Sonali Thacker on sloppy AI guidance and capitulation to tech
Thacker, an NYU English professor and parent, calls the AI guidance sloppy and lacking any evidence-based rationale for AI as a pedagogical good. She argues the guidance represents capitulation to a contested technology, calls children 'not guinea pigs,' and warns that parents with means will exit public schools for those with restricted AI policies.
You may begin.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
Thank you to the council.
I'm Suneli Thacker, a parent of a rising second grader in Manhattan and an educator myself.
I'm an English professor at NYU.
I'm appalled at the sloppiness of the AI guidance that was released and strongly in favor of a two-year AI moratorium.
The guidance does not offer, as far as I could see, one single affirmative, rigorous, evidence-based reason for the introduction of AI as a pedagogical good.
Instead, the rationale for the guidance is that AI is here and here to stay, and so the school system must adapt and adopt.
But this has a distinct whiff of if you can't beat them, join them, and it represents a capitulation to a supposed new status quo, when actually AI, its uses, benefits, costs, infrastructure are all deeply contested.
The very last place to acquiesce to AI as some kind of foregone conclusion is in our classrooms.
Our children are not guinea pigs for under-regulated and rapaciously profit-seeking companies to refine their products.
Mayor Mumdani's victory was met with immense joy by many, myself included, and his administration's stated values are about resisting corporate power.
An encroachment, expanding childhood education, and keeping families committed to the city and to its public institutions.
Throwing the door open to AI as this guidance does would be a stunning betrayal of those values.
The DOE cannot ask families to trust it to be a steward of childhood education and then announce that there are multiple domains, the so-called green light areas, where educators are told to proceed with using AI with confidence,
even as that very same guidance acknowledges that the IRMA process is not yet capable of evaluating algorithmic bias, equity, impact, or instructional effectiveness in its own words.
The guidance also acknowledges that the DOE does not yet have authoritative answers about AI's impact on biometric and behavioral data, academic integrity, family rights, cognitive offloading, and environmental impact.
So seemingly everything.
How on earth do you breezily tell educators to proceed with confidence without having this crucial information?
AI will cheapen our students'educations, and I fear that parents with means will exit the public school system for private charter and alternative schools that commit to much more restricted and considered AI policies.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Next, we have Jane Hatterer.