The Battle Over A.I. in the Classroom

trying to get my teenagers interested in reading it. If they were to have their

“own logins and we could share articles, I think that would help get them”

interested. It would also then allow us to discuss with the dinner table or wherever. Thank you very much. Andy, we heard you. It's why we created the New York Times family subscription. One subscription up to four separate logins for anyone in your life. Find out more at nytimes.com/family. From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

With the school year ending, educators and parents all over the country are taking stock of the earthquake that is AI in the classroom. Today, my colleague Natasha Singer talks about the year that we shaped American classrooms, and how one dedicated teacher helped his students chart their own path into an uncertain future. It's Wednesday, June 17th.

Natasha Singer, welcome back to the Daily. Thanks for having me, Rachel. So, the school year is done for most students across the country, and it's been a really contentious year when it comes to one topic in particular, which is AI in the classroom. Something that you have been covering.

“Can you summarize for us what the fight is over specifically, and when did it really get started?”

You know, Rachel, I've been covering tech in schools and tech industry, influence in

schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and I've never seen the kind of parent

backlash about school tech that we're seeing, and particularly, as you pointed out, AI is becoming the new flashpoint. And I think that it's partly because of the context. First of all, there are massive concerns about cheating. Students tell me they're sitting in the front row of class, and the kids in the back row have got their Chromebooks open, and whenever a teacher asks a question, the kids in the back are looking up the answers on Gemini or Chatchee

BT, and if they get cold on, they're just reading the AI answers. Wow. And so, there are all these concerns that these AI tools could pose serious risk to kids learning, to kids critical thinking, and so that's part of what the fight is about. And at the same time, you're getting this massive push from tech companies like Google and Microsoft and OpenAI to get their chatbots into schools, and you're also seeing the White House pushing for AI education.

This next executive order relates to artificial intelligence education sir. The White House issued this executive order on AI education toward the end of the last school year, and it was called Advancing AI Education for American Youth. All ready? I said, big deal. Because AI is where it seems to be at. We have literally trillions of dollars being invested in AI.

The Trump White House was saying, if America wants to remain on the cutting edge, then we need kids to learn how to use these AI tools. AI is the way to the future. I don't know if that's right or not, but certainly very smart people are investing in it heavily. It was a call to action, but it didn't have a lot of direction on what to do. And so, that left a great opportunity for tech companies to come in and shape what was happening. At Microsoft, we believe, delivering

that Google VCAI is the most profound way. It's called the AWS Education. And so, the next thing that happens is you have dozens of companies signing up. Today, we are making new commitments by providing K through 12 students, teachers and staff with broader access that ever before. Those companies are like, "Amthropic, an Amazon, an Nvidia, and meta, and Microsoft, and Oracle, and OpenAI, like all the companies who are invested in tech." Step up and say, "We have the

technology and the expertise and the funds to drive AI education." And the goal really is to

give away up to $100 million in technology. $150 million will go to its grants to support AI education.

“There's nothing more important than education. Focusing on education is the center of where we need”

to go, because it is all of these young people. They literally have to embrace it. But AI education is so new. Nobody really knows what it is. And everybody has different definitions. So basically, in the absence of very specific guidance from the White House, that leaves a vacuum for all these other stakeholders, if you will, to come in and try to shape how AI is being used in the classroom. 100%. Okay, so these big tech companies want to get their

technology into schools, which we know they have done before. I am probably one of many people who remembers being a kid and suddenly seeing these big colorful iMacs that just appeared in classrooms.

we see these tech hype cycles in school driven by companies who have products. And they want to get their products in front of kids because kids are the next generation of consumers. If you

can train a second grader on your tool, you have them for life as a customer. And we should look

at these because when schools got laptops in the beginning, there was a big push for what they called computer literacy. Like learn how to use a computer. And then a social media was taking off. We got social media literacy in schools. And then there was this brief moment, after meta changed its name, where there was a campaign for metaverse literacy. And now we have this huge push for AI literacy when we have sparse evidence that many of these past tech

literacy's had educational benefits for kids. Can you talk about what that roll out of AI

“in schools actually looks like? What are we actually seeing happening with students?”

