The Battle Over A.I. in the Classroom

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the

The school year ending, educators and parents all over the country are taking stock of the earthquake that is AI in the class. Today, my colleague Natasha Singer talks about the year that reshaped American classrooms.

And how one

Help the students chart their

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.

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.

Already.

That's a big deal. Because AI is where it seems to be at. we have uh literally trillions of dollars being invested 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 uh the way to the future. I don't know if that's right or not, but certainly very smart people are investing in it.

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 delivery.

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 than ever before.

And those companies are like Anthropic and Amazon and 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 a hundred million dollars in technology.

fifty million dollars will go towards grants to support AI 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 were members being a kid and suddenly seeing these big colorful IMAX that just appeared in classrooms. So on some level this is not a totally new phenomenon.

This is a really important point because we see these tech hype cycles in school driven by companies who have products. And they wanna 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

Can you talk about what that rollout 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. test tech tools to see what they thought had the best guardrails for students.

Los Angeles Unified will never waver from putting our students' needs first.

But they had signed a deal with a startup to make an AI chop up for students. A new day is dawning in technology and public education as Los Angeles. LA had said we're gonna be a model for the nation in AI use. I was gonna be called Ed, it was really friendly.

Hi everybody. RF Ballorin. S. Edmund?

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 this AI. platform, we have one of the brightest entities in the universe.

An ad.

And so it was billed as this magical thing, right? And the superintendent said it would democratize access to information and 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 its 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, though, 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 chat bot, Los Angeles parents started a petition called Get big tech off students' desks.

Thank you.

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 was my child and that you had his best interest

Yeah.

And it wasn't long before he started to come home from kindergarten singing the first songs he learned. Yeah.

Make cursive and typing educational standards and remove all generative AI and AI chatbots immediately.

And more than a thousand 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

This concern over AI is part of the wave that we're seeing around the country of parents pushing back on school tech.

So, okay, 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 produce texts and images. are multiple. You've used ChatGPT and other tools. They regularly make stuff up. Right. And so one of the things is are they gonna misinform students and are students not gonna know? The second thing is that you're basically offloading human tasks.

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.

Absolutely. It's completely different to read a play like Othello, or study Primary source documents on the history of the 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 so this year I spent a lot of time going to schools and asking teachers and students what they think.

We'll be right back.

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She sent me a year-long subscription so I have access to all the games. We'll do word old mini spelling B.

Has given us a personal connection.

And so having read the same article, we can discuss it.

Such a diversified gift.

I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes. And we even just shared a recipe the other day. The New York Times contributes to our quality time together.

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slash gift.

Okay, so Natasha, what have you learned from talking to the people that we have not been hearing from in all of this, teachers and students?

You know, I spent 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 is magically gonna transform education or AI is gonna tragically doom 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. Can you just tell me a little bit about your class and the school, your Newark?

Yeah, I'm in uh Newark, New Jersey at North Star Academy, which is a charter school. I've been there for It's passion. It's hard for me to imagine doing anything else.

You just see he's the kind of dedicated, engaging teacher that you wish you had or that you would want for yourself.

Helping them become good writers, good thinkers. good people.

And you know, like many of us Scott started experimenting with AI chatbots.

My kids and I were using it to make silly stories and

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.

And I thought, wow, this could 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.

Lesson planning, lesson.

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 AP US.

industry. So hopefully deepen 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 at those moments. And if we do that, then AI I think can augment learning in some really powerful ways.

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,

Right.

But also after about ten minutes Scott's like, Okay, close your computers and now we're gonna talk about this ourselves.

He wants to make sure that his kids are still exercising their brain muscles, 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.

No, it's it's every time you do a Google search, it is integrated into dating apps, it's everywhere.

And at the same time, we're seeing kids like adults get into these very risky, intimate relationships with AI chatbots. And sometimes there are really tragic outcomes.

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 but like

Seems like the right call.

Right. But the first line for many teens is Chat, tell me what to do about this, right? Right. And so Scott and his teacher Mike were like just growing concerned about.

Who knows what's gonna 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 generative AI is actually a crucial new subject that teens need to be fluent in. And the way they're gonna deal with this is they're gonna create a new course.

So our goal in all of this by the end of the class that we're having is for you all to think of yourselves as drivers of the technology.

