{"id":367775,"date":"2026-10-08T11:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T11:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/367775\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T11:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T11:50:12","slug":"ai-wary-nyc-students-say-the-tech-is-still-sneaking-into-classrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/367775\/","title":{"rendered":"AI wary NYC students say the tech is still sneaking into classrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

A moratorium on most uses of artificial intelligence<\/a> is in effect in New York City\u2019s public schools, but students say the technology keeps turning up in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

Students said they’ve caught teachers and administrators using AI for slideshows, quizzes, posters and schoolwide email. While the instances they described appear to follow the letter of the moratorium, the students argue they flout the spirit of the new policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure AI is nowhere near our education,\u201d said Juno Hayes a 17-year-old senior, who uses they\/them pronouns.<\/p>\n

Some of the students said if they\u2019re banned from using AI, educators should be barred from using the technology, too. And given the potential social, economic and environmental costs of artificial intelligence, they said schools should be completely AI-free.<\/p>\n

In early September, Mamdani announced new rules prohibiting<\/a> all student-facing AI up through 8th grade. The technology is only allowed in high schools in certain circumstances: AI literacy classes, career-training courses, and pilot programs that haven\u2019t started yet.<\/p>\n

The AIM Coalition, a group of parents, educators and students critical of AI’s deployment so far, said the limits the mayor announced in September are a good step, but don\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n

Hayes, a member of the coalition, said students were met with an unwelcome example of AI upon returning to school last month: A large, AI-generated poster of their school mascot, a hawk, was staring down at them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and a lot of my friends were like, \u2018This sucks. We don’t want this up here,\u2019\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n

Hayes loves to draw and worries about the impact of artificial intelligence on art, labor, cognition and the environment. They pinned a note underneath the poster encouraging fellow students who object to the image to sign on. \u201cI got a lot of signatures,\u201d they said. The picture was eventually taken down.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI will never replace the expertise, judgment and relationships that teachers bring to the classroom,” said Onika Richards, an education department spokesperson, in an emailed statement. \u201cAI may only be used for instructional planning and operational tasks, not student facing instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research shows teens, like adults, are split on AI. A study<\/a> by the Pew Research Center in February found that a majority of teens nationally use chatbots for help in school, and more teens have a positive view of the technology\u2019s potential impact on their futures than negative. But those views appear to be shifting. Gallup<\/a> reported in April that excitement and hopefulness among teens was dropping, while anger is rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for most students it’s more of a 50\/50 split of, \u2018Oh, yeah, this is amazing. I don’t have to do work,\u2019 said Sika Agbkou, 16, a leader with the New York Civil Liberties Union\u2019s Teen Activist Project. \u201cAnd then there’s also people who are concerned, saying, \u2018\u200aThis harms the environment, and I don’t want to integrate that into our lives.\u2019”<\/p>\n

‘Genuine gibberish’<\/p>\n

The students who spoke to WNYC did not want to name their schools because of concerns they could get in trouble with teachers and administrators.<\/p>\n

Agbkou, a junior, said one of her teachers uses AI in a computer science class to generate \u201cexit tickets,\u201d questions that students have to answer at the end of lessons to see if they learned the material. But she said that seems hypocritical.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s forbidden within our classes,\u201d she said. \u201c\u200aI feel like teachers are not being held to the same standards as students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yelani Joseph said it’s not hard to see when AI is allowed to \u201csneak in\u201d to her teachers’ lesson plans and materials. She’s another junior who attends high school in Brooklyn and is an organizer with NYCLU’s Teen Activist Project.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been a habit for some of my teachers to use AI to generate the curriculum slideshows that we use,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A recent health class was a textbook example of how not to use AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were learning about periods. We were learning about pregnancy,” Joseph recalled. “The slideshows that we had on reproductive health were generated to the point where the captions and the subcaptions were, like, genuine gibberish.”<\/p>\n

‘It doesn’t replace teachers’ experience’<\/p>\n

The American Federation of Teachers, the national union that includes New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, grabbed headlines last year when it launched a new training center in partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. Union officials said the center would help teachers learn how to use AI to cut down on planning so they could focus more on students.<\/p>\n

But union leaders have since advocated for limits on chatbots and artificial intelligence in schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem right now is that no one has had enough training in AI, not the adults in the classroom, and certainly not our high school students,\u201d said Mary Vaccaro, an executive officer at the city teachers union. \u201cOur goal is to get educators the information they need to use AI safely, ethically, and as a tool to improve their practice. It doesn’t replace teachers’ experience, creativity, or our connection with our students.”<\/p>\n

Vaccaro urged the Mamdani administration to develop “courses for older students so they can understand AI and not be derailed by it.”<\/p>\n

Multiple students recently described a decline in trust<\/a> between teachers and students since ChatGPT emerged earlier this decade. Agbkou said a teacher accused her of using AI on an essay two years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me feel angry because, as a student, I don’t feel like I gave any reason not to trust me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said her dad showed the teacher the sequence of her work in Google Docs to prove she hadn\u2019t cheated.<\/p>\n

Joseph said the irony is that many teachers are using AI software to detect whether students have been using AI on assignments \u2013 and often the detection software gets it wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThey’re being allowed to just check our work with AI, even though that AI might not be 100% accurate,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it could lead to kids getting failing grades on their assignments because they’re being accused of using AI even though that’s not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the AIM coalition have testified at school board meetings and City Council hearings. Hayes is circulating a petition to strip all AI from schools.<\/p>\n

The education department said it will be offering training to educators on responsible use of AI. Officials said they would look into any allegations of teachers not complying with the limits on AI.<\/p>\n

Hayes cautioned that the long-term debate is just getting started.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s good to have some regulations,\u201d Hayes said of the city’s current AI moratorium. \u201cIt\u2019s up to us to make sure that people understand the fight is not yet won.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A moratorium on most uses of artificial intelligence is in effect in New York City\u2019s public schools, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-367775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}