Panic drove NYC and LA to ban school AI and thats a big mistake

There are two ways for America’s schools to get artificial intelligence wrong.One is to hand a child a chatbot and let it do all the thinking — and the other is to ban AI and pretend it doesn’t exist.New York and Los Angeles have both chosen the second option.That means they’re setting their students up to get the first.Americans are split when it comes to AI, as evidenced by the debate that raged last week.When the heads of Anthropic and OpenAI urged AI companies to slow development down, President Donald Trump dubbed their alarm bell a “sick conspiracy” — and skeptics saw self-interest behind both warnings.Mayor Zohran Mamdani faulted Trump for what he called a “very flip response” to AI companies’ talk of “the end of humanity,” and the New York City Council has called for an all-member hearing to question AI companies about the dangers.The nation is somewhere in between: A Politico poll this month found that 48% want to pause the development of advanced AI. Yet on Sept.2, Mamdani and Chancellor Kamar Samuels chose to go to extremes, banning generative AI in NYC public schools for every student from 2-K through grade 8 — about 600,000 kids.Later that same day, Los Angeles blocked AI on school devices in every grade — banning it indefinitely for more than 378,000 students.These school systems are behaving as if a kindergartener’s educational needs are the same as a 13-year-old’s, or a 17-year-old’s.But their bans fail no matter who is right about AI.If Trump is right and AI is the engine of the future economy, our students must learn how to use it.If Mamdani is right and AI is dangerous, students must learn how it works, so they can understand its flaws and pitfalls.Either way the answer is to teach — and a ban teaches nothing.Mamdani calls his policy a moratorium.

But a moratorium only works if the world outside is also pausing, and right now it isn’t.More than half of US teens already use chatbots for schoolwork, accordin...