So, that's a really important question. It's also difficult to answer because each school district is doing its own thing. The most prominent example is Miami-Dade County Public Schools,

which is the third largest US school district. And they were very careful. They spent months

having their own technology experts, tests, tech tools to see what they thought had the best guardrails for students. And then they spent months training teachers had to use these tools and I sat in on some of those trainings. And so you have a district that basically geared up for a year before they decided to introduce Gemini Google's chat pod for more than a hundred thousand high school students. So, that was a very careful roll out. They started very, very slowly. And then

I think in contrast, you have the Los Angeles Unified District, which is the second-largest school

“district. And they in 2024 announced with huge fanfare. Los Angeles Unified will never wafer from”

putting our students' needs first. That they had signed a deal with a startup to make an AI chat pod for students. A new day is done in technology and public education as Los LA has been we're going to be a model for the nation in AI use. And it was going to be called Ed. It was really friendly. Hi everybody. I'm Ed. Hola todos. So, Ed, Barry of Bolorin is Edland. That would talk to students and students could ask for help if they were struggling with a

math problem. It could give them emotional support. They could check their grades. They could check their test scores. Their parents would be able to use the AI tool. We have one of the brightest entities in the universe. Ed. And so it was built as the magical thing, right? And the superintendent said it would democratize, access to information, a panacea, it sounds like. Right. But very quickly within a few months, federal prosecutors came in and charged the founder

of this startup that was making the AI tool for Los Angeles schools with defrauding investors, defrauding investors. Right. And then the startup went bankrupt. And so, you know, that's the end of this tool that LA had chosen as this kind of demonstration product. Sure. And so you have this contrast between Miami, which went methodically, and tested many AI tools before settling on one.

And LA that went with a small startup that had never made anything of this scale.

So, obviously, this rollout of AI in schools has been chaotic. Los Angeles shows the

“risks of rushing into something quickly. This chaos, those does seem a bit predictable, right?”

Because if we're talking about technology that we are only beginning to understand what it is, how to use it, what the risks are, how have parents reacted to all of this? Well, I have to go back to Los Angeles because soon after this whole fiasco with the chatbot, Los Angeles parents started a petition called Get Big Tech off-students desks. Big Tech is the big tobacco of our time. Is it safe? Is it legal? And is it effective?

I trusted the school and the district with my child and that you had his best interest at heart. And it wasn't long before he started to come home from kindergarten singing the first song she learned. Grammarly ads. Big Curse of in typing educational standards and remove all generative AI and AI chapauts immediately. And more than 1,000 people signed this petition and one of the things that the parents were asking

for in their petition is to get the school district to audit all its recent tech contracts. LAUSD must undertake a review of all existing technology products and policies to ensure they are safe, effective, and legal. So this concern over AI is part of this wave that we're seeing around the country of parents pushing back on school tech. So the AI backlash kind of gets rolled into a broader backlash with AI, though, what is a specific

complaint about AI? So I think the concerns about these generative AI tools, right, which can

make stuff up. Right. And so one of the things is are they going to miss informed students

“under students not going to know. The second thing is that you're basically offloading human tasks”

to a bot. And if you are a child or a student who doesn't know how to think critically yet or who doesn't know how to use research or doesn't know how to analyze a text passage, then it's like both hindering the development of your own human skills and also creating this result that seems human ish. It's human ask. And we've seen a series of reports and studies cautioning against using AI in education and the problems it could cause. And one of the biggest was a report from Brookings

earlier this year in which, you know, they looked at hundreds of studies and they spoke with hundreds of students and teachers and researchers and parents and technologists across the world. And the Brookings report said that at least for now the risk of using generative AI in kids education far overshadows the benefits. I want to pause briefly here and talk a little bit more about some of those risks that you articulated because what you are describing as the concern is

fundamentally about critical thinking, right? If the assignment is to read a fellow and explain what

it means or look at a piece of civil rights law and try to explain how it might apply in a different situation, theoretically what students are being offered is a machine that can do all of that for you. And just to use it in perfect metaphor, if you think of the brain as a muscle that you exercise by learning to think critically in schools, this is a tool that basically takes away that exercise. Absolutely. It's completely different to read a play like a fellow or study primary source

documents on the history of civil rights movement or even listen to a podcast versus getting an AI to synthesize that for you, to summarize that for you, to explain it to you. And parents are saying they want to see more research and more studies about the impact of these tools and schools. And so one of the things we saw right after the L.A. chatbot Fiasco was the Los Angeles School Board just voted to put in restrictions on tech and schools, including like no laptops or tablets

for kids and kindergarten and first grade. But in New York, we've seen a groundswell of concerns

specifically around AI and a huge push to get the school district to put a moratorium on using student-facing AI tools and asking for an immediate pause on AI and schools. And one of the things that's remarkable about this polarizing debate is that the folks that are actually in the middle of this, the teachers and the students are largely left out of the discussion. And so this year I spent a lot of time going to schools and asking teachers and students what they think.

