Artificial intelligence knows how to write an essay, solve an equation and do homework without even asking for a snack; New York, however, banned it in schools for at least a year. From this start of the school year, students in public primary schools and middle schools will no longer be able to directly use generative AI tools in class. The measure, announced Wednesday by democratic-socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani, will concern around 600,000 students for at least one year. The city presents the system as the most extensive school ban in the United States. It will apply to all software offering generative AI directly accessible to students until the end of middle school. Nearly 40 educational applications already used for mathematics, reading or other subjects will have to be deleted or modified. As for conversational robots offering emotional support, they will be banned at all levels.
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“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-assisted early education is not only inevitable, but necessary,” said Zohran Mamdani. “We don’t see it that way.” His schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, defends the same caution: children learn, he explains, when they face a difficulty, make a mistake and then start again. “No software, chatbot or algorithm can replicate this productive effort for a child.”
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Digital sorting
AI is not the only one affected. No individual screens will be authorized before the CE2 equivalent. The municipality then recommends limiting their use to 30 minutes per day for primary school students and 45 minutes in middle school. It must also review all the digital tools purchased by the school system and exclude those whose educational usefulness has not been demonstrated. With nearly a million students and a budget of about $40 billion, the Education Department has some business arguments.
The device does not, however, organize a complete disappearance of artificial intelligence. Some approved educational programs, programming software, digital books and exams may continue to use it. Exceptions are also provided for disabled students, those learning English or those following certain training courses preparing for a profession. Teachers will be able to use AI to prepare their lessons, translate documents or write messages. However, they will not be able to entrust him with grading homework, nor ask him to decide whether a student should move to the next class or what action to take when faced with a child in crisis: prepare the meeting, yes, chair it, no.
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Fifteen minutes of AI
For high school students, New York takes a different strategy. Everyone will take introductory AI courses twice a year devoted to how it works, its risks, its professional consequences and its famous “hallucinations”, this invented information that the tools present with great seriousness. Only five applications will be authorized at the start of the year, under strict conditions and under the supervision of a professor. One of them, responsible for analyzing texts, can, for example, only be used for fifteen minutes per week.