So I actually went to the first class of the semester earlier this year in February. Sixteen students had signed up, it's an elective class, and most of them were seniors preparing to

Okay, so what do they talk about in the first class?

You control the wheel, you control where things are going. You 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 agents.

So to kind of think about this in your own lives, we're gonna do what we're calling a twenty four hour audit.

To look at this, the teachers asked the kids to think about when were the times that they actively asked a chatbot 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.

Which may seem obvious. But of course most of us just mindlessly are using these AI tools all day long. Sure. You know, and 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.

So right there, that clip of the building falling was an AI jet. Now you would think like what's the big deal? It was less than a second.

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 co-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.

Um okay. So I I'm Anna by the way. Um I work on the Daily, which is you know

So

Our daily producer Anna Foley spoke with a few students.

Um, I'll start. My name is Brianna Perez and I'm currently a senior and I'm eighteen.

My name is Nicholas Wortham. I'm currently a senior and I'm eighteen.

My name is Adrian Farrell. I'm a senior and I'm eighteen.

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-pilots that helped in like business databases. So I feel like AI isn't gonna 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.

Um, so I just wanted better understanding of how AI can help me in my thinking. Like going throughout this class, it kinda 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 kinda drive me and I won't drive it.

Yeah. What did you think about AI before you started this call?

Um, to me I think the misconception that I had is AI kinda has the answers to everything. 'Cause 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.

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 were funny or

Um, 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 realized I 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

Did you change how you listen to music? Like do you still use AI DJ?

Yes. Okay.

Yeah.

I try to like be more specific. Like, if I don't like the song, I'll skip it now. Before I just let it used to go on and on and on. But you know, 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 hit. I'm kinda 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?

Uh yes. So recently I went on vacation with my mom and our whole itinerary when we were in Puerto Rico was completely chat GBT generated. But my mom was like, this saved her so much time and most of the places we went to were actually pretty good.

Yeah. Like it's here to stay, so you might as well start learning it, kinda like what you were saying. You two, anything with your parents?

So my dad is mostly a call type of person, like he'll call me instead of text me. But recently he's been texting me and using Chat G V T. I can tell because that is not the way he talks at all. Um, the times he does text me, it's only like one word short answers and now all of a sudden I'm getting this long paragraph of like Uh advanced words. Um not to say he doesn't know them, but that's not him.

Yeah.

doesn't typically write that.

he does not

Yeah.

Like that at all.

Um, and it really caught me off guard and I asked him about it and he said, Yeah, Chat GPT really helps me um formulate my grammar and I was telling him that I want to hear what you have to say not ChatGPT. So we talked about it for a bit and he kinda understood where I was coming from.

Thank you.

That's a big task as uh your family ambassador for AI.

Well, they say it themselves like I'm growing up in this time of AI, so I feel like it's kinda up to me.

Mm-hmm. So the students have taken on the roles of teachers. They're teaching their parents about AI and and how to use AI responsible.

Well, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. And thank you for letting me uh sit in on class. I I enjoyed it. 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 GPT 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 they're 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.

That artificial intelligence is a tool created to expand human potential.

AI is meant to be a tool to help people instead of replacing human thinking.

To foster personal harmony, we seek a personal connection with technology that serves to enhance the 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's the one. AI should be viewed as an 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 they're not a good idea. Educational institutions may authorize the usage of artificial intelligence, provided it remains a tool of support and never a surrogate for the educator. In 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 a part of the future here and elsewhere, maybe.

When you think of what parents are concerned about, that there's so much tech in schools, that it is brotting kids' brains and bamboozling them and they won't be able to think critically, like here you have twelfth 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.

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.

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 tool. And the durable critical thinking skills that teachers like Scott and Mike believe are in the best interests of kids. But I think it's part of a much bigger thing that's happening.

Natasha Singer, thank you so much.

Rachel, thank you for having me.

We'll be right back.

This is Maurice Schemat, the host of a new podcast from Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and the New York Times. Last year, I spent three months embedded with a capital defense team. Their client had been on death row for more than 30 years, and now his execution date had been set.

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 to the Justice Department.

Today's episode was produced by Diana Wynn, Lexi Dio, Adrian Hurst, and Anna Foley. It was edited by Michael Benoit with help from Lizo Balin, and contains music by Marion Lizzano, Dan Powell, and Chelsea Daniel. Our theme music is by Wonderly. Special thanks to Juan Arredondo.

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