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70 obsessive reporters on the ground covering the ins and outs from every game. I almost forgot to mention the best part, Amy. Free access to the athletics World Cup coverage in our app. Download the athletic app and see you there. Okay, so Natasha, what have you learned from talking to the people that we have not been hearing from and all of this? Teachers and students? You know, I spend a lot of time in schools this year

and it's absolutely fascinating. I found that more and more teachers and students aren't buying the popular polarizing narratives that like AI's magically going to transform education or AI's going to tragically do education. You see some students who have deep concerns about AI and you have teachers who are trying to stake out a middle ground and chart a new path for what AI

“education could look like for their students. And what does that path mean? What does it look like?”

Well, a great example is a teacher that I started talking with earlier this year. Okay. Can you just tell me a little bit about your class and the school, your new work?

and then there for a long time, so I... His name is Scott Kern. He teaches advanced placement

US history. It's a passion for sure. It's hard for me to imagine doing anything else. You can just see he's the kind of dedicated engaging teacher that you wish you had or that you would want for your kids. I don't think that become good writers, good thinkers, good people. And you know, like many of us, Scott started experimenting with AI chat box. My kids and I were using it to make silly stories. And then he signed on and did this

fellowship program for teachers where he learned to build his own customized AI tools tailored to the history courses that he was teaching. And he's the head of the history department. I thought, wow, this can be so helpful for me as a curriculum planner. And so he's using it for his own work to develop and update course materials. And you can see that that's really useful.

“But as he's using these AI bots more and more, I thought, I think there's opportunity here.”

It occurs to him that the AI might also be able to help engage his students in learning APUS history. So hopefully deep in their thinking and to make for like a richer discussion. But in very limited doses, when teachers know when the moments of academic friction and

critical thinking are happening, they can choose that AI will not enter the picture of those moments.

And if we do that, then AI, I think, can augment learning this in really powerful ways. And so educators know that the thing that makes students learn is friction, right? The fancy term for it is productive struggle. If something is easy, you might not retain it. But if you think through something yourself and you ask questions and maybe you make mistakes or maybe you correct it or maybe you have this epiphany about how to synthesize information

from different time periods or whatever, it's going to stick in your head. And so Scott decides to develop some AI tools to see if he can help that productive struggle, that friction with students. And one of the things he does, remember he's an APUS history teacher, is he creates a debate bot. And in the middle of class, students stop for 10 minutes. And they start talking with the AI tool that Scott made. And it's saying to them, what do you think was the primary cause of the

“Chicago race riots? And students say, here's where I think the reason is, and you've got the”

bot saying, okay, what evidence do you have for them? What's the primary source for your argument? And what about what else is happening around the rest of the country? Maybe it's not isolated to Chicago. The bot is designed to try to push their thinking further and help them hone a deeper argument, right? It's not trying to think of for them. But also after about 10 minutes, Scott's like, okay, close your computers. And now we're going to talk about this ourselves. He wants to

make sure that his kids are still exercising their brain muscle, so to speak. Right. And it's working inside the classroom. Outside the classroom, Scott and one of his teacher colleagues, Mike Taubin, are getting worried because they're noticing that a lot of students are turning to AI tools more frequently. And I have been seeing this a lot in my reporting this year. Like, yeah, their plenty of kids using AI to cheat or to take shortcuts. But I'm also talking to teens around

the country who are using chatbots to like, create fitness routines or look up recipes or envision their prom dresses or make animated selfie videos. No, it's it's every time you do a Google search, it is integrated into dating apps, it's everywhere. Right. And at the same time, we're seeing kids like adults get into these very risky intimate relationships with AI chatbots and sometimes they're really tragic outcomes. I recently spoke with a 12th grader in San Francisco and he told

me like, he'd accidentally stabbed himself in the middle of the night with a samurai sword. Wow. And instead of waking up his mom in the middle of the night to tell her that he had this deep bleeding gash in his leg, instead he has to chap out about what to do about it. He asked the chap out what to do about a samurai sword injury to his leg. Yes, he did. And eventually he woke up

his mom and she took him to the emergency room. That seems like the right call. Right. But the first

line for many teens is chat. Tell me what to do about this. Right. And so Scott and his teacher Mike were like just growing concerned about their students. Who knows what's going to be out there in six or seven years. Imagine that they get there and we have done nothing to prepare them to think critically about AI. If we're helping kids to figure out the world and their futures, then we have to help them figure this out too. So the teachers decide that gender of AI is actually

“crucial new subject that teens need to be fluent in. And the way they're going to deal with this is”

they're going to create a new course. And they're going to call it driver's education for AI.

yourselves as drivers of the technology. So I actually went to the first class of the semester

earlier this year in February. 16 students had signed up. It's an elective class. And most of

“them were seniors preparing to graduate. Okay. So what do they talk about in the first class?”

