Why New York City Is Restricting Artificial Intelligence in Public Schools

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Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. Hope you're enjoying this Labor Day. It's the last break before students return to New York City Public Schools. Want to know who won't be returning to school this year? AI. At least for some students. Let's jump into it. New York City is overhauling how artificial intelligence can be used in public schools this year. Students from 2-K to 8th grade will be barred from using AI. That means no AI for instruction or tutoring. The ban will last one year. For high school students, they'll have limited access to the technology. The city is also limiting screen time for younger students and disabling AI features in dozens of programs that schools had previously been allowed to use. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the policy at a press conference just one week before the start of school. He pushed back on the idea that schools should embrace AI simply because the technology is so powerful.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani: The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way.

Janae Pierre: The policy marks a change from the guidance the city released back in March, when officials still allowed some student use of AI but with caution. A large number of parents rejected that guidance and pressured the city for an outright moratorium on AI in schools. Parents also called for limits on screen time. At that same press conference, school's chancellor, Kamar Samuels, explained why the city wants younger students doing more work themselves.

Chancellor Kamar Samuels: They learn best when they are wrestling with hard problems, when they're getting it wrong, when they're trying again and finally getting it right. That struggle isn't a flaw in the system. It is learning.

Janae Pierre: The AI moratorium in the nation's largest school system reflects a growing unease throughout the country with how the technology could disrupt society. How did the city get from its earlier approach to this one? Where will AI still be allowed? Are there loopholes? WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jessica Gould has been reporting on the changes. Jessica, welcome to the show.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

Janae Pierre: We talked back in March about this same topic, and school's chancellor, Kamar Samuels, announced back then that he would allow some student use of AI. I'm wondering what changed between March and now.

Jessica Gould: This new policy that was released in March came after years of deliberation with working groups and task forces that the city convened to think about what is the right AI use for schools and students. They released this traffic light policy that said some uses were red prohibited, some were green, meaning go largely on the teacher side, but for the category, the broad and controversial category of student use of AI, that was considered a yellow light, meaning that educators should use careful discretion about when and where students can use AI in their assignments in the classroom. This traffic light approach immediately spurred a major backlash, especially among parents who criticized it as vague. Thousands of parents petitioned for a moratorium, saying that there shouldn't be any AI use in schools for at least two years. They cited the negative impacts on kids' brain development and learning, concerns about data privacy, and also the tremendous impact that AI has on environmental resources and concerns about climate change. They also pushed for limits on screen time. Then, before summer break, Chancellor Samuels said he had heard parents' concerns and that officials were reconsidering the policy. He also told principals to pause all software purchases until the city released revised rules. That brings us to the most recent announcement last week.

Janae Pierre: Okay, so tell us more about how the city justified this ban.

Jessica Gould: Sure. The ban is for all AI from 2-K, as you said, up through 8th grade. They said that it's really important that students learn how to do what they call the productive struggle of figuring out answers to questions and learning on their own. Here's what Chancellor Samuels said when he was on All Things Considered for WNYC last week.

Chancellor Kamar Samuels: Oftentimes they might, let's say, take the cognitive load off. They might give students an answer to a question when they ask. They might do various things, but we're going to be really looking closely at that. Those are the kinds of things that we're concerned about where our students are not doing the kind of thinking that they need to do. We want to make sure we're vetting tools.

Janae Pierre: Cognitive load off. What does he mean there?

Jessica Gould: I think that refers to the shortcuts where AI solves your math problems or writes your essays, does all your research. Educators talk a lot about how important it is to have the discomfort of pushing yourself to learn something new. That is how you learn. Also, you have to become comfortable with that discomfort. I think that a lot of our technology takes away the need for getting accustomed to that feeling.

Janae Pierre: Jessica, one thing I hear in conversations often is that AI is making people dumber. It seems like the school's chancellor is nodding to that and trying to keep students away from that.

Jessica Gould: I think that the city sees that there could be positive impacts, particularly for older students. One thing that Mayor Mamdani said in this week's press conference was that he has yet to see a study that proves any positive results from using AI for young kids, except for those that are published by the technology industry.

Janae Pierre: You mentioned that the city is putting new limits on screen time for younger students. What will those limits look like?

