The Battle Over A.I. in the Classroom

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rachel Abrams** (0:28)
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is The Daily.
With the school year ending, educators and parents all over the country are taking stock of the earthquake that is AI in the classroom. Today, my colleague Natasha Singer talks about the year that reshaped American classrooms and how one dedicated teacher helped his students chart their own path into an uncertain future. It's Wednesday, June 17th. Natasha Singer, welcome back to The Daily.

**Natasha Singer** (1:12)
Thanks for having me, Rachel.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:13)
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?

**Natasha Singer** (1:32)
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.
Students tell me they're sitting in the front row of class, and the kids in the back row have got their Chromebooks open. And whenever a teacher asks a question, the kids in the back are looking up the answers on Gemini or ChatGPT, and if they get called on, they're just reading the AI answers. Wow. And so there are all these concerns that these AI tools could pose serious risk to kids learning, to kids critical thinking. And so that's part of what the fight is about. And at the same time, you're getting this massive push from tech companies like Google and Microsoft and OpenAI to get their chat bots into schools. And you're also seeing the White House pushing for AI education.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:32)
This next executive order relates to artificial intelligence education, sir.

**Natasha Singer** (2:37)
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.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:48)
That's a big deal because AI is where it seems to be at. We have literally trillions of dollars being invested in AI.

**Natasha Singer** (2:58)
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.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:06)
AI is the way to the future. I don't know if that's right or not, but certainly very smart people are investing in it heavily.

**Natasha Singer** (3:13)
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.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:26)
At Microsoft, we believe delivering on Google VC AI is the most profound way.

**SPEAKER_9** (3:30)
It's called the AWS education.

**Natasha Singer** (3:33)
And so, the next thing that happens is you have dozens of companies signing up.

**SPEAKER_10** (3:36)
Today, we are making new commitments by providing K through 12 students, teachers and staff with broader access than ever before.

**Natasha Singer** (3:44)
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.

**SPEAKER_9** (3:59)
And the goal really is to give away up to $100 million in technology.

**SPEAKER_8** (4:05)
$150 million will go towards grants to support AI education.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:09)
There's nothing more important than education.

**SPEAKER_11** (4:12)
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.

**Natasha Singer** (4:25)
But AI education is so new, nobody really knows what it is. And everybody has different definitions.

**Rachel Abrams** (4:32)
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.