You control the wheel. You control where things are going. You will are not a passenger who's just sitting there letting AI happen to you. You're in control. They focused on having students think about agency. So to kind of think about this in your own lives, we're going to do what we're going to 24 hours on it. So you're going to look at this. The teachers asked the kids to think about when were the times that they actively asked a chat about to do something for them specific.

And the cases in which you're like on Instagram and there's an algorithm and it's just feeding you content and you're like just scrolling through. They're being asked to think critically about whether they're thinking critically. Right. Which may seem obvious. But of course, most of us just mindlessly are using these AI tools all day long. Sure. You know, in addition to this exercise, where they thought about whether they were AI passengers or AI drivers, the students had this fascinating

conversation about creativity. That clip of the building falling was an AI generated clip.

Now you would think like what's the big deal was less than a second. But they looked at a scene

from a movie where a director had used AI to generate an explosion. And they talked about like, is that film director still the creative force behind this part of the movie? Or should the AI also get a code directing credit? And when we talk to students from the class, they weren't naive about the potential impacts of the technology and you hear their really sophisticated thinking when we ask them about it. Okay. So I'm Anna. By the way, I work on the daily, which is, you know,

like, so our daily producer and a fully spoke with a few students. I'll start. My name is Brianna Perez and I'm currently a senior. And a meeting. My name is Nicholas Worthom. I'm currently a senior and I'm 18. My name is Adrian Fro, I'm a senior and a meeting. Okay. And Anna asked them broadly about what they had hoped to get out of the AI literacy class and how they thought about AI now. I decided to sign up for this class because I actually did an internship last year and I saw

how there was a lot of AI co-pilets that hoped in like business databases. So I feel like AI isn't going to go nowhere. So it's better for me to learn it now. So I will be more like aware and know how to work AI in my future. So I just wanted better understanding of how AI can help me in my thinking. Like going through out this class, it kind of made me realize that I have to approach AI with a certain purpose in mind instead of just mindlessly asking a general question because then AI will kind of drive

“me and I won't drive it. Yeah. Yeah. What did you think about AI before you started this class?”

To me, I think the misconception that I had is AI kind of has the answers to everything because I had some very specific tasks that I was working on. And if I wasn't specific giving the AI context or like being straightforward with what I needed it for, it wasn't as accurate or efficient as I hoped it was going to be. And it just showed me that I had to put a lot more effort into my own personal thinking and taking the initiative on my own versus solely relying on AI in places that I

probably shouldn't have solely been relying on it for. When you look back on this course, do you have favorite lessons? Any memories that you know you had a light bulb moment or like we're funnier or silly? I would say probably the first class. We had an example chart of like how are you a driver and how are you a passenger? And I was like I really sat back and really that was like Spotify has

an AI like DJ and I'm always listening to the AI DJ. It plays all of my favorite music and I was like

that's AI unconsciously driving me because I'm not picking the music. I'm just listening to whatever it generates. And I was it was funny because I was like I feel like I have a good understanding of AI but this idea of like being a driver wasn't really something I ever thought of. Did you change how you listen to music like do you still use AI DJ? Yes. I tried to be more specific like if I don't like the song I'll skip it now before I just let it use to go on and on and on but I'm

trying to get better. Yeah you're trying to say like if it's gonna pick music for me it should be straight hits. Yes. I'm kind of curious like before this class like I feel like I see a lot of

“people in my life using AI including my parents. Have your parents used AI and like what is that like?”

Yes. So recently I went on vacation on my mom and our whole itinerary when we were in Puerto Rico

of the places we went to were actually pretty good but I would say the issue with both of my

parents is they cannot tell us some things AI generated. And even it was say at the bottom like may contain AI generated media and they're just like well how can you turn on just like yeah this is giving me a problem I feel like in the future. Yeah like it's here to stare so you might as well start learning it kind of like what you were saying you too anything with your parents. So my dad is mostly a call type of person like you'll call me instead of text me but recently

he's been texting me and using tragedy. How can you tell? I can tell because that is not the way he talks at all. The time he does text me it's only like one word short answers and I'll listen I'm getting this long paragraph of like advanced words not to say he doesn't know them but that's not him. He just doesn't typically write you all. Yeah yeah yeah yeah and he really called me off guard and asked him about it and he said yeah tragedy really helps me

