Teachers, parents and even students trash disastrous impact of AI in schools: My heart breaks for this generation

A few months ago, a third-grade student in Brooklyn was assigned — like the rest of his classmates — an AI-powered reading program called Amira.He was already reading at a sixth-grade level, but he also suffered from hearing loss.Amira, the AI program, repeatedly flagged his pronunciation — which was sometimes slightly off, due to his hearing impairment — directing him to practice simple words again and again.“It was having him reread words like ‘cat’ and ‘bat’ and ‘dog,'” his mother, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Post.“He could read them.He just couldn’t pronounce them the way the bot needed him to.”When she tried to opt her son out of the program, she said both the school and district officials initially told her no, and his feedback improved the technology for future students.“I never consented to allow my child to train an AI chatbot,” she continued.

“I never consented to allow my child to be used in this manner at all.”The question of technology in school classrooms is a thorny one.There is no doubt that staying abreast of the latest technology is key — it is already shaping jobs and industries, and today’s young students will need to be fully literate in it.But swathes of teachers, parents, and even students are raising concerns that technology and AI in the classroom are hindering learning, normalizing cheating — all while the DOE sinks over $1 billion into tech firms.One parent told The Post that her child used a school-issued device to screenshot math problems and run them through programs like Google Lens to receive answers in seconds.Similarly, essays can be drafted by chatbots before a child writes a single sentence with their hand.One teacher revealed that their school has begun removing laptops from classrooms altogether because they are disruptive and distract students from learning.“These kids are not going to be self-reliant,” Aixa Rodriguez, an English teacher at Motion Picture Technical Hig...