Student Arun Ahmed Misha testifies on AI concerns and lack of student consent
Arun Ahmed Misha, a high school junior, testifies about the lack of student consent in AI pilot programs, the fear of losing human connections with teachers and creative aptitude, and the need for student and parent awareness of AI policies.
Hello, Chair Dynowitz, Chair Krishna, and everyone present in this room.
My name is Arun Ahmed Misha.
I'm a high school junior and a member of the Teen Activist Project at New York Civil Liberties Union.
After the first AI guidance came out, I gave countless testimonies in different PEP meetings in the city council here and also helped organize meetings to talk about and educate students about artificial intelligence.
I remember how excited I was waking up in the morning seeing that Mayor Mamdani banned artificial intelligence.
See the vaguely interpreted post?
Super excited me instantly reposted that on my social media, only to find out that that was not for us high schoolers.
It almost felt like we were not important enough to be protected.
When I read the details, I see that as students, we do not have the chance to consent to the decision.
made for us.
If my principal signs up to be a pilot school where products will be tested on us, I do not get to consent and I do not get to refuse to participate.
Most students do not even know how this policy even works and this policy was even announced.
It seems like the city is busy in implementing a system that will require high school students to lose human connections with our teachers, to lose their creative aptitude, and to make it seem normal that everything we do in school should be monitored and fed into the artificial intelligence system.
While the Dewey says that AI will not replace teacher, the people who sells this product says the complete opposite.
The possibility of losing the teacher whom I think to be taught
whom I think to be the torchbearer of my life, the possibility of losing the creativity, which I think made human history incredible, the possibility of students losing attention abilities, which I think
harm us all, just by a single policy is the terror that concerns me and thousands of other students.
When a student reads the news and sees technology companies says that AI is a risk to humanity, what is the role of schools to teach us how to understand it?
Our ability to think and ability to have the human connection must remain the future of education.
Thank you so much.