The tide on AI is turning, and the people are resisting the narrative of inevitability that we have been sold. In NYC, the AI Moratorium Coalition, comprised of MORE-UFT members and others, continues to demand a two year moratorium on the use of AI in NYCDOE schools. (You can join the more than 4,000 people who have signed our petition here.)

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected on a wave of optimism and hope for a government that is responsive to the people. Unfortunately in K-12 education, Mamdani has not shared a strong vision for any students older than 2 years old. The only clear policy he has communicated for K-12 education is flip-flopping on mayoral control. In continuing the undemocratic governance of the nation’s largest school system, Mamdani is promoting the status quo, which has established a racially and economically segregated school system with highly inequitable outcomes. He is also promoting the continuation of neoliberal education policies and inappropriate encroachment of private corporations and corruption into our public school budget. 

At MORE-UFT and in the AI Moratorium coalition, we look outwards for power, not upwards. We are building a grassroots resistance of rank-and-file educators, families, students, researchers, scientists, artists, and concerned community members. Mayor Mamdani claims to be interested in accountability and feedback, but has yet to meet with our coalition. We have held multiple information sessions and educational panels, met with Chancellor Samuels and his staff twice, held multiple rallies at City Hall, got more than half of the City Council to sign a letter to the Mayor demanding a two year moratorium on the use of AI in schools, have almost a thousand signatories to a separate artists’ AI moratorium open letter and succeeded in shifting the tone towards AI away from “inevitability” towards “caution.” 

We continue to organize parents through sharing information. As soon as parents learn about the lack of protection for their students’ data, the racism baked into the “immediate feedback” writing LLMs that teachers are being pushed to adopt, the horrendous impact on the environment, and the corruption that DOE Superintendents and bureaucrats through the partnerships like the Google GSV Fellowship, they are radicalized. We have an ever-growing list of educators and families that are engaged and enraged. 

Mayoral control was utilized under the Adams administration to force curriculum mandates across the city. Under NYC Reads (which the Mamdani administration is extending), superintendents chose from one of three mandated curriculum options (EL Education, Great Minds’ Wit & Wisdom, and HMH’s Into Reading). Students and families have pushed back on the lack of whole books involved in each curriculum option. Many superintendents chose HMH, and in the time since that large 5-year contract was agreed to, HMH has morphed from a curriculum publishing company to an AI company that also produces curriculum. Mamdani’s silence on this shift and lack of intervention on the unrestricted and ungoverned use of AI in schools creates a vacuum of leadership that is filled by people who may be operating under corporate priorities, such as the Google GSV fellows who hold policy making decisions within the DOE. The stated goals of the Fellowship are to find “early adopters and key messengers” to “convert skeptics” and generate a “cultural shift” towards AI from within. No scientific evidence is being included in this push for AI adoption from within the NYCDOE. There are no peer reviewed scientific studies that prove the efficacy of AI. 

There is plenty of evidence that AI doesn’t work. The AI Moratorium coalition has compiled an ongoing list of studies, articles, and evidence related to a myriad of concerns related to AI. Ironically, the company that wrote the NYCDOE’s initial AI guidance document, Accenture, itself illustrates the cost of dependence on AI. Their company is trying to dial back excessive spending on AI to do basic tasks. NYCDOE should be wary of the hidden costs of this “free” (for now) technology. If NYCDOE schools adopt AI, what’s to stop the companies from instituting tokens and dramatically increasing the price on a widely adopted (but unnecessary) tool? 

Mayor Mamdani said he wanted accountability– well here it is. We are holding those in power accountable for ensuring our students are protected from an insidious technology that empowers the surveillance state, pollutes the environment, increases energy costs, disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities, invites cognitive offload and the loss of critical thinking, diminishes and commodifies individual student voice, hastens the privatization of public education, homogenizes the language through LLM use, and undermines our profession.