In public schools in New York, students up to the third grade will not be able to use artificial intelligence tools during the next school year. The new policy, announced on Wednesday 2 September by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, will cover almost 600 thousand children and boys, about two thirds of the students of the public system.
The moratorium will last throughout the school year 2026-2027 and will apply from 2-K to the eighth grade. Not only will ChatGPT and other generalist chatbots be excluded, but all teaching software that use AI generated directly with students.
The city has already identified more than 38 programs authorized in schools whose functions of AI do not comply with the new criteria: those components will be disabled. The so-called companion chatbots, designed to support personal conversations with the user, will be banned in all classes, including superiors.
The measure does not prevent teachers from using artificial intelligence to prepare lessons or carry out administrative activities through instruments approved by the school system. Exceptions are also provided for certain assistive technologies for students with disabilities, for those who are learning English and for vocational training programs.
In high school, the approach will be different. All students will follow two modules of 45 minutes a year to learn how AI tools work and recognize its limits, errors, false information and bias.
Up to 50,000 students can also participate in five pilot programs. The tools chosen by the city will be used for up to 45 minutes a week, always under the supervision of a teacher. The program does not preview the introduction in general chatbot class as ChatGPT or Claude.
The new AI policy is accompanied by more restrictive indications even on the time spent in front of the screens. Up to the second element will be limited the individual use of digital devices during the lessons. From the third to the fifth the city recommends a maximum of 30 minutes per day, becoming 45 minutes from the sixth to the eighth.
During the presentation of the measure, Mamdani explained the choice distinguishing between children and adolescents: for the first the priority is to avoid generational tools replace some parts of the learning process; for the second the city considers now necessary to understand how to use a technology that will meet at university and work.
This is not the first time that New York tries to establish limits to AI in schools. At the end of 2022 the Department of Education had blocked ChatGPT on its networks and school devices, especially for doubts about the reliability of answers and its use in tasks. That ban was then passed while many schools had begun to develop their own rules.
The new policy instead seeks to set equal criteria for the whole school system. And it comes when the use of AI by students is now much more widespread than four years ago.
There are still several aspects to be clarified. Chalkbeat reported that, just a few days from the beginning of the lessons, all the details have not yet been defined on how the individual schools will have to apply the new limits and control the tools already present in the teaching platforms.
The moratorium will last a year. Meanwhile, a new Technology in Schools Coalition, consisting of students, teachers, parents, unions and experts, will evaluate pilot programs and the effects of new rules before the city decides what to keep from the next school year.
L’articolo In New York Schools, nothing AI up to the third media proviene da IlNewyorkese.
