(TNS) — Michelle Wu and Zohran Mamdani, two of the country’s most prominent progressive urban mayors, are splitting on artificial intelligence in the public school classroom — in the immediate term, at least.

Wu is positioning Boston Public Schools (BPS) as the first major U.S. city to proclaim all students will graduate “AI literate.” Through a $1 million public-private partnership, the city is collaborating with the University of Massachusetts Boston to design a secondary school AI curriculum (grades 7-12). A bostonpublic.ai website outlines the “holistic, ethical and human-centered” vision.

This summer, BPS launched an inaugural cohort of “AI educator ambassadors,” a group of 25 teachers tasked with leading AI learning projects at their respective schools.

The endeavor pairs with Gov. Maura Healey’s vision to make Massachusetts a global leader in AI innovation.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Mamdani in September took a vastly different stance, announcing an expansive student-facing generative AI moratorium for preschool through eighth grade — encompassing nearly 600,000 public school students in the city.

Specifically, student-facing generative AI tools and companion-style chatbots are prohibited across New York City elementary and middle schools for this school year, and the city disabling AI in nearly 40 allowed educational software programs.

The diverging rhetoric on AI in schools between the two mayors mirrors a broader national debate over whether tech immersion or “childhood protection” should define public education in the digital age. And is some combination of both possible?

“We do not know what we should do about the arrival of AI in schools, and worse, historically when new technologies come around, a lot of our guesses on what to do about them are wrong,” said Justin Reich, director of the Teaching Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an associate professor of digital media. “A lot of people say, ‘Why don’t more Massachusetts schools have AI policies?’ Well, no one knows what a good AI policy is.”

A 2025 RAND report surveying students, parents, teachers and school leaders found 61 percent of parents felt greater AI use would harm students’ critical-thinking skills. Agreeing were 55 percent of high school students and 48 percent of middle school students. Just 22 percent of district leaders shared the concern.

That same study showed AI use in schools is happening regardless of the worries, with 54 percent of students reporting they used it for schoolwork last year.

The mayors appear to be responding to different camps, Reich said: Mamdani to public anxiety around AI and Wu to optimism.

But Reich speculated that elementary education in Boston and New York City won’t actually look that different in practice. Boston also recommends no direct AI interaction for pre-K through second grade, while New York City is taking that further through eighth grade.

Despite New York City’s moratorium and even stricter policies playing out in Los Angeles, Reich said Wu seems to be “sticking with the plan” — emphasizing graduating students who are ready for the modern workplace and can navigate the evolving AI future. The industry’s role in BPS’ approach is significant, too — with Whoop, Toast, Wayfair, Boston Dynamics and HubSpot all serving on the Boston Public AI Advisory Board, among other companies.

“The idea is that every single BPS graduate will have fluency,” Wu said during a September fireside chat event at the Harvard Kennedy School. “They will know the types of tools that are available, the kinds of decision-making that happens with that. And they will be also educated on risks, ethics, challenges, and be able to really promote responsible use in a safe and guided environment so that they’re out into the world (and) able to take full advantage of the opportunities, technologies and resources in front of them.”

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
In March, Wu joined BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper and tech entrepreneur Paul English to announce a $1 million public-private partnership to bring AI education to the city’s students in grades 7-12.

BPS is partnering with UMass Boston’s Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute to design a dedicated “applied AI” high school elective. The district also has a nine-member AI Industry Advisory Board intended to promote internships and career pathways.

When Wu first announced the district’s endeavor, she cited a collaboration between city government, higher education and industry “that will position Boston Public Schools as a leader in AI fluency and the understanding for all of our students to recognize the full context of this world.”

Last month at Harvard, comparing prohibition of AI to telling children “don’t watch TV,” Wu argued that cities have to be realistic about emerging technology and empower students through guided, ethical instruction.

“I think in Boston, we already have been putting in the time over many years and with community partners and our ecosystem to have those conversations to understand the details, and things are (further), I think, along the line here in this part of the country because of who we are and also how we think about challenges,” Wu said when asked directly about the different approaches in New York City and Los Angeles.

Just days after Mamdani’s announcement last month, California’s largest city rolled out a ban of sorts that goes even further, restricting AI use at all grade levels.

Twenty-five Boston secondary school educators are piloting AI learning projects in their classrooms this year after undergoing training this summer with Day of AI, an AI curriculum and professional development organization. They’re scheduled to participate in a district showcase and hackathon next June.

Boston’s push also aligns with proposed Massachusetts state public school graduation recommendations that would require AI and digital literacy modules to be completed.

When Mamdani held a press conference early last month with several city councilors and public schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, he announced New York City’s strict and measured approach.

“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable but that it is necessary,” Mamdani said. “We do not see it that way.”

The moratorium — as well as imposed screen-time limits — came after parent groups spent months raising concerns about AI tutors, student privacy, screen time and outsourcing learning to chatbots.

Mamdani emphasized the one-year moratorium is for K-8 students. He said it would “be irresponsible” to not prepare high schoolers for the “fast-evolving technological future that lies ahead.”

In high school, similar to Boston, New York students will partake in AI instruction, he said, specifically through the pilots of “five rigorously vetted educational AI programs that teachers have vouched for.” The pilots will be limited to a maximum of 45 minutes per week under direct teacher supervision, and none of them are chatbots, he said.

“This pilot is not introducing ChatGPT, Claude or anything similar into our curricula,” Mamdani said.

The mayor also announced the city is disabling AI in 38 existing core curriculum products, including Amira, a reading tutor, which drew the ire of many parents.

New York City Council member Lincoln Restler said he received dozens of complaints from parents whose children were talking to AI programs to learn how to read, while Council member Rita Joseph said families had signed petitions and filled officials’ inboxes.

RHETORIC VS. REALITY
Reich, the MIT professor, said the biggest difference between Wu and Mamdani in this instance is rhetoric, and not necessarily the actual classroom instruction that will take place.

He speculated that visiting a K-8 classroom in either New York City or Boston would reveal very little AI usage.

Reich cited the parent and community concerns in New York City over automated tutors and screen time that likely fueled the city’s policy. Those concerns exist equally in Boston, he argued, even if they haven’t reached the same volume publicly.

Meanwhile, he pointed out high schoolers in both cities will ultimately receive similar AI exposure.

“I do think their rhetoric absolutely has some important differences, but I think it’s worth noting the on-the-ground learning experiences for kids in Boston and New York may actually not be all that different,” he said.

Reich commended New York City for treating its policy as a one-year experiment to be evaluated by its Technology in Schools Coalition, while noting UMass Boston is similarly positioned to evaluate Boston’s implementation. BPS is also in the throes of developing seventh through 12th grade AI literacy and fluency benchmarks “so the district can measure what students are actually learning, not simply how many classrooms are participating,” the district said.

Critical in all school districts across the country, Reich said, is the ongoing evaluation, investigation and revision of whatever is taught.

“Every district in the country is conducting an experiment,” Reich said. “How systematic are you in evaluating how what you are doing is working?”

That in itself will be a mounting challenge, he said, given AI’s novelty and how fast it’s moving. Reich cited that, while Google was founded in 1998, the first peer-reviewed research about teaching kids to sort truth from fiction on the web was published in 2019.

Reich said schools must be “just as devoted to evaluating what they do as much as developing what they do.”

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