Resisting the Rise of the Bots

In the next 10 years the AI education market is projected to reach between $112 billion and $127 billion — more than double the federal government’s entire K–12 education budget. Tech executives, administrators, and even some teacher union leaders are urging educators to utilize AI for everything from lesson planning to giving feedback, and to teach students how to use AI “ethically.” Rethinking Schools has not climbed aboard the AI bandwagon.

In his piece “Educators Over AI: Because No Bot Can Build a Beloved Classroom,” Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian details how “the real work of teaching and learning cannot be automated.” Rachel Franz and Susan Linn focus on the dangers AI toys pose to young children. Rethinking Schools editor Ursula Wolfe-Rocca writes in her open letter to educators that “in this time of ascendant authoritarianism” it is especially important to build our pedagogy on human relationships and not “outsource any more of our humanity to tech billionaires.” And Anne Lutz Fernandez takes on many of the arguments encouraging educators to embrace AI, reminding us that “AI’s health and environmental costs alone mean there may be no such thing as ethical AI use.”

We would love to live in a world where advances in technology change our lives and schools for the better, rather than enrich corporate executives at the expense of children and educators. But that is not the world we live in, and AI cannot get us there. Only organized human beings can do that.