Molly Senec of CIDNY on AI risks for students with disabilities

Great.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Chairs, good evening.

My name is Molly Senec.

I am the Education and Employment Community Organizer at Center for Independence of the Disabled New York.

Advancement in digital technology have provided critical access for people with disabilities to spaces that were previously far less accessible.

It has meant the ability to participate in activities remotely, more consistent use of assistive technology, and the immediate availability of practically infinite information, all things that can be and are incredibly valuable in an education setting.

However, digital technology has also made it easier to harass people and to perpetuate bias and to steal personal information, to spread or even generate misinformation, and to erode many of the skills like critical thinking.

thinking that schools are supposed to build.

Over the last few years, New York has struggled to contend with having to retroactively set up guardrails inside the classroom for technology that has already had the chance to become ubiquitous outside the classroom, which obviously we know includes a cell phone ban

and an attempt to restrict social media usage for children and teens.

Now, there is a new technology that is developing rapidly enough that it's causing decision makers everywhere to rush to incorporate its usage

for fear of being left behind without necessarily considering that we actually have an opportunity to get ahead and avoid the problems that we saw with cell phones and with social media.

As of right now, AI is developing so rapidly that we do not know enough about it or about the impact of its long-term usage on students, especially students with disabilities, to begin incorporating it into our schools without doing our due diligence.

While we cannot necessarily protect students outside the classroom, it remains our responsibility to protect them as best we can within it.

Just a couple of things, more details are in my written testimony.

We're looking at the impact of critical thinking, bias, misinformation, mental health, trust erosion, and also the conflation of assistive technology with AI, meaning that

we don't yet know whether it masks critical symptoms and potentially delays diagnoses.

Thank you.

Thank you.