The Battle Over A.I. in the Classroom

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the school year ending, all over the country educators and parents are taking stock of the drastic shift caused by artificial intelligence in the classroom. Today, Natasha Singer, a technology reporter, discusses the year that reshaped American classrooms and how one dedicated teacher helped his students chart their own path into an uncertain future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.
0:13.5	With the school year ending, educators and parents all over the country
0:18.1	are taking stock of the earthquake that is AI in the classroom.
0:22.8	Today, my colleague Natasha Singer talks about the year that reshaped American classrooms
0:28.0	and how one dedicated teacher helped his students chart their own path into an uncertain future.
0:39.9	It's Wednesday, June 17.
0:45.3	Natasha Singer, welcome back to The Daily.
0:46.8	Thanks for having me, Rachel.
0:52.4	So the school year is done for most students across the country. And it's been a really contentious year when it comes to one topic in
0:55.1	particular, which is AI in the classroom, something that you have been covering. Can you summarize for us
1:00.9	what the fight is over specifically? And when did it really get started? You know, Rachel,
1:07.1	I've been covering tech in schools and tech industry, influencing schools for the New York Times for more than a decade. And I've never seen the kind of parent backlash about school tech that we're seeing. And particularly, as you pointed out, AI is becoming the new flashpoint. And I think that it's partly because of the context. First of all, there are massive concerns about cheating. Students tell me,
1:29.1	they're sitting in the front row of class and the kids in the back row have got their Chromebooks
1:32.5	open. And whenever a teacher asks a question, the kids in the back are looking up the answers
1:37.1	on Gemini or ChatGPT. And if they get called on, they're just reading the AI answers. Wow.
1:42.2	And so there are all these concerns that these AI tools
1:45.3	could pose serious risk to kids learning, to kids' critical thinking. And so that's part of what
1:51.2	the fight is about. And at the same time, you're getting this massive push from tech companies
1:56.2	like Google and Microsoft and Open AI to get their chatbots into schools.
2:01.3	And you're also seeing the White House pushing for AI education.
2:06.5	This next executive order relates to artificial intelligence education.
2:10.7	The White House issued this executive order on AI education toward the end of the last school year.
	...

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