A teachers’ union is calling on schools to limit artificial intelligence chatbots and screen time
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, warned that young people are “drowning in technology,” urging schools Wednesday to stop giving digital devices like iPads to children in preschool through second grade.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Ms. Weingarten also urged elementary schools to avoid using artificial intelligence tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Khan Academy’s Khanmigo. And she called for new national privacy and security standards for AI tools in all schools.
The message was part of a new campaign by the US’s second-largest teachers union to prioritize active, hands-on learning and interpersonal relationships in classrooms while reducing schools’ reliance on digital devices. Ms. Weingarten said she was captivated by a lecture she heard from Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” about how screens can bind children, hindering socialization and critical thinking.
“If we don’t find a way to name it educationally, I’m afraid we’re going to lose a generation of kids,” Ms. Weingarten said in a telephone interview. “Working with teaching and learning in the earliest years should be done without artificial intelligence”
The union’s effort reflects the resistance of parents and educators against the intensive use of school laptops and applications. Some parents and non-profit children’s groups are also fighting back against campaigns by tech giants such as Google and OpenAI to push their AI products into schools.
Last month, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest public school system in the US, said it would phase out school devices such as tablets for the youngest students, as well as introduce limits on screen time for each grade level. Dozens of parents and health groups called separately a five-year hiatus on the use of generative artificial intelligence products such as Gemini and ChatGPT in schools.
In her speech Wednesday, Ms. Weingarten laid out a plan to refocus public education on the human capabilities and well-being of students. She called it “devices down, eyes up, hands-on strategy.”
Skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and applying ethics have become more important in the era of artificial intelligence, she said. Still, she noted, “Rather than working on a challenge, students can turn to an AI chatbot and get an easy answer.”
Ms. Weingarten also criticized the Trump administration’s ties to technology companies, suggesting that the White House’s industrial relations led to a “laissez-faire approach to dealing with the harms of technology.” She called for an independent research consortium to examine the effects of AI, screens and other technologies on students.
Ms. Weingarten’s warning comes nearly a year after the union announced it was launching a National Academy to Teach AI for Teachers, backed by $23 million from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. At the time, she said industry involvement would help train teachers and give them more of a say in how companies shaped AI tools for schools.
Some union members criticized the tradesays partnership undermines teachers’ autonomy on AI
This week, Ms. Weingarten said the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for the use of AI in schools with “our partners at the AI Academy” and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards.
“We are transparent,” Ms. Weingarten said, adding that she prefers that AI safety be regulated by the federal government and state legislatures, not unions. She added: “We are willing to walk away from the funding we receive here if we don’t get safety and privacy.”