Jessica Gould: This is a limit on one-to -one individual devices. That's individual laptops or tablets. After the pandemic, it became a priority that every student have a laptop or tablet to bring home in case they needed to use it for remote learning. Under this policy, most students from preschool through second grade won't be permitted to use these individual devices in classrooms. This comes as parents have said that even the littlest kids spend too much time on these devices as part of the curriculum. There's also new limits on laptop and device use for students in third through eighth grade. They're putting a time limit per day, which didn't exist before. There are exceptions for if you're a student with disabilities and you need assistive technology, like if you're dyslexic and you need something that's going to read the text to you or that you can speak into and it takes your notes down. There's also exceptions for students learning English who need help with translation. There are exceptions for assessments that are going to be given periodically as part of the regular course of school.

Janae Pierre: Let's switch now to talk about high school students, because they're being treated differently under this policy. They can actually use AI, but with some limitations. Can you talk about that?

Jessica Gould: Yes. What Mayor Mamdani said here was that older students need to have some exposure to AI and be given critical skills about how to deal with it. They're going to be rolling out these artificial intelligence literacy courses throughout high schools to teach kids about AI, the dangers and the potential. There's also going to be a limited number of pilot programs that schools can opt into where they use a particular vetted AI program for a limited amount of time per week. Then also AI can be used for coding and robotics or for career and technical education. The city is not placing any official screen time limits on high schools at this point.

Janae Pierre: I want to talk about teachers. Have you talked to any teachers about this new policy? I mean, can they still use AI?

Jessica Gould: They can. They can use AI for lesson planning and organization, maybe for some general communication with families and for translation. They can't use it for grading; they can't use it for behavior and discipline, and they can't use it for decisions about student graduation or promotion. I talked to some teachers who were concerned that some very useful things that they had been able to do with AI before in terms of creative projects in the classroom that they might not be able to do anymore because of this. Most educators so far have said they think this is a step in the right direction.

Janae Pierre: It's interesting that you bring that up. I have a friend who's a teacher, and they talk about how all of the administrative stuff that you don't really think about or consider when you pursue a career as a teacher, but AI usually helps with that.

Jessica Gould: There are questions about data privacy of students, and anything that teachers do has to go through the vetting process of whether it meets the privacy standards for the city. Teachers are overworked. There are arguments among some teachers that if you can free up some of the time that they spend on lesson planning and creating materials, that they can spend more time working individually with students, which is what's most important.

Janae Pierre: Teachers got to walk the walk as well.

Jessica Gould: Now, the teachers' union has raised concerns about whether rolling out this policy within a week before school starts, without clear plans for who's in charge of enforcing it, is going to put a lot of the onus on teachers at the last minute, and they're concerned about that.

Janae Pierre: Okay, so I understand that you spoke with an education advisor to the mayor. What did they say?

Jessica Gould: We education reporters talked to some of the officials in charge of actually executing this program. After the mayor and chancellor's remarks, we wanted to know if city officials feel like they have a real grasp on how many AI tools are actually being used in schools right now. What they say is that they know of about 40 programs in use with AI that they plan to pull, but there might be more, and they're going to be looking to see what those are as the year goes on. Ailish Brady, a senior education advisor to the mayor, said the Education Department will be working with vendors to turn off all AI features or cancel the products.

Ailish Brady: AI products, including those embedded in Tier 1 curriculum where the AI can be turned off, will be turned off. That includes Amira and any HMH products you mentioned. If a product cannot have the AI turned off, then that will be taken off the board entirely in our schools.

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Janae Pierre: We've been talking with WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould about New York City's new restrictions on AI in public schools, including a one year ban for students through eighth grade. Those restrictions only go so far. After the break, what happens when students can still use AI at home, and how the city will decide whether this new approach is actually working? Stay close.

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Janae Pierre: This is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. We're talking with WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jessica Gould about New York City's new restrictions on AI in public schools. Jessica, you've done a lot of reporting on how AI has already transformed assignments. You reported that homework has changed a lot because of AI. Writing assignments have changed because of AI. Kids are going to be kids. The city can restrict AI, but students can still use it when they get home, right?

Jessica Gould: Right. This moratorium is about what happens in school. Teachers, principals, the chancellor and Mayor Mamdani can't control what kids do once they leave a school building. In recent years, teachers have been transforming their assignments and their lesson plans so that a lot, if not all, of the writing happens in class to prevent AI use and cheating. We've gone back to blue books and writing by pen and paper and pencil. In terms of take-home assignments, it's a huge challenge. I've talked to teachers who use AI detection software, but they say that it's hard to prove beyond a doubt that AI was actually used, even if the software flags a paragraph or a whole essay.

