On September 17th, Kyle DeAngelis, one of the authors of this piece, delivered this open letter to Randi Weingarten at an event at UFT headquarters, along with a copy of Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI. 

An Open Letter to AFT President Randi Weingarten on the Potential and Pitfalls of the New National Academy for AI Instruction

September 17, 2025

Dear President Weingarten,

We are writing to you as two UFT chapter leaders on behalf of both our members and our union siblings across the city who are watching with apprehension as artificial intelligence impacts our lives and work at an alarming and accelerating pace. 

While we have some concerns about how the AFT’s new National Academy for AI Instruction was launched this summer here in New York City with little input from rank-and-file members like us, we agree with your statement that “it’s our job as educators to make sure AI serves our students and society, not the other way around.” To that end, we believe that the new AI academy can and should promote robust dialogue and critical engagement around these emerging technologies. 

The AI Institute must equip educators to do more than simply use these technologies unquestioningly. It must also give teachers the tools they need to be informed and critical users of AI at a time when these technologies present immense challenges to both our profession specifically and our society generally. Instead of learning only how to use AI in lesson planning and other professional tasks, teachers at the AI academy should be given the opportunity to learn about and wrestle with complex, pressing ethical issues relating to AI, including but not limited to:  

• • AI and racial bias.  Various AI tools have been shown to exhibit alarming racial biases, replicating the preexisting biases that are baked into the data these systems are trained on. These biases can have a detrimental impact on student success. Teachers must understand how to utilize AI tools critically to ensure that racial equity is supported in our work with our students.
    
    
  • AI and labor issues. Current generations of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT have been trained on the labor of workers in South America, Africa, and Asia in exchange for poverty wages and exploitative conditions. Closer to home, workers in the United States have experienced concerning, anti-union applications of AI that have troubling implications for the labor movement at large.  Educators should learn to think critically about the extractive circumstances under which these tools have come to exist and their potential impact on labor. Additionally, our union should be using its considerable political clout to help ensure that future generations of AI technologies are not brought into existence on the backs of workers at home or around the world. 
    
    
  • AI, climate change, and the environment. The data centers that are being constructed around the world to train and maintain AI technologies at exponentially larger scales are poisoning communities and using unconscionable amounts of water, including in communities suffering from drought. Already, data centers’ consumption of energy is having an impact on people’s pocketbooks.  Electrical bills near data centers have skyrocketed, and this impact is projected to increase over time. Teachers should have opportunities to think critically about AI and its contributions to climate change so that they can act as more informed users of the technology. 

These are complex, thorny issues, but we are unequivocal in our belief that our union siblings across the country deserve the opportunity to be engaged thoughtfully in all aspects of AI, both good and bad. Cultivating a union of informed AI users who understand both the promises and pitfalls of AI will help to insulate our students and communities against the dangers these technologies present, and may help us to secure a future in which AI has a more positive impact on our society. Let’s work together to make the AI academy a place for critical thought and discourse, not just a rubber stamp for tech companies with a history of hostility towards public education, organized labor, and the environment. 

In solidarity,

Kyle DeAngelis

Chapter Leader

P.S./M.S. 368 The William “Bill” Lynch School

Lauren Monaco

Chapter Leader

P.S. 089 The Liberty School

If you stand in solidarity with us and believe that the AI academy should provide teachers with the opportunity to learn about and discuss ethical issues related to AI, please add your name here.

If you are interested in organizing around AI in schools, add your email here.