“formally my grammar and I was telling him that I want to hear what you have to say not”

tragedy. So we talked about it for a bit and he kind of understood what I was coming from. That's a big task as your family ambassador for AI. Well they say it themselves like I'm growing up in this time of the AI so I feel like it's kind of up to me. So these students have taken on the rules of teachers they're teaching their parents about AI and how to use AI responsibly. Well thank you guys so much I really appreciate it and thank you for letting me

fit it on class. I enjoyed it. Yeah yeah yeah but Natasha given just how fast all this AI technology is evolving. I mean they're coming out with like new versions of chat GBT it feels like every few weeks at this point. What are the chances that whatever these kids learn it this semester would be outdated by the next school year? That's a really good question but I think what's fascinating about these teachers is they're trying to get students to think deeply about

its implications for society not just how to use it and the questioning skills that their learning can be applied to any technology whether it's social media or like upcoming quantum

“technology and so I think of this not so much as AI literacy as AI civics. It's a civics class.”

And so as a final project the students got up and they presented a kind of declaration of independence about this technology. I hope that this is really helpful for me to be so evident that artificial intelligence is a tool created to expand human potential. AI is meant to be a tool to help people on a set of replacing human thinking and so only so faster personal harmony we seek a personal connection with technology that serves to enhance

any human experience without replacing it. That creativity is lost whenever convenience becomes more important than growth and that true learning still demands struggle reflection and creativity. And that way I should be viewed as a extension for humanity designed to unlock solutions for

critical challenges. Whenever AI begins to diminish honesty or human connection we have the

responsibility to limit its use and to question its influence because education on institutions and the authorizing usage of artificial intelligence provided it remains a tool of support and never a surrogate for the educator and conclusion we stand firm against the surrender of our autonomy we assert our role as the architects of the future. Thank you for a great semester we had never taught this class before it never existed before at the school and thanks to you

“I think it's become a part of the future here in elsewhere maybe.”

When you think of what parents are concerned about that there's so much tech and schools that it is broad in kids brains and being boosling them and they won't be able to think critically like here you have 12th graders who arrived at a place where they're excited about AI. They want to use the tools in ways that will benefit them. They have specific ideas about what uses that might be but they also know that they are dealing with a product and they

don't want to have a product driven future. They want to have a human driven future and I think that that's an amazing outcome for parents who are concerned about the overuse of tech and schools. Well to your point Natasha what people are worried about with technology is so existential right like it's really important how we educate kids but what is the world that we are educating them for because what this one teacher is doing even if it does work

and it gets students to think critically and use these tools better that feels very out of scale with the advances this technology is making and basically every other sector of our lives like this feels a little bit like a David and Goliath story. So I think you're picking up something that's really important we all know there's a massive massive power imbalance between trillion dollar

tech giants pushing schools to train kids on their AI tools and the durable critical thinking

skills that teachers like Scott and Mike believe are in the best interests of kids but I think

to look like. I'm visiting schools all the time and I think this grassroots teacher movement for

“AI civics is much bigger than the one classroom and the one school we visited.”

The fact that teachers around the country want to help students learn to ask deep questions about whether they want a technology driven future how they want AI tools to fit into their lives or maybe they don't want to use AI at all is a reflection of this broader questioning

of the role of big tech power and society. Students are not buying the idea that an AI

driven future is inevitable. The Tasha singer thank you so much Rachel thank you for having me. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today. The Trump administration announced plans to move”

two major functions of the education department to other parts of the government. The White House's

most aggressive moves yet to dismantle an agency that it has pledged to dissolve.

The changes move programs for disabled students into the department of health and human services and the enforcement of civil rights laws and schools to the justice department. The moves are expected to be immediately challenged in court.

“And federal prosecutors on Tuesday on sealed conspiracy assault and other charges against”

15 people accused of violently impeding immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis during an immigration crackdown this year. Minnesota's top federal prosecutor didn't rose in so the defendants remembers of two Minneapolis-based groups connected with the far-left movement and TFA. Since the immigration crackdown began late last year, prosecutors have struggled to sustain similar criminal charges against ICE protesters with judges often questioning

the government's underlying evidence. Today's episode was produced by Diana Win, Lexi Dio, Adrian Hurst, and Anna Foley. It was edited by Michael Benoit with Health from Lizzo-Balen and contains music by Mary Elizano, Dan Powell, and Chelsea Daniel. Our theme music is by Wonderley, special thanks to Juan Aradondo.

That's it for the daily, I'm Rachel Athero's, See You Tomorrow. This week on the Wirecutter Show, the cost of consumer tech products, laptops, phones, gaming consoles is climbing. We have built a world that makes people need this stuff and increasingly it's going to be very difficult for a broad category of people to afford. What's driving it and what can we do about it? Find out wherever you get your podcasts.