from every direction, we were hearing about a revolutionary new technology that was about to transform our lives.

 Back then, the tech industry's story about artificial intelligence was thrilling, provocative, and told entirely in the future tense. Business leaders and elected officials rushed to incorporate AI into their operations. There was a sense of urgency, an eagerness to get on board this magic technology that would solve our most stubborn problems and transport us to a brilliant future.

    Well, I'm here with a message from the present. The  flourishing we were promised has not arrived. We're waking up to the fact that this technology is NOT being developed to extend human capacity or expand human knowledge — because those are not the tech industry's priorities. In 2025 we saw the leading AI companies drop their commitments to democracy and equality,  dismantle their safeguards and moderation, and aggressively fight off any form of regulation, no matter how sensible.

    And unlike in January 2025, we now have real-world data on how their products are performing. In “AI-enabled” classrooms, students are experiencing isolation, cognitive atrophy, and loss of focus. Outside classrooms, LLMs are endorsing suicide, inducing psychosis, and empowering bullies. This is happening because tech companies have decided to prioritize user engagement over safety, dependence over efficacy. And it turns out those decisions are antithetical to human flourishing.

    Just three weeks ago, the Eric Adams administration tried to push four AI ed-tech contracts through the PEP. And they failed, to our great relief, saving NYCPS millions of dollars. Let's hope 2026 is the year our school leaders wake up to the fact that ed tech in its current form is a not just a waste of money, it's a direct threat to our values, our humanity, and our children.