posted in Technology

No AI until high school: NYC mayor Mamdani imposes 1 year ban on AI for schools through 8th grade

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1377962/no-ai-until-high-school-nyc-schools-announce-major-classroom-technology-overhaul

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels today announced a moratorium on student-facing generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in schools, alongside a new screen time policy, a decision that will impact nearly 600,000 public school students, or two-thirds of the system’s total enrollment. The policy establishes a one-year moratorium, effective in the 2026-2027 school year, on student-facing generative AI for children in 2-K through 8th grade. It also introduces twice-yearly AI critical thinking modules for high schoolers, limited AI pilots for a small number of high school classrooms and age-appropriate screen time restrictions.

www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mayor-mamdani-and-chancellor-samuels-put-students-first-with-nat
The official website of the City of New YorkMayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels Put Students First with Nation’s Broadest Generative AI Moratorium in Schools
Edited ⁨⁨Sep⁩ ⁨3⁩, ⁨2026⁩, ⁨15:17⁩⁩enPage

Replying to @⁨IllNess@infosec.pub⁩

TBD. I’m no fan of AI or especially the companies. But every kid learns differently and our schools are not built for some kids’ learning styles. AI can customize for every single student.

I feel like the ones that could benefit most from AI teachers are the ones in these huge classroom where the teachers can’t give individual help. And AI would be perfect for these grades as the topics are much more basic and easier for AI to get right.

Anyway, I don’t think this’ll be a popular comment, but I also don’t think it’s wrong.

Replying to @⁨Exeous@lemmy.world⁩

If internet searching and self learning matches you learning style, great for you.

Personally, I have used AI for many development projects and have learned way more than I was ever able to by googling. Many times I’d take answers from stack exchange and ask AI wtf it meant and it would break it down in a way I could understand.

Now apply this to middle school math and a student that just doesn’t learn math like other kids.

Replying to @⁨danc4498@lemmy.world⁩

And you sound like an adult who has already learned how to do development. AI in schools makes kids lazy. Imagine if you had an application that answered every question for you, sometimes right and many times incorrect, I would be willing to bet you would not have learned how to do development. I think you are talking about teachers using AI to develop curriculum, which is a great use, just like how you use it for dev.

Replying to @⁨mx_smith@lemmy.world⁩

There’s a difference between handing kids chat gpt and telling them to learn and giving them ai tools designed around teaching children specific topics.

My kid has to do math problems on a website each week. When he doesn’t understand the problem he can click a help button that breaks the problem down for him. When he doesn’t understand that, he’ll ask his teacher who doesn’t have time to break things down even further for him or loses patience with him when he still doesn’t get it. So he goes on without understanding. A built in AI could easily figure out what it is he doesn’t understand and then teach him that and work back to the problem he’s working on.

I think the “wait a year” approach is probably a good one to ensure they are giving the kids the right kind of AI. But a blanket “AI bad” statement I disagree with. I think kids that have access to these kinds of tools will end up better off than those without.

Replying to @⁨Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world⁩

Gotcha so you’re not disagreeing with any of the points I actually made about how AI can help individualize learning. Just that kids shouldn’t be on computers or tablets in school.

Well, I don’t have anything to say about that as my kid has a chromebook and outside or using it for certain homework assignments, I don’t think he uses it to learn. If he had some AI software on there designed for him to learn, I bet he’d get much more use out of it.

Replying to @⁨danc4498@lemmy.world⁩

Expecting “individualized” education from a technology known for being abused in sloppy ways, for being non-deterministic to the point it’s producing NSFL content if it doesn’t have safeguards, and that hallucinates inaccurate information while being controlled by the most powerful sociopaths in the world then…

Yeah. That’s a reasonable expectation and not unsafe at all my dude. /s

Replying to @⁨TachyonTele_Esq@piefed.social⁩

:100:

I just see no way in which the injection of AI into an already crumbling education results in anything resembling “good outcomes”.

You gotta learn to think. It takes time and effort and dedicated practice. And you need space, time and an environment for that.

As bad as this is for grown adults, it seems orders of magnitude worse for kids/ young adults.

Replying to @⁨TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world⁩

As problematic as AI is, these students are going to live in a world where it exists. I would much rather live around people who were taught how to use it well and as a tool to aid thinking and understanding rather than a total replacement to thinking. I’m sure it will take years of refining how we teach high schoolers to live around it to get good results, but we have to start somewhere.

Replying to an earlier post

They’re not compatible, under the current paradigms. You’re not wrong, imo.

But neither is the commenter you’re replying to.

It ain’t going away, and as it is (in every respect from function to marketing to access) ‘AI’ is currently absolutely poisonous for mental development, no matter the age.

But that’s not inherently married to the way it will always be used.

Imo, the ban should be in place all the way in K-12, for no less than 5 years, and some resources devoted to enable school districts to engage the necessary mechanisms to assess how to marry the use of AI technology into educational use, with an actual thorough process in place to assess how and if it can be done in a manner beneficial to educational goals.

It’s not enough to have a techbro declare it the best thing in the world for learning, a child development psychologist declare it the worst thing to exist, and an education expert sitting between them looking anguished.

They need to all be locked in the same room, metaphorically speaking, and honestly arrive at a form that is meaningfully impactful to student outcomes (if one can be found), before it’s something that schools should attempt to use within the curriculum.

Replying to @⁨beep@piefed.world⁩

I recently attended a parents night at my daughter’s school where one of the teachers laid out the schools new AI policy and guidelines which were the result of at least a year of research. My favorite slide was the don’t and do of AI under the new policy.

Don’t: Use AI

Do: Not use AI

This school also generally limits the usage of technology. They do have laptops on hand, but they come out only for very specific subjects such as coding or robotics classes, both of which are optional classes.