I recently heard about teachers embedding little clues in their assignments in white font that the kids can't see but then is picked up if you copy-paste, and they try to catch it that way. Even then, if they can definitively prove that AI was used, there aren't clear punishments outlined for infractions. Chancellor Samuels acknowledged that, and he said they're working on it.

Chancellor Kamar Samuels: I think this, just like the phone ban, really opened up strong conversations between home and schools and community about how to collectively approach our young people. All of schooling requires really strong partnership with parents and really strong engagement. This I know will continue to fuel that conversation. Secondly, I think it's going to be important that we continue to work with schools and work with teachers around professional learning with regards to detection devices and detection mechanisms and so on.

Jessica Gould: What I took away from those comments is that there's no silver bullet for this. They don't have a solution yet.

Janae Pierre: Jessica, it has me thinking about money here. When it comes to these detection mechanisms and this technology, this is just something else that city schools will have to pay for, right?

Jessica Gould: That's true. Although perhaps there's going to be some money saved by canceling some of these AI contracts.

Janae Pierre: Okay. There's another question of whether these restrictions actually accomplish what the city wants them to. That is, how will the city determine whether this policy is working?

Jessica Gould: Officials say they're going to be seeking comment from educators, students and families about the policy. That's the reason for this one-year moratorium, and they're going to create yet another task force to study how things are going. Although we've seen that in recent years, these task forces can't keep up with how quickly the technology is changing. We've seen this at all levels of society and governance that artificial intelligence is growing at an incredible pace with minimal regulation.

Janae Pierre: You talked about what you heard from teachers about this new policy, but have you heard any reactions from parents?

Jessica Gould: Yes. Some parents who have been fighting hard for an AI moratorium called the policy a productive step, but they say there are too many exceptions, and they want to see the AI ban extend to all grades, not just through middle school and for at least two years. Generally, I've heard support from parents and teachers, though there are also plenty of educators and families who say that these tools can be helpful and that school is exactly where you should learn how to use tools like this responsibly.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould. Thanks a lot, Jess.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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Janae Pierre: After our conversation, we took a trip to Fort Greene Park to hear what people there thought about the city's new restrictions on AI in public schools. There we met Brooklyn parent [unintelligible 00:16:28]. She has a 10-month-old, and she told us she already thinks of AI a lot, like screen time.

Speaker 1: The longer that we can keep kids away from it, knowing that it is inevitable, I think the better that they can build their intellectual and social skills. Not a bad idea. We try not to have it with our 10-month-old, but I know at some point, just being out in the world, it will happen. I don't know that there's a right age. We're addicted as adults, so maybe we're still too young for screen time.

Janae Pierre: We also met Samir Sonti. He works in higher education and was with his partner and their one-year-old. He told us he's worried about what AI could do to our ability to think.

Samir: I'm quite concerned about it. We're very, very worried about the way AI is degrading our species' ability to think.

Janae Pierre: What do you think about the Mamdani administration's new policy that teachers aren't allowed to use AI to instruct students under ninth grade?

Samir: I was very excited to see it. I think it's an important step in the right direction towards ensuring that our kids actually get an education from trained human beings for the foreseeable future.

Janae Pierre: Elisa Fortunato was with her husband and their two children, Andrea and Nicola. They're 10 and 13 years old. She told us AI can be useful, but students should learn and create with their own minds first.

Elisa Fortunato: It could be useful to learn how to use it as a tool, but you have to be older. Also, I think that even older students first studying, learning, creating with their minds; then they can learn how to use it. It's a tool. I agree. I don't think it could be useful for teaching students. I asked the artificial intelligence to translate me something. I am not learning. I am losing an opportunity. Of course, it depends.

Janae Pierre: Finally, Keith Metcalfe told us he already sees smartphones and Google changing how much people have to remember for themselves. For him, AI adds another layer to that.

Keith Metcalfe: It's just like phones. I used to know 10, 15 phone numbers. Now I don't even know my own number, because you just press a button and that's it. I think that takes away from people just thinking and using their own head.

Janae Pierre: What do you think about the city's new restrictions on AI in public schools? We want to hear from you. Send us a message at NYC Now at wnyc.org. We might use your comments in a future episode. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. Enjoy the holiday. See